Interesting article on the ramifications of the downsizing of the previous main religions.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/27/scotland-losing-churches-morham
An interesting article and although focussed on Scotland and in particular the CofS I think the same issues apply to the CofE.
The fundamental issue, as I see it, is a massive 'over-supply' of church buildings to meet the needs of the dwindling number of worshippers. The CofE (and I suspect from the article the CofS) don't seem to want to address this issue. Maintaining property sucks money from front line services and also kind of 'bed blocks' the better use of those buildings and land where in many cases the churches are used for not more than a handful of hours a week.
Looking at the CofE - they have 16,000 churches to support an average weekly worshipping community of just 570,000. That is just 35 people per church on average. How can that be sustainable. Now the CofE (and this article for Scotland) tend to focus on historic buildings and with challenging issues, e.g. burial grounds and/or no other church for miles. But that isn't always the case.
As an example, where I live - small city of some 70,000 people, there are 10 CofE churches. Some are undoubtedly incredibly important historically and architecturally (e.g. our Abbey) and deserve to be protected and preserved. But of those 10, that is only 4 - two others are pretty standard Victorian fair, the other 4 are non-descript 1930-1950 buildings, built alongside new developments at a time when there was always a new church built alongside a new housing estate. None would be missed historically or architecturally if the land was sold off for redevelopment.
Now some argue that this would mean people would be disadvantaged as they'd have to travel further to get to a church. But my experience with the significant number of CofE worshippers I know (a dying breed) is that virtually none attend their nearest church. Nope they chose the church that most aligns with their preference, often ignoring 2, 3 or more nearer churches. So some like the Abbey experience, others want the church that focusses on traditional music, others prefer the evangelical happy/clappy church. Yet most of these churches struggle to support two services on a Sunday. Surely these needs could be met in fewer buildings but with more services and a greater variety of services.
Interestingly in the same city the RCC (with probably close to similar numbers of worshippers) have just two churches.
