UK, May 10, 2006: (HPI note: The following two reports appear in the latest newsletter of Religion Watch.)
Even significantly reducing membership losses may not be enough to prevent the extinction of liberal Protestant denominations in England, reports Quadrant (May), the newsletter of the Christian Research Association. Mathematician John Hayward writes that if a church’s reproduction potential falls below a certain threshold, the church heads for extinction. Growth depends not only reversing losses but producing enough “enthusiasts” who convert and bring in unbelievers or renew lukewarm believers. The Methodist Church, United Reformed Church, the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church are all below the “extinction tipping point,” but only the first two denominations are not producing enough enthusiasts to survive, and “even if their losses were reduced extinction will be reached well before the middle of this century.”
Due to economic pressures and declining attendance, more and more church buildings in Germany will have to be closed or sold. However, the conversion of church buildings into alternative use sometimes leads to reactions even among secular-minded Germans, Joachim Guntner reports in the Swiss daily Neue Zurcher Zeitung (April 24). The number of Roman Catholics going to church every Sunday in Germany was around 12 million in the 1950s and is now down to 4 million. Communities which become too small get merged with other ones, thus making additional buildings useless. In 2003, the German Bishops’ Conference released guidelines in order to help communities facing difficult decisions. When a church has to be sold, according to the guidelines, it should preferably go to public authorities rather than to fall into private hands; cultural purposes should be preferred to commercial use – although in practice this cannot always be avoided. Both Catholics and Protestants don’t want to have churches sold to Muslim and other non-Christian religious communities (except possibly Jews from the viewpoint of Protestants), due to the symbolical impact such a change of owners would create.