Rising tide of patriotism sends faithful back to pews

Anglican Church hails rise in congregation numbers as pride in Christianity and ‘Englishness’ grows

THE Anglican Church is experiencing a small increase in congregation numbers, partly thanks to a resurgence in patriotism and pride in Christianity, a report has found.

The decline in Anglican believers has slowed since 2013 while the growth in the number of non-religious people has stabilised, the study shows.

Academic Stephen Bullivant said that the church was recovering after losing a lot of believers after the publication of Richard Dawkins’ The God De

lusion in 2006.

The professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University in Twickenham also said that a rise in patriotism might be linked to greater pride in Christianity among some groups.

“People see Christianity as an expression of Englishness. There has been more rhetoric around Britain being a Christian nation.

“People are looking for ways to connect with others. I suspect a larger proportion of people who do say they are Anglican tend to be patriotic,” he said.

The figures, which are based on an analysis of the British Social Attitudes Survey and the European Social Survey, show the proportion of people who say they have no religion rose to a high of 50.6 per cent in 2009. It has been static or lower ever since, and reached 48.6 per cent in 2015.

Meanwhile, the proportion who say they are Church of England worshippers has risen from a low of 16.3 per cent in 2009 to 17.1 per cent in 2015.

The report says: “The proportion of self-describing Anglicans in Britain has more than halved, from 40 per cent in 1983, down to 17 per cent in 2015.

“That said, the past three years are worth highlighting. If talk of even a modest Anglican revival would be premature, one certainly can speak of a newfound stability.”

Professor Bullivant added that the release of Dawkins’ book had stopped a lot of latent Anglicans from describing themselves as Christian.

“That book was really aimed at those people who said they were Anglican but didn’t really believe in God,” he said. “So a lot of them stopped ticking Anglican on the forms and started to tick atheist instead.”

He said that numbers could have stopped falling because the church is now left with a bedrock of genuine believers – and efforts to attract new wor-

‘I suspect a larger proportion of people who do say they are Anglican tend to be patriotic’

shippers could be working.

“After decades of bad news, this is certainly welcome for the Church of England,” he said. “If I was in the Anglican Church I would be celebrating this.”

The Rt Rev Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool, said: “The report tells us that the past four years have shown a gentle increase in the number of people who see themselves as Anglicans.

“In Liverpool, we say we want more people to know Jesus and more justice in the world – a message of personal relationship and community action. In my experience that message remains attractive to people in this increasingly self-centred and lonely world.”

However, Professor Bullivant also found that 61 per cent of those who say they are of no religion were brought up as Christians, suggesting that many people are still deserting Anglicanism.