JUST in time for Easter, a surprisingly upbeat story from our established churches.

There have been numerous stories about the decline in church attendances and about Britain becoming a strenuously secular country. We're much more likely to take part in retail or leisure pursuits of a Sunday, it seems, than to sit on a hard wooden pew in a church and pay obeisance to our Creator. Just two months ago, the National Secular Society responded to news that Church of England attendances had slumped below one million for the first time by observing: "It is inappropriate for there to be any established religion in a modern pluralistic society, far less one where the majority do not consider themselves to be religious.”

Not so fast. Detailed new research by Dr Steve Aisthorpe, commissioned by the Church of Scotland, suggests that the number of Britons to whose lives the Christian faith is central is much greater than you would think merely by measuring church attendances. It challenges widespread assumptions that the fall in Sunday-morning numbers is synonymous with a decline in Christian faith and the Christian community. The research, indeed, uncovers a phenomenon of "churchless faith"; two-thirds of people who have stopped attending church nevertheless maintain a strong personal faith. The numbers of attendees is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the entire Christian community, Dr Aisthorpe points out. The decline in Christian faith is considerably smaller than we have been led to suppose. Indeed, the research points out, Christianity in Great Britain is not so much in decline as in transition.

Dr Aisthorpe's painstaking handiwork has many valuable lessons for our churches as they consider why church-goers become church-leavers. In a wider context, it might be reassuring that Christian faith remains so strong. We should also, perhaps, beware making haphazard assumptions based on a few headlines.