Attendance at Anglican Cathedral services rises by 18%

Friday, September 30th, 2016

Latest figures show an 18% increase in the numbers attending services in England’s Anglican Cathedrals between 2005 and 2015.

On average 36,700 people,adults and children, attended cathedral services each week in 2015.

Almost all of the increase in attendance over the past decade has been in increasing midweek attendance.

But in 2015 attendance at Sunday has also begun to increase.

In addition, the “fresh expressions” or new types of services and schools services, which are not counted in the main figures, attracted nearly half a million more people into the cathedrals.

More than 1.1 million people attended 5,310 public and civic events held in cathedrals in 2015 in total.

And the number of children and young people attending organised educational events in cathedrals has increased by 14 per cent from 280,900 in 2005 to 320,000 in 2015.

Data are collected from the 42 cathedrals in England in the
annual Cathedral Statistics survey.

However, in the Anglican Church in England over all attendance continues to decline decline.

It was revealed last January that the weekly attendance of church activities has fallen to 760,000 which is less than 2 percent of England’s population.

At that time John Spence, the finance chief of the Church, say he expects the decline to go on for the next three decades.

At the same time in the Episcopalian Church in the United States average church attendance lowered by 12 percent in the past five years and 26 percent in the last 10 years.

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