THE Church of England could disappear “within a generation or two” without an immediate change of direction, according to a senior bishop.

The Bishop of Manchester, the Right Rev Nigel McCulloch, said that the Established Church was in danger of becoming a minority sect. “We will, unless there is a turn in the tide, be a Church that gradually disappears from this land,” he said.

Bishop McCulloch said clergy were being diverted from their true mission of evangelism by the debate over sexuality, 25 years of church legislation and increasing red tape caused by secular regulations.

“It is almost as if the Devil is in this. It distracts people from what they are meant to be doing,” he said. “Far too many of us are being forced into managing an institution rather than engaging with souls.” The moment that an institution goes down that road, he said, it “has lost its heart, the purpose it was created for”.

Bishop McCulloch said: “The agendas which are imposed on most churches these days are almost deliberately designed to veer them away from what the spiritual issues need to be.” He was speaking to The Times after the latest figures showed plummeting membership across all the churches.

Figures published in The UK Christian Handbook: Religious Trends show that at the current rate of decline, total church membership across Britain will have fallen to 5,598,000 by 2005, down by more than a million people in 15 years. Over the same period, the number of church buildings will have fallen by 1,400 to 48,600 and the number of ministers will have dropped by 1,000 to 35,400.

Even if the rate of decline does not increase, the figures mean that by the turn of the next century, there will still be thousands of churches and ministers, but they will have no Christians to minister to.

The declining interest in organised Christianity contrasts with the findings of the 2001 Population Census, which included a voluntary question about religion for the first time. In the census, 72 per cent of the population said they were Christians. The Handbook acknowledges an “obvious yawning gap” between profession and commitment in terms of church attendance.

Writing in the foreword to the Handbook, published by Christian Research, Bishop McCulloch said: “The overall picture presented by this book serves to highlight the dilemma which Christian churches in the United Kingdom currently face. It has long been said that there is a yearning for spirituality across our countries, but until now the evidence has been largely anecdotal.

“What the census has shown is that a huge majority of our population, in the privacy of their own homes and without any external pressure, have expressed a personal allegiance of some kind to the Christian faith. Unfortunately, as the trends noted in this book ably demonstrate, there is a seeming inability on the part of most Christian churches to understand and engage with that opportunity.”

Bishop McCulloch said: “At its earthly heart are the faithful few who gather for worship and scatter for service. The fact that, in so many places, they are becoming even fewer is a matter of the deepest concern.”

A mission to teach

THE Right Rev Nigel McCulloch was appointed Bishop of Manchester in 2002.

Church statistics that year showed that under his predecessor, Manchester was one of the few places in the country to report a big increase in church attendance.

His diocese has a population of nearly two million and covers Greater Manchester and parts of southern Lancashire.

Bishop McCulloch, married with two daughters, was previously in Wakefield for ten years.

Under his leadership, Wakefield became known as the “missionary diocese”. A skilled writer and broadcaster, he headed the Church of England’s communications committee before it was abolished a few years ago, the Church having decided communications were no longer a priority for the new Archbishops’ Council.

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