FEATURE: WHEN Church of England attendance figures dropped below one million a week for the first time in the mid-90s there was widespread talk of the national religion's impending demise.

But this month the UK Anglican church revealed its first increase in attendance for decades. And it appears to be a trend which is borne out in Swindon. This Easter weekend, church leaders say they are expecting to be as busy as ever in celebrating the most important event in the Christian calendar.

In an increasingly secular and materialistic world, they say there is more need than ever for belief, faith and the sense of community which church attendance brings.

Bishop of Swindon, Michael Doe, said: "After being here for eight years I think interest in religion and questions of what kind of society we are and where we are going are stronger than ever.

"I'm not conscious of any great drop in figures. There are changing patterns of church attendance because people's lives have changed.

"People often work on Sundays and go away for weekends so we try to collect figures for individuals attending during the week rather than congregation numbers. That's producing a much more accurate picture."

Not only is attendance looking healthy so are church coffers. "There has been an amazing increase in giving by church members over the last five years," said the bishop.

"Anglican church members have been asked to provide much more of the costs of running their parishes and they've risen admirably to that challenge.

"We have a situation where people are much more open as to whether they go to church or not not as part of social duty but because they choose to go."

Church leaders from the town's large Catholic community tell a similar story.

Monsignor Richard Twomey said church attendances at Holy Rood, Swindon's largest Catholic church, have stayed at more or less the same level 1,700 a week for the last few decades.

He said immigration into the town from outside the UK has boosted the congregation in recent years. Swindon's small community of Indian Catholics from the former Portuguese colony of Goa are comparatively recent arrivals to the town who have boosted the congregation at Holy Rood by up to 200.

Monsignor Twomey said: "People leave and new people come but on the whole our attendances are staying fairly well up."

Father Liam Slattery said attendances St Mary's, on Tovey Road, are better than ever: "They are very good at the moment."

Each weekend sees a total of between 750 and 800 people attend the five services. On Christmas Day this figure rises to 1,500, and at Easter to 1,000.

He said: "Our numbers seem to be on the increase and we are getting quite a few young families coming in as well."

Easter message from Bishop of Swindon Michael Doe...

THE great event of this year will be the Queen's Golden Jubilee, so once Easter is over expect endless TV programmes and newspaper articles looking back on the last 50 years.

I've already done one which wanted to know my three favourite songs from the period. I began with Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind, which somehow sums up the student days of the 60s and a post-war generation for whom many of the old certainties, including religion, no longer held firm. Today that's even more true. Good Friday and Easter Day will mean little for most people.

I then chose Neil Diamond's He ain't Heavy, He's my Brother because, however much things have changed during these past 50 years, most of us still believe that we should care for each other. Technology has shrunk the world, and enlarged both its dangers and our capacity to change it for the better. We have never been so close to our brothers, and sisters, across the world. If only we could be closer to what leads to good, and more able to deal with what so often takes us in the opposite direction.

And number three has to be Somewhere, from West Side Story, where the two lovers can still believe: "There's a place for us somewhere." Deep within each of us there is that longing to find the place where we can be at home and together.

Much longer than 50 years ago there was a man who lived through difficult and dangerous times in Palestine. He didn't have easy answers to people's questions. He just said that there's nothing more important than bearing each others' burdens and finding where we really belong. He believed that the way into both of these was the love which comes from God.

That's what his followers see when they look at the way he died, on a Cross. And they dare to believe that not even death could overcome it.