The Church of England has disputed statistics published by Christian Research this week which pointed to serious decline in church attendance at the same time as active Muslims continue to grow.
In the latest edition of its magazine Religious Trends, Christian Research forecast that by 2050 the number of Sunday churchgoers would drop from just under one million to around 899,000, whilst 4,000 churches could face closure by 2020 if present rates of decline continue. The number of active Muslims in the UK is predicted to grow to 2,960,000, three times the number of predicted Sunday churchgoers for the same year.
The Church of England's head of Research and Statistics for the Archbishop's Council, the Rev Lynda Barley called Christian Research's forecast into question, however, saying that its projections and comparisons with other religions were "flawed and dangerously misleading".
"These figures take no account of the rapid growth in 'Back to Church Sunday' initiatives that are drawing thousands back to church. Nor, being based purely on numbers in church buildings on Sundays, do they take account of the thousands joining the Church through 'fresh expressions' initiatives meeting in other places, on other days," she said.
Ms Barley also questioned Christian Research's methodology, in calculating the Church of England's active members according to the number of adults on the Church of England's local parish based formal voting lists.
"There are more than 1.7 million people worshipping in a Church of England church or cathedral each month, a figure that is 30 per cent higher than the electoral roll figures and has remained stable since 2000," said Ms Barley.
"More are involved in fresh expressions of church and chaplaincies across the country and we have no reason to believe that this will drop significantly in the next decade. Of course, we hope and pray even more people will come along and see what they're missing."
The head of Christian Research, Benita Hewitt, responded to criticisms, saying that The Times had put out a "misleading" article on Christianity's decline based on the Religious Trend research, in which it compared the number of Christians in church each Sunday to the number of Muslims visiting a mosque at least once a year.
"It's just not comparing like with like," said Ms Hewitt.
