Manchester’s churches will be the emptiest in the country this Christmas, with 98% of the city’s population preferring to go shopping and partying than celebrate the birth of Christ.

While Christmas attendances can more than double in rural areas compared with regular Sunday services, England’s city dwellers can no longer be tempted into the pews by traditional carols and candlelight.

A survey of yuletide congregations in every Church of England diocese has shamed London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, and Bradford inhabitants, who came in the bottom ten for turning up at church.

It also revealed Hereford as home to the country’s most devoted churchgoers, with one in 10 expected to turn out this Christmas.

Christmas “tourists”, who mix festivity with ceremony, regularly swell the numbers worshipping during the festive season, especially in Guildford, Surrey, where congregations treble at this time of year, according to the research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

David Voas, who conducted the study and specialises in religious change at Manchester University, said: “If you want to find the Christmas spirit in your parish church, go to Hereford. More than 10% of the population in the diocese of Hereford will be in an Anglican church at Christmas.

“That is three times as many as in London, four times as many as Birmingham and five times as many as Manchester.”

It was “fair comment”, said Voas, to conclude that Manchester was “godless”.

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