Let us tweet… more pray online than in church

MORE people now follow the Church of England on social media than bother to actually visit a church, the latest count of congregations has revealed.

Church leaders said they have 1.2million followers who pray online through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, but only 1.1million people go to a CofE church to pray in the course of a typical month.

And the Church’s traditional method of measuring its faithful, a figure called Usual Sunday Attendance which counts those who are in the pews on an ordinary Sunday, has fallen to a record low of fewer than three quarters of a million.

The 740,000 level of Usual Sunday Attendance was less than half the number of regu- lar churchgoers 50 years ago – a figure that is below estimated attendance in Roman Catholic churches and which is almost certainly lower than the number of Muslims who attend mosques in England on Fridays.

The decline means that a typical middlesized church among the CofE’s 10,000 places of worship had a ‘worshipping community’ – the number of people visiting at least once a month – of just 44 last year.

Church of England leaders think their congregations have dropped by 10 to 15 per cent over the past decade. In some areas decline has been faster: marriages celebrated in its churches were down by more than a fifth from 2006 to 2016 as couples chose civil weddings in stately homes or other ‘approved premises’.

Funeral numbers have fallen even faster, by more than a quarter, as families opt increasingly for non-religious ceremonies conducted by freelance celebrants rather than clergy.

The CofE’s estimates follow a report of the respected British Social Attitudes survey last month. It found fewer than half the population now consider themselves followers of any organised religion and only 15 per cent of people now say they are CofE.

Church officials saw cause for optimism in the spread of its message on social media. It said people want to know about Christianity and in a month it reaches 1.2million on social media while 1.5million visit its websites.

Mike Eastwood of the Church’s Renewal And Reform campaign to win new congregations, said: ‘I am encouraged by the success so far of the digital campaign. This project has shown how social media can be used to communicate the Christian faith and life to a huge audience outside our church walls.’

But William Nye, secretary general of the General Synod, the Church’s parliament, said the figures were ‘a sobering reminder of the long-term challenge we face. This is likely to persist for some years ahead’.