By TREVOR GRUNDY
 ©2014 Religion News Service

Attendance
figures released by the Church of England show that Sunday worship attendance
continues its downward slide and now stands at about half of what it was 45
years ago.

The
report from the Archbishops’ Council Research and Statistics Department,
released March 21, shows that on average in 2012, 800,000 adults, or about 2
percent of the adult population, attended church on Sunday. That’s down from
1.6 million Sunday worshippers in 1968.

Christmas
and Easter services continue to attract the highest number of worshippers.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day bring in around 2.5 million people and Easter
services attract approximately 1.4 million.

One
of England’s top women judges, Baroness Brenda Hale, said the Church of England
is in decline because it is so undemanding.

She
recently told a conference at Yale Law School: “It has no dietary laws, no
dress codes for men or women, and very little that its members can say is
actually required of them by way of observance.”

Her
comments came in a lecture following a series of court cases in which British
Christians claimed to be suffering from religious discrimination but lost their
cases.

She
described England as a “paradoxical country” when it comes to religion, saying
that even though the Church of England is the “established“ church (and has
been since Henry VIII broke from Rome in the 16th century), half the population
does not profess any religious affiliation.