There’s a misprint! The headline’s wrong! It should be, ‘The evangelicals: who are they?’ Well, actually, perhaps it shouldn’t, as the number of evangelicals attending church on a Sunday in England is rapidly diminishing.
In 1990 there were 1.4 million evangelicals in church, but by 2030, data extrapolated from a 2005 census suggests, there will only be 1.2 million, a large exodus over just 40 years.
However, other considerations apart, the number left in 2030 is still large enough to ensure that evangelicals will still be around for quite a while – even if the same rate of decline continues (which of course it may not). Furthermore, while a loss of approximately 4,000 evangelicals every year is significant, it needs to be compared with those who are not evangelicals. In 2020, evangelicals will be almost half of all of those going to church, some 46% of the total. In 1990 they were just a third, 34%, of the total.
