The report shows that from 1998-2005 half a million people stopped going to church — half the loss sustained in the nine year period before 1998.

It finds there are two major reasons for the slowing decline — the growing number of churches and the considerable increase in the number of ethnic minority churchgoers.

According to the census, just over a third of churches, 34 per cent, are growing, compared with 21 per cent in 1988, and a further 16 per cent are stable, up from 14 per cent in 1998.

Nevertheless, the report says, the losses from declining churches outweigh the gains from those with increasing numbers, and the continuing decline is taking place in a situation where church attendance is at extremely low levels.

In Scotland the situation is no better, with the Church of Scotland now having just over half a million attending services, down from 1.3 million in the 1960s, while the Catholic Church has just over 200,000 practicing members, down 20 per cent on a decade ago.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, archbishop of St Andrew’s and Edinburgh, has published a plan involving closing many parishes. The number of priests could halve in some areas due to parish amalgamations.

The average age of priests in Scotland is now above 60 and the number of active priests in the Edinburgh archdiocese is expected to fall from the current 63 to just 34 in a decade’s time.

By contrast, however, Canon Len Black, of St Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church of Scotland in Abban Street, Inverness, is upbeat both about the present and the future.

“Over the last two years I would say there has been an upsurge in church attendance on any given Sunday, and we usually have difficulty seating everyone at Christmas. In fact we have had to bring in extra seats,” he said.

“Nine years ago Bishop Gregor McGregor announced that he was going to close St Michael’s, but since then we have completed a £250,000 refurbishment and the life of the parish is on the up and up.”

The Rev David Meredith, minister of the Free Church in Smithton and Culloden agreed Inverness was clearly out of step with the overall national trend when it comes to church attendance.

“Here in Smithton and Culloden we are in a bit of a Bible Belt in that the Free Church, the Barn Church of Scotland, Culloden Baptist Church and the King’s Fellowship are all enjoying significantly higher attendances than many others in other areas,” he said.

“I would say, in fact, that the evangelical sector, of which we are part, is growing at a greater rate than the non-evangelical churches. I put it down to the fact that people are looking for certainty in an age of uncertainty.

“Christmas is a particularly busy time of year in a non-secular sense for us because of various events we are involved in such as the carol services we’ll be holding in schools.

The Very Reverend Len Black lights the candles at The Church of St Michael and All Angels in Abban Street.

“It is also significant that our increasingly bizarre ethos of political correctness is now being seen as an emperor without clothes.”

The Rev John Chambers, of Ness Bank Church of Scotland, said membership figures in his church had been increasing steadily, which was encouraging.

“People are definitely looking for something beyond what they can buy in the shops. Our special Christmas services are well attended. They are usually jam-packed with a lot of young people in the congregation,” he explained.

“In recent years I have definitely seen a renewal of interest among young people, but we have to meet people half way without changing our message.”

Fr Michael Savage, of St Mary’s RC Church, Huntly Street, who hails from Glasgow, said he had noticed a difference between the Highlands and some other areas where spirituality was concerned.

He found in the Highlands that there was a lot more awareness of the place of faith in people’s lives.

“I would also agree with the other members of the clergy who have said they have noticed an increase in the numbers of those attending church. In our case, the arrival of so many Polish people in the area has helped to swell the congregation,” he said.

A similar picture was reported by the Rev Tom Urquhart, of Inverness Baptist Church who had noticed an increase in attendance and membership over the last two years with East Europeans again playing a part.

“An encouraging work for us has been teaching English to the East Europeans in classes held in the church. We wanted to reach out to show them care and some have responded by coming to our services,” he explained.

“As far as the young are concerned, we have an encouraging youth club on a Thursday night with around 20 attending, and I can say there is definitely a searching among young people.”

In May the Chicago Tribune newspaper carried an article examining the crisis of faith in Britain.

It stated that 72 per cent of of the British people called themselves Christian in the 2001 census, but only eight per cent regularly attended services.

Calum Brown, a historian at the University of Dundee, told the paper that Britain was showing the world how religion as we have known it can die.

He was pessimistic about the future, observing that after two generations of people with little experience of regular church participation, it would be difficult to turn the situation around. But it appears that Inverness may be bucking the trend.

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend