Sir, It is the statisticians who produced Religious Trends who should be on their knees (“Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour”, May 8). The methodology of the publication is so flawed that it is dangerously misleading to draw any predictions from it.

A few examples highlight the problems. Christian Research does not compare like with like. It takes the number of Muslims at the 2001 Census and assumes that half are active worshippers. Using the same assumption would give 20 million active Christians, yet it limits, for example, active Church of England membership to only average Sunday congregations. That ignores actual head counts showing the average million Sunday congregation is only part of the 1.7 million individual worshippers in any given month, recorded year on year since 2001.

It ignores the rapid growth in Back to Church Sunday initiatives that brought more than 20,000 people back to church last year. Being based purely on numbers in church buildings on Sundays, it ignores the thousands joining the Church through more than 5,000 fresh expressions initiatives meeting in other places, on other days.

The Right Rev Nick Baines
Bishop of Croydon

The Rev Lynda Barley
Head of Research and Statistics, Archbishops’ Council

Sir, The “residual Christian identity”, as Ruth Gledhill terms it (Commentary, May 8), still permeates our society and its institutions, even if unnoticed and unremarked. What is vitally important is that churches that ultimately preserve and articulate this identity should not be panicked by falling numbers into adulterating or abandoning Christianity’s core tenets and values. Active Christian communities have always known it is quality, not quantity, that really counts.

If people are to come back, as history suggests they eventually will, there must be something to come back to.

Jonathan Luxmoore
Religious News, Warsaw

Sir, Had the same gloomy predictions been applied to church attendance before the evangelical revivals of the 18th and 19th centuries, then we might have been fed the same conclusions for 1850 as you now treat us to for 2050.

One simply cannot ever close the books on what God will do for future generations. The Church has always worked that way. It travels like a camel from one oasis to the next.

Wait around. The time will come again when you’ll see them all thronging back to church.

Nigel B. Bain
Failand, Somerset

Sir, I have served as a country vicar in Cumbria, Norfolk and Derbyshire, and in each area the attendance at the village churches was either steady or growing slightly. Attendance is generally as high or higher than at any time since the Second World War.

Maybe it is because there is still a sense of identity and community in most of our villages, in contrast to many urban areas.

The Rev Chris Mitchell
Hulland Ward, Derbyshire

Sir, The Jewish community is not immune from the same forces of secularisation and disbelief as the churches face.

At Maidenhead, our solution has been to concentrate less on belief and more on cameraderie, with the synagogue transformed from a house of prayer to a community centre.

We still hold services, but we have a far greater attendance at social, cultural and educational events. In fact, it has thrived so much that we had to move to a larger building. It is not old-style religion, but it is in a loosely religious context and answers a need for religious values without religious theology.

Does that offer my Christian friends cause for hope or just reinforce the gloom?

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain
Maidenhead Synagogue, Berks

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