The Feminisation of the Church of England rolls on apace

In the current drawn out discussion on women priests and women bishops, one issue that has been largely overlooked has been the effect on men. If this issue is approached from a strict politically correct perspective, it can be argued that as the roles of leadership in churches pass from men to women, because such roles are accepted as equal and identical there ought to be no difference in the effect on men in the pews. But if in practice as others maintain, the engendered roles of leadership do not conform to a common outcome pattern, differences may well emerge in the way men respond to women exercising ordained leadership.

Before we can address this problem directly, it behoves us to remember some well established facts. These are facts which, it must be admitted, apply to nearly all the mainline churches of the West (taken here as Anglican, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed etc., but not Orthodox).

Men and women worshippers: In mainline churches the numbers of worshippers of both genders have been steadily falling, with some of the greatest falls occurring in recent years. In whatever way the figures are interpreted, almost all the churches have experienced similar falls. If we take figures from the Church of England's own statistical department, we find that during the last eleven years from 2000 there has been a steady drop in average attendance on Sundays from 1,058,000 to 924,000. Thus in this period 134,000 adults, young people and children ceased to attend church, i.e. a fall of 12.7% or, very roughly, 1% per year.

Is it possible to break down the above figures by gender? Not it seems by the C. of E statisticians. Nevertheless several pieces of research have been done in Great Britain, the U.S.A. and continental Europe, all of which confirm a general finding which is that year by year the loss of men from churches of every mainline denomination is not only greater than that of women, but that this loss is getting worse year after year. Read more

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