British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIII: January and April, 1871Various
History
British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIII: January and April, 1871
Various
English periodicals
That a serious error has crept in somewhere into the returns, as
respects the Principality, is obvious from this one fact. The number of
sittings provided by the Church of England is stated to be 301,807, and
the number of the worshipping population of the same church on the 31st
of March, 1851, is stated to be 138,719. Now Mr. Mann shows that the
proportion per cent. of attendants to sittings in the Established
Church, throughout all England and Wales, is only thirty-three; whereas
by the above showing, the proportion of attendants to sittings in Wales
alone is 40 per cent. We venture to say, that no man competently
acquainted with Wales, knowing, as every such man must know, the
miserably meagre attendance at hundreds of churches in that country,
would for an instant believe that the churches are occupied in the
proportion of 40 per cent. of attendants to sittings. Let us, however,
take the figures given to us in the census. The population of Wales,
including Monmouthshire, in 1851, was 1,188,914. The total number of
places of worship was 4,006, which was distributed thus:
PLACES OF WORSHIP.
Of the places of worship--
The Established Church furnished 1,180
Nonconformists 2,826
-----
4,006
SITTINGS.
Of the sittings (including estimates for defective return)--
Established Church furnished 301,897, or 30 per cent.
Nonconformists 692,239, or 70 per cent.
It appears thus, that the Church had provided sittings for only 25 per
cent. of the population, while the Nonconformists had provided sittings
for nearly 59 per cent.
But how about attendance? According to Table B. of the Census of
Religious Worship, the greatest number by very far of attendants at the
services of the Established Church on the Census Sunday was in the
morning. The number was 100,953. If we add one-fourth to this number for
the absentees, we have 126,191, which represents 10·6 per cent., not
quite one in nine of the population.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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