The latest statistical news on religion in this country continues a well established and depressing trend: Christianity is going down hill.
From the reliable
British Religion in Numbers
Lord Ashcroft’s latest large-scale political poll, conducted online among 8,011 voters between 11 and 22 August 2016, included his customary question about professed ‘membership’ of religious groups.
.... the proportion identifying with no religion has increased steadily in similarly-sized Ashcroft surveys for the second half of each year since 2011, by almost five points over this quinquennium.
There has been a corresponding reduction in self-identifying Christians, who seem destined to lose their overall majority share within a matter of years. Indeed, religious nones are already in the ascendant among under-35s and supporters of green and nationalist political parties.
 |
Henry VIII created the Church of
England by his demand that the clergy
submit to him. |
(
Lord Ashcroft Polls, BRIN links to
pdfs of the survey results - see Table 65)
Hand-wringing and prophecy
I don't think I'm defeatist; I think we should face reality.
That reality is that religion is losing traction across the population. Inevitably this is uneven: some geographic areas, some age groups, some traditions will lose people quicker than others. Here and there affiliation to religion will grow. But the overall trend is decline.
This is not merely that people don't like religion, or see its faults and failings and decide it's not for them, or that they simply see the worst expressions of faith.
It's more fundamental:
- Fewer people think in religious ways
- Metaphor is no longer a legitimate or normal way to express or explore truth
- Conformity is not a positive value
- Always-on social media is not conducive to prayer and meditation
- It is hard to see religious experience as integral to the digital world
- Science has a mind-set which normally regards religion as irrelevant (at best). Furthermore: science delivers knowledge and tangible benefits that religion cannot match
- Religion is associated with (even identified with) fanaticism and violence, and at best social conservatism
But the majority of people simply don't care: religion is not so much meaningless as irrelevant.
This isn't new, just inexorable. All sorts of responses have been tried (see the book pictured). Proposals have included:
grow your church with hard work, dedication and faithfulness, seek greater holiness and devotion, return to traditional expressions of faith, adapt the faith to changing times, build big and they will come, don't adapt the faith but create
fresh expressions of the church.
Each response has no doubt had some effect and been valuable for those involved - and without them things would probably have been worse - but still the trend is towards the marginalisation of Christianity.
The Church of England
The Church of England, in which I have a vested and pecuniary
interest, seems to be losing affiliation more rapidly than some other
groups (or, maybe, I just notice it more).
In fact all those things in which its identity is invested are just
those things which make the CofE unable to adapt to changing
circumstances,
The CofE remains hobbled and encumbered by its legal processes, its
laws and legalism, its parochialism, its history, its hierarchical structure, its
buildings, its entrenched divisions. Its structure militates against novelty.
Even the most ardent supporter could not call it 'nimble'. Long before he became
Archbishop of York John Sentamu described the CofE as having 'the engine of a motor mower and the brakes of a juggernaut'. It is an entirely reasonable for the leaders of the church themselves to create extra-mural ways of communication, mutual support and commitment (
Companions of St Aidan, for example) as a way of getting around the constraints they work within.
Realism
I accept: one person's realism is another's defeatism. But I cannot see that tinkering at the edges of the CofE is going to save it. I think that if the Church of England is going to live it is going to have to die first. We don't need a new reformation but a resurrection: a new body, a new identity.
Paul Bagshaw
