Thousands of churches could be designated “festival churches” and closed down except for festivals such as Christmas and Easter under plans published today by the Church of England.
The massive church shut-down follows plummeting congregations especially in the countryside where one in four parishes, about 2,000, have fewer than ten regular worshippers.
The Church of England owns 12,500 Grade I listed churchesThe Church of England now has fewer than 800,000 worshippers in the pews on an average Sunday, according to latest figures. Numbers have dropped to under half that of the1960s.
In the latest Government census, Christianity was still the largest religion in England and Wales with 33.2 million people stating this as their faith, but this was a decrease of 4.1 million from the previous census in 2001 when the question on religion was introduced.
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