THE Covid-19 pandemic has had a “long-term adverse impact” on attendance at religious services in Britain, the political scientist Sir John Curtice said this week.
Sir John is a senior fellow at the National Centre for Social Research, which, since 1983, has conducted the annual British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey. Respondents are selected at random from those who live in private households in Great Britain. Data are weighted to reflect the known characteristics of the adult population.
On Monday, the centre published an article drawing on the findings of the 2025 survey, carried out online last autumn. Attendance at church services is still below pre-pandemic levels, and is lowest of all among younger people, it suggests.
A high level of variation in self-reported data over the years, however, may reflect small sample sizes.
In the 2025 survey, 4468 respondents were asked about their religious identity. Almost half — 49 per cent — identified with a religion. One in eight Christians (13 per cent), as in 2024, reported attending a service at least once a week. The figure was 12 per cent in 2021 and 20 per cent in 2018.
Overall, five per cent of all adults reported attending a Christian service each week, compared with eight per cent in 2018. The proportion for the under-35s was four per cent. The greatest fall was recorded among the over-70s: nine per cent recorded weekly attendance last year, compared with 18 per cent in 2017.
Among those who identified with a religion, a minority reported attending a religious service at least once a week: nine per cent of Anglicans; 15 per cent of Roman Catholics; 13 per cent of “Other Christian”; and 23 per cent of people of other faiths.
The figures suggest greater stability among Anglicans (the 2019 figure was 12 per cent, up from nine per cent in 2017). The proportion among RCs reporting weekly attendance fell from 25 per cent in 2017 to 15 per cent in 2025, although there was greater variation over the time frame in this group: the figure was 23 per cent in 2018 and 16 per cent just a year later. The “Other Christian” proportion reporting weekly attendance halved from 27 to 13 per cent between 2017 and 2025, while the share in the “Non Christian” group also varied significantly: from 37 per cent in 2017 to 23 per cent last year, down from 39 per cent in 2024.
“COVID-19 has, it seems, had a long-term adverse impact on religious attendance across the whole of the diverse religious landscape that exists in Britain today,” Sir John wrote in an accompanying article. “The evidence from the British Social Attitudes survey is clear: there has been no revival in Christian observance in Britain.”
Sir John’s article acknowledges the impact of sample sizes on the BSA data, which draws on responses from 519 Anglicans, 303 Roman Catholics, 931 “Other Christian”, and 254 non-Christians.
Earlier this year, he observed that the proportion of BSA respondents identifying as Christian stood at 40 per cent — the same as in 2017 (News, 6 February). The percentage who identified as “none” fell from 52 to 49 per cent. “The long-term decline in the proportion who identify as Christian, or indeed with any religion, has seemingly come to a halt,” he wrote.