Cinema ad banned; church sues

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Less than 5% attend CofE services on a weekly basis. Guess they thought they could advertise to get some new recruits...before the new Star Wars film.

They should have included some vague references to the force in there, then at least they could have duped some of the sillier fanboys into attending an Alpha course of whatever.

Yes, but a LOT of people attend church at Christmas (and Easter). Not just all the registered church members who don't go to church weekly, but a whole bunch of other semi-religious or even non-religious people do as well. I know several people who last Christmas said they wanted to attend church, even though they don't really hold a Christian faith at all. Many people simply do it out of tradition, or because they like the experience as a part of Christmas.

Christening is like that too - a whole bunch of people will come to that, even if they have a faith that conflicts with Christianity; and a whole bunch of people who do it are non-religious, and choose to do it out of tradition.

Very true, many people still hold a nominal affiliation with the CofE especially due in part to the act it is established.

Meh, I'm not bothered or worried about that. The cohort effect has effectively demolished the core base of both the CofE and the Catholic Church in England and Wales to the point where almost as many churches are closing their doors each month as pubs (the latter is a sad statistic). The ONS data as well as several other surveys such as the British Social Attitudes Survey confirm this. I think the CofE especially is worried about its coffers continually declining as much as anything else. That's all this advert was trying to reverse, imho, by reminding people that 'hey, Christianity and the church still exists!'. Well, the above being true, the other factor in the continual decline of the CofE especially has been outright apathy towards it. Most people here won't describe themselves as outright 'atheists' but will say non-religious or that they literally don't care.