Saturday, February 10, 2007

Churches in Britain 'redundant' :: The Times

Extract:
Thousands of churches face closure in ten years
...
Just one tenth of the nation’s Christians attends church, and churches are now closing faster than mosques are opening. Practising Muslims will, in a few decades, outnumber practising Christians if current trends continue.

A generation ago the churches in Britain seemed unassailable. The first mosques in Britain opened at the end of the 19th century but by 1961 there were just seven mosques, three Sikh temples and one Hindu temple in England and Wales, compared with nearly 55,000 Christian Churches.
...
By 2005 the number of churches had fallen to 47,600. According to the organisation Christian Research, another 4,000 are likely to go in the next 15 years.

In the Church of England alone, which still has 16,000 churches, 1,700 have been made redundant since 1969.

Over the same period, the number of mosques in Britain has grown to almost the number of Anglian churches that have closed. The Islamic website Salaam records a total of 1,689 mosques.
It's hard to see why The Episcopal Church should benefit from criticism from its brothers and sisters in CoE.

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