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.
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)
JPTF 2007/06/18
http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2007/02/thousands_of_ch.html
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