There is a wonderful article on the orientation of churches here, from a 2007 issue of Archaeology magazine. My thanks to Doug for making me aware of it.
“Armed with a Silva compass fixed to a piece of wood with brass screws, over 10 years Ian Hinton surveyed almost 1,750 churches in England and Wales. He resolved an old belief – but uncovered a new mystery.”
For those who do not have the time to immerse themselves… the answer is yes, churches do face east , but not perfectly and the discrepancy varies with location. The average ‘error’ is only 4 degrees, which is pretty good.
There are some tendencies that are very interesting: mainly that a church is more likely to be aligned north of east if the church itself is situated in the west of the country. This is a trend that the author, Ian Hinton, says…
Last night, looking west through some tree branches, I took this picture of the orange star, Arcturus. It is one of the five brightest stars in the night sky and is part of the constellation Bootes. It is in fact the brightest star in the northern half of the celestial sphere.