Lausanne World Pulse – The Growth of Ethnic Churches in the UK

June 2006

By Peter Brierley

It may appear all doom and gloom on the church horizon as we look at declining United Kingdom church attendance; however, there is one area in which this is absolutely not the case—the churches which are attended by those in “ethnic minority” groups. In whatever race or culture these growing churches occur, we, as the global body of Christ, need to come alongside the leaders and learn as much as we can from them.

Demographics of the Ethnic Churches
Non-white churches are growing and are starting new congregations in many places. And these churches are made up of peoples as diverse as can be imagined. The largest and most well known are the many so-called “Black churches” which are primarily of West Indian or West African (especially Nigeria and Ghana) origin. These are invariably charismatic churches and generally fall under the Pentecostal denomination. 

However, there are also other churches which serve particular nationalities. The Chinese and Korean churches are well established, having been in the UK for several decades. There are also others from Asia, sometimes grouped together in the Asian Christian Fellowship, which bring together those from Japan, the Philippines, Cambodia, Malaysia and other countries in Southeast Asia. These are mostly non-charismatic and are usually included in the “Protestant Overseas Nationals” churches in the “Smaller Denominations” grouping.

A number of churches serve those of Indian descent, of which the Tamil and Swahili are the largest, but including some whose nationality is predominantly Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Kenyan or Tanzanian. These too are included with the “Protestant Overseas Nationals” churches group.

In the UK there are a number of Lutheran churches serving those who come here, usually from other European countries. Here, the Scandinavian countries are especially strong. Lutheran churches are also part of the “Smaller Denominations” category.

Orthodox churches are also well represented in the UK; the Greek Orthodox Church is by far the largest. It is six times the size of all the others combined. The smaller Orthodox churches include the Antiochan, Armenian, Assyrian, Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Coptic, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Latvian, Romanian, Russian Orthodox (in two groups, inside and outside Russia), the Serbian, Syrian and Ukrainian, as well as the British Orthodox. The majority of these clearly serve nationalities other than British, even though many British people attend the “foreign” Orthodox services and enjoy doing so.

Catholic churches serve their overseas nationals living in the UK. The Croatian, German, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Slovenian and Ukrainian Catholic churches exist in the UK, and are growing. For example, seven new Croatian Catholic churches have started in England in the last five years.

Other groups, where non-white people are in the majority, are not easily separated. The Seventh-Day Adventists, for example, have a significant proportion of their attenders who are black. Whereas this group is growing, their white congregations are declining.

The common feature of all these groups (with the exception of the Lutherans) is that their Sunday attendance is growing. Another feature is that many of their services will be in their mother tongue, which is not English.

Dr. Peter Brierley is the Senior Lausanne Associate for Church Research. He attended Lausanne I in 1974 and has been involved with the Lausanne movement since 1984. Formerly a government statistician, he is currently executive director of Christian Research, a UK charity which produces resource volumes like Religious Trends and the UK Christian Handbook. Brierley can be reached at [email protected].