According to research carried out by Tearfund, 12.8 million adults in the UK attend church at least once a year, of whom 7.3 million attend at least once a month.
Tearfund regularly interview 7,000 members of the public about their churchgoing habits, as part of wider research about perceptions of society and world issues, and have identified an upward trend in church attendance.
‘We have noticed that in the last year, there has been a significant increase in monthly attendance, bringing the figure for autumn 2008 to 15 per cent after a number of years of reported decline,’ says Matthew Frost, Chief Executive of Tearfund. ‘Similarly, the proportion of UK adults attending church at least once a year has increased from 21 per cent in 2007 to 26 per cent in 2008, which is an increase from around one in five adults to around one in four.
‘Our understanding is that more people are attending now than before, even if that is only a couple of times a year rather than every week. This might mean going to church at one of the high points in their family’s year, such as Christmas or Easter, or attending Sunday services or midweek events.
See:
http://www.networkipswich.org.uk/Articles/140398/Network_Ipswich/Action_Zones/The_Christian_Community/Church_attendance_is.aspx
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