Christianity Dying in Britain?
Post by 雲水
The results of the 2021 Census have been published, and are
being heralded as bad news for Christians. The proportion of the population of
England and Wales identifying as Christian has dropped below 50%(to 46.2%) for
the first time since, one publication announced, 'the Dark Ages'.
Some social media users have reacted with predictable glee,
crowing over the demise of 'white, boring, Christian' Britain. Diversity 'think
tank' Watch This Sp_ce (sic) told Wales Online that it's time to 'rethink how
we celebrate Christmas', to help people feel 'more included', although
Christmas could hardly be more secular at this point.
An article in iNews suggests two main causes for this decline.
Firstly, that Christianity's image has been damaged by abuse scandals and
traditional (for which, read 'out-of-touch') views on abortion, women's rights,
and sexuality. Secondly, that the intrinsic link between 'Englishness' and
Christianity no longer exists. 'For 1,500 years,' it says, 'being English has
meant, almost by definition, being Christian'. But no longer.
There is something to both claims. A religion that fails the
vulnerable, and covers up those failures, deserves to feel the full force of
its founder's fury poured out on those who cause even one of his little ones to
stumble. And is it such a loss if one's religion is no longer a bolt-on to
one's national identity?
How many people really met with Christ when they were compelled
to come to church by threats and fines? Was the golden age of English religion,
where almost everyone went to church twice on Sundays, indicative of a deep
faith; or was it the pressures of societal conventions that made the parish
church the place to see and be seen, to hobnob with one's peers and scout out
potential marital matches?
There is more going on here. It is not just that many of our
churches have lost the moral high ground and the privileged position of
patriotism; these are merely symptoms of a deeper malaise. It is worse than
this - they have lost their first love. Cut adrift from the anchor of faith,
they find themselves foundering in a sea of conflicting ideologies, grasping at
the crumbling straws of 'relevancy'; holed, terminally, beneath the
waterline.
Way back in the 1960s, Thomas Merton warned of a 'new, secular
"post-Christian" Christianity, which is activistic, anti-mystical,
social and revolutionary [and which] tends to take for granted a great deal of
Marxist assumptions about religion being the opium of the people.' Such
Christianity, he said, sought to distance itself from the historical faith and
'with the greatest fervour to prove that there is no opium about us!' Such a
Christianity has nothing to offer, no transcendent meeting with the living God,
no healing balm for the wounds of sin, only infantile imitations of
contemporary culture. No wonder people have deserted it in droves.
Football-themed nativity service, anyone?
In medieval Japan, the great Zen master Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481)
despaired over the parlous state of religion in his country. The temples were
full of priests and monks, but they were there not to seek after the truth and
pursue enlightenment, but to gain political positions at court and make money
from officiating at funerals. In response, Ikkyu took to carrying around a
wooden sword in an ornate scabbard. When asked why he, a monk, was carrying a
sword, he replied:
'As long as this sword is in its scabbard, it looks like the
real thing and people are impressed. But if it is drawn and revealed as only a
wooden stick, it becomes as joke - this is how religion is these days; splendid
on the surface, transparent inside.'
Too many of our churches have become like Ikkyu's sword - they
look good on the outside, maybe even packed and wealthy - but inside, they are
empty and vacuous. Perhaps many of us, too, are Ikkyu's swords; our fine,
Christian words hiding the dead wood inside.
Advent is an ideal time to reflect on what lies inside each of us. When we stand before God, drawn out of our earthly scabbards, what will he see? Fine steel honed in the fires of love and faith - or flimsy, dead wood? Revival will not come to our land unless it comes to our hearts first; until we can learn, in the words of Abba Arsenius, to 'flee from sin, be silent, pray always'. Then, perhaps, we will have real food to offer to a starving world.
A question for the historians among Archbishop Cranmer’s surviving flock. Could there possibly be some sort of parallel between the present moment and the period immediately preceding the Evangelical Revival in which the Wesleys, among others, were prominent?
ReplyDeleteThe brief triumph of Puritanism had been eclipsed with the Restoration, but that clearly isn’t the whole story. Something serious had happened to the churches in general, so much so that it took the Revival, aka the Great Awakening, to put Christianity back on its feet in the English-speaking world.
@ Ray Sunshine
ReplyDeleteHave a read of this:
https://dwightlongenecker.com/the-waning-of-the-west-and-the-future-of-the-church/
Good article Lain, with what we hear about the church almost weekly, it would be surprising that anything else was happening. If those who claim to be leaders in the Christian community act in such a way, how can what the claim to believe have any credibility?
ReplyDeleteAnd the confusing messages!! Finally we've got to stop being defined by our attitudes to homosexuality and gay marriage.
Let's try posting that comment again, with 50% less gibberish!
Delete------
Thank you, Prof!
I think you're absolutely right: society is obsessed with sex and the church(es) have made the grave error of allowing themselves to be dragged down to the same level and letting, as it were, the enemy choose the battleground. This has led to constant infighting among 'progressive' and 'traditional' Christians - and why should anyone believe in a faith when its adherents can't make up their mind - and the perception that the only thing that Christianity is about is making homosexual people miserable. We've lost any public sense that the Gospel is about hope, forgiveness and joy and not about policing the bedroom.
Paradoxically, I don't necessarily think that 'Christianity dying in Britain' (Jack's title) is a bad thing, because much of it doesn't deserve to survive. The