Thousands of churches to close

Thousands of churches face closure, demolition or conversion in the next decade with experts warning of the imminent demise of some branches of the Christian religion in Europe.  In some parts of the country, the closing churches are even being turned into centres of worship for other faiths. A disused Methodist chapel in Clitheroe on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, is the latest, just granted planning permission to become a mosque for the town’s 300 Muslims. There are more than 47,000 churches in Britain today. More than seven out of ten of the population, 42 million people, count themselves Christian. It sounds a lot. But behind the figures lies a story of apparently irreversible decline in the country’s established religion. Where Christianity is growing, on the Pentecostal and evangelical wings, worshippers often prefer modern, functional warehouse-style buildings to the traditional neo-Gothic landscape of British ecclesiastical architecture.

(Note: time pressure means I cannot do what I usually prefer to do and write a separate comment on this - although I might update and change it later. So, because it is generating a bit of comment out there already, I am posting an early, slightly amended version of a story that appeared in The Times earlier this week instead and, if I have time, will try to update it later on. rg)

Just one-tenth of the nation’s Christians actually goes to Church, a trend that is seeing churches are closing at a rate even faster than new mosques are opening.  Latest figures show that practising Muslims will in a few decades outnumber practising Christians if current trends continue.

A generation ago, the churches in Britain seemed unassailable. Although the first mosques in Britain opened at the end of the 19th century, by 1961 there were just seven mosques, three Sikh and one Hindu temple in England and Wales. This compared with nearly 55,000 Christian churches.
Sometimes, with denominations such as the Methodists split into three different types, there could be as many as seven or eight churches in one small town to cater for all the Catholics, Anglicans and different groups of Protestants.

By 2005, churches had plummeted 47,600. According to latest data from the organisation Christian Research, another 4,000 will go in the next 15 years.

In the Church of England alone, still with 16,000 churches on its book, 1,700 churches have been made redundant since 1969 when the Pastoral Measure enabling this process came into effect, although the Church is anxious to emphasise that more than 500 have also opened during that time. The new Fresh Expressions initiative is also having a dramatic impact, and although Sunday attendance is under one million, monthly attendance figures give the established Church 1.7 million regular worshippers. Since the 1960s however, the number of mosques now active in Britain has grown to equal almost exactly the number of Anglian churches closed in Britain. The Islamic website Salaam has 1,689 mosques in its data base.

Anglicans distressed about their church’s decline can take heart from the fact that none of these is in one of their churches. Covenants attached to redundant Anglican churches makes it almost impossible for them to be used by another faith. None have become mosques and just two have become Sikh gurdwaras. Also, the Church of England has opened more than 500 new churches since 1969.

Redundant Anglican churches tend to get turned into houses, offices or restaurants instead. In Cheltenham, 19th-century St James’ is now Zizzi’s, an Italian pizza restaurant, with an enormous pizza oven in the sanctuary.

But Methodist churches, down from 14,000 in 1932 to 6,000 at present and closing at the rate of 100 a year, are often sold with no restrictive covenant attached. Even where one is attached, it can be reversed by appeal to Methodist head office.

Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “In 1990, when I left had just left university, there were about 400 mosques in the UK. In the last 17 years it has gone up three-fold. Many existing mosques are also being refurbished and enlarged. In Bolton where I was born, the mosque we used to go to was a converted church.”

Belgium-based Chris Gillibrand, a regular commentator here and who campaigns against the closures of Roman Catholic churches throughout Europe on his weblog, said: “On present demographic trends, the self-destruction of European Catholicism will be complete in twenty years. Priests and laity share responsibility. In stark contrast to Muslim communities, Catholic families are smaller and the fullness of the faith has not been passed to their children, who are often lapsed.”

He continued: “It is ironic when so many churches are being transformed into cultural centres that real culture is so endangered. Living culture is much more than a half-remembered history and exhibitions of meaningless modern art, whose main purpose is often just to shock.”

According to Peter Guillery of English Heritage, the trend is not new. Brick Lane’s 18th century Huguenot church in London’s East End became a Methodist chapel in 1819. It was converted into east London’s main Orthodox Jewish synagogue from 1898 and then into a mosque in 1976, this last adaptation staving off demolition after a ten-year search for an alternative use.

Multi-faith use is growing. Art and Christianity Enquiry, a Christian arts trust, is next month planning a seminar on how many buildings in Britain are actually being shared by different faiths groups.

And pockets of Christianity are still surging ahead. London’s TA Property Consultants has more than 300 evangelical and pentecostal churches on its book, looking for premises that can accommodate congregations of 500 worshippers or more.

But overall the present growth in places of worship for other faiths is unprecedented, for new builds as well as conversions.

Oxford professor Ceri Peach has recorded how town and city planners are becoming more flexible. From demanding that temples and mosques were hidden away, behind factories or rows of trees, some are starting to allow discreet pinaccles and minarets. Others are even permitting “the bold and the magnificent”. In a recent paper for The Geographical Review, he warned: “The new cultural landscape of English cities has arrived. The homogenised, Christian landscape of state religion is in retreat.”

