Migrants fill Church pews in UK

[T_i_B]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/18/nchurch18.xml

The rate of decline in church attendance has been slowed by an unexpected factor — the influx of Christians from Africa and Europe. One of the biggest surveys among Britain's 37,000 churches, published today, finds that the growth of immigrant-led churches has partly offset dwindling congregations elsewhere.

The news will cheer Church leaders. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said the phenomenon was having a healthy impact on mainstream Churches.

The research shows that black people now make up 10 per cent of all Sunday churchgoers in England, while other non-white ethnic groups add a further seven per cent. In inner London, fewer than half the worshippers are white, with black Christians accounting for 44 per cent of churchgoers and non-white ethnic groups 14 per cent.

The impact of Roman Catholic Croatians and Poles and Orthodox Russians and Greeks has been significant.

[jody]

1. Do non-white ethnic groups cause white ethnic groups to leave church? na

[T_i_B]

2. Not in my experience.

It's more a case of the older church going population dying out and no younger generation coming up to replace them actually. Migrant groups are a notable exception to this.

[kwassa]

3. This is happening here in the US as well.

Traditionally, due to our very racist history, church congregations and even denominations had been highly segregated. This is still largely true, simply out of custom.

The traditionally white Episcopal church in the Washington area has seen an influx of immigrants from former English colonies where the Anglican church had been established. We have now have many congregants of color from different parts of the world, but particularly many black people from Africa and the Caribbean. In the church that we currently attend is a large group of Liberians who have been involved for between 15 - 20 years. Fortunately, these immigrants are not as conservative as the parent churches that they come from.

We also have a large Hispanic ministry as well, with a priest from the Dominican Republic in our church, whose services are entirely in Spanish.

The Roman Catholic churches have been swelled in numbers by immigrants from Latin America, though inroads into that community have been made by evangelical groups.

As to Rowan Williams ..... the man is spineless. He needs to stand up to the African bishops, but won't.

[fedsron2us]

4. Not just the pews.

Migrants also hold some of the top jobs in the Church of England. The current Archbishop of York, Rt Rev John Sentamu, is an African. Of course, this situation is not entirely without historical precedent. In the seventh century the early Anglo Saxon Church often had foreign Archbishops of Canterbury including St Theodore who was from Tarsus in distant Asia Minor.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. I saw him when I was in York last month

It was during the time he was holding his vigil for peace in the Middle East, literally camping out in a tent in a side chapel of the cathedral and gathering people for group prayer on the hour, enough to fill the chapel the time I was there.