The Church of England (C of E) is Britain's established church—one of roughly 20% of countries worldwide with a state religion. It wields both soft and hard power: 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords, where they can help shape laws; 4,600 C of E schools educate children across England; and England's monarch is crowned by the senior archbishop. The church has an endowment of £10.4bn.
It is led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, a post held since March 2026 by Dame Sarah Mullally, the 106th holder and first woman in the role. She succeeded Justin Welby, who stepped down in January 2025 over his handling of a child-abuse cover-up scandal.
Adult church attendance has fallen by more than a third in 15 years. Only about 700,000 people attend weekly—just over 1% of the population. The C of E closes around 20 churches each year; 197 have shut in the past decade, and some 16,000 remain open. In the 2021 census less than half of Britons called themselves Christian, down from almost 60% in 2011. Almost 1,000 churches are on Historic England's "at risk" register.
A rise in churchgoing among the young is mainly a Catholic phenomenon. A YouGov survey of 13,000 adults, commissioned by Bible Society and conducted in late 2024, found that among 18- to 24-year-olds 16% reported regular attendance, up from 4% in 2018. But 41% of young churchgoers attend Catholic services, while only a fifth sit in Anglican pews (down from a third in 2018). Catholic worshippers in England and Wales may soon outnumber Protestants for the first time in five centuries.
The church is riven by overlapping factionalism. An experiment to introduce blessings for gay couples has created an alliance of conservatives led by Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB), a powerful evangelical church whose rock-style worship draws in young people. Liberals fear HTB is taking over; traditionalists fight for more parish funding; conservatives fret that the church has become too woke.
The church's "established" status grants it special privileges, including the automatic right of 26 bishops to sit in the House of Lords. Leaked policy plans suggest that the Green Party would "disestablish" the church, removing these privileges. Britain's heir, Prince William, was reported to feel "not instinctively comfortable" in a "faith environment".
The King James Bible of 1611 infused the English language with phrases such as "fallen from grace" and put "words in our mouths". The BC/AD dating system was popularised by the Venerable Bede, a 7th-century English churchman. Christianity shaped England's landscape—a spire or tower is the first thing visible when approaching an English village.
The Church of England continues to be dogged by concerns about how it handles abuse. In February 2026 the Bishop of Lincoln was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault.
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