There is an interesting case study we looked at in Clitheroe in Lancashire. When the small Muslim community that has been settled in this small town on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales for 40 years sought permission to turn a derelict Methodist chapel in the town into a mosque, the letters page of the Clitheroe Advertiser was flooded for weeks with protests. Ribble Valley council finally approved it at the end of December, but it will be years before the battle is forgotten. In many respects, the story of this chapel’s decline as a Christian centre of worship and renaissance as a Muslim one encapsulates the difficulties facing both the Muslim and the Christian communities in Britain.

Mount Zion Methodist Chapel survived for 55 years but was closed as a church way back in 1940. It was then made over to industrial use, and the choir stalls made way for Singer sewing machines. From 1992 it was used by Lappet Manufacturing, making 40,000 high-quality headscarves a week for export to Muslims in Saudi Arabia. They moved out in 2004. Meanwhile, Clitheroe’s Muslims tried for years to establish a place of worship in the town, but never got their plans approved. At one point, the council was even criticised for maladministration by the Local Government Ombudsman for the way it reached a decision not to sell land for a mosque.

When the chapel proposals came up before the council, nearly 1,000 people signed letters objecting, compared to 429 who supported it. Members voted eight to five in favour last December.

The chapel, which will take about 18 months to restore and convert, will become a community centre as well as a mosque. Ironically, when LS Lowry painted the chapel in his picture A Street in Clitheroe, he embellished it with a few fancy pinnacles of his own. As one local told The Times: “If it was good enough for Lowry, why can’t it be good enough for us?”

Registered mosques in UK (figures from Christian Research)
2005 - 635
Projections
2010 - 685
2020 - 800
Many mosques are not registered however.
The website Salaam.co.uk has 1,689 mosques in its database.
Churches in the UK
2005 -47,635
Projections
2010 - 46,735
2020 - 43,890
Alternative uses found for the 1,696 Church of England churches made redundant since 1969 include:
Civic, cultural or community - 245
Residental - 223
Arts, crafts, music and drama - 38
Light industry, office, shopping - 62
Demolition - 374
Worship by other Christian bodies - 121 (Source: Church Commissioners)

Comments

[Colonel Bain]

O de Archabbot Dom Augustine Baker MM spoke of dis to come ten years ago. The Heavenly Father is in charge of God's Houses but man is sometimes blinded by what he worships which is money, change an newness!!
Giddup...

[Martin]

"not in recognisable neo-gothic structures, but in more practical buildings"

Hideous modern monstrosities, you mean. I do not understand why we have lost the aesthetic of paying homage to God by making churches places of great beauty, but I do wish we could recover it. I consider these carbuncles, such as that indescribably disgusting thing in Liverpool, to be positively irreverent and not fit places for the celebration of the Mass.

[Martin]

"the invasion by Muslims into the Christian European continent represents one of the most significant threats that the West has ever faced"

I agree, and consider that we ought to be curtailing it to a far greater degree than our pusillanimous authorities will countenance. I would go so far as to ban any further Islamic immigration whatsoever and would then embark upon a programme of aggressively integrating the existing population into our society.

[Martin]

"Cue bishops and archbishops demanding more and more of our tax money to maintain their buildings"

I am not an Anglican: indeed as a Catholic I have reason to resent the way in which Anglicanism purloined the buildings from the Catholic Church in the first place.

But medieval religious buildings, whether still used or not, are of major artistic and historic value. They are the largest single group of ancient buildings we have, and they are national treasures which, due to their age, are in need of much maintenance. Because these buildings are national treasures, t is incumbent upon the state to aid in their preservation. Their religious purpose is actually no more relevant to that point than the former military purpose of castles has any bearing on the state's duty to aid in the cost of their maintenance on the same basis, that they are irreplaceable national treasures.

[Kriegerwulff]

The West is dying at an incredible rate...the invasion by Muslims into the Christian European continent represents one of the most significant threats that the West has ever faced. The last large scale invasion centuries ago was repulsed by the Christians, but I wonder if we have the will to power to survive this most recent onslaught.

[The Labour Humanist]

Why do I always fear for my wallet when I read stories like this!?

Cue bishops and archbishops demanding more and more of our tax money to maintain their buildings - which they now can't afford to run because they are losing followers by the thousands every month. Of course it would be crazy to expect the CofE to dip into its own £5bn worth of assets, why do that when they can mug the taxpayer (again).

[Alan Marsh]

It sounds dramatic, "Thousands of churches to close", but the reality is that churches open as well as close. Majestic mediaeval buildings in tiny hamlets close. Victorian churches surrounded by modern industrial estates, which have replaced housing, also close. But churches are also opening all the time, not in recognisable neo-gothic structures, but in more practical buildings, where the people now live and worship.

The signs are that there will be more and more Christians in the UK in the present and near future than any surveys in the past indicated (only bad news, or bad predictions normally get reported).

The Church is not to be mistaken for its buildings heritage, however fine it may be: the Church is where people are worshipping today.