Manchester: a godless place?

“If your idea of Christmas mostly concerns shopping and parties, Manchester is the place to be,” says Dr David Voas of Manchester University in today’s Independent.

And he should know - he’s just completed a study into how much Christmas affects church attendance.

It turns out Manchester will see the country’s lowest increase (22%) in attendance over the festive period. This compares to Bath & Wells, for example, where 199% more people are expected.

The Independent also reports a north/south religious divide, with the North West as a whole being particularly inelastic: Liverpool (23%) and Blackburn (34%) will see the next smallest increases.

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Yeah, we got the atheist smarts in Manchester!

Nevertheless, a merry kissmas to those who celebrate!

ps. RI Christmas lectures start tomorrow evening, on Primes! Sure to be fun.

Simple reason for that: our weekly church attendance is very high compared to the rest of the UK. Thanks to the large baptist, methodist and (since the Polish started arriving) Catholic communities in the city, Sunday church attendance is high. As a result the ‘upkick’ has a way to go to be high when measured in percentage terms. However, if you’re in Bath & Wells and only 50 people turn up every week, to get a 200% upkick requires much less than it would in Manchester with a congregation measured in tens of thousands.

I hate people who don’t understand statistics. Particularly statisticians.

Thanks for the reply Paul. The original article (and possibly, therefore, the survey) doesn’t gives any suggestion for why that might be the case, but that sounds reasonable.

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