It is sinful not to sell empty churches, Archbishop told

CHURCHES with small congregations are just “museums gathering dust” and should be sold off, a clergyman has said in plans submitted to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The proposals drawn up by the Rev David Keighley said that the sale of “virtually empty” Church buildings could raise tens of millions of pounds for the poorest in the UK.

He claimed that up to 12,000 places of worship across England had fewer than 30 people attending regularly before the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Keighley, 72, who retired in 2017 after 40 years of service, said: “Selling off these churches is not killing the Church.

“It is simply responding to the needs of the 21st-century Christian community and using funds in a more practical, and fundamentally Christian, way.

“The vast majority of churches in England have been little more than museums for some time, and the cost of their upkeep cannot be justified when considering the minimal level of use.

“The wastefulness of the Church in this respect could almost be considered sinful.

“According to my own research, around 75 per cent of English churches had a congregation of 30 or fewer regular parishioners before the Covid crisis. This will only continue to decline after the pandemic has abated.

“The only rational, and Christian, thing for the Church to do given the ongoing decline in church attendance is to sell off churches that are, literally, a waste of space.”

Submitting his proposals to the Archbishop of Canterbury this week, Mr

‘Selling off churches is not killing the Church. It is simply responding to the needs of the community’

Keighley said that the sale of Church buildings could be a “blessing to struggling communities”.

He went on to say that the pandemic has shown that worshippers have adapted to online services conducted over video platforms such as Zoom, which could become a permanent fixture once the pandemic is over.

Earlier this month, a report commissioned by Archbishops said that the Church of England should look at using its land to build affordable homes rather than for making a profit.

It argued that the Church should “not simply be driven towards land sales at the highest price”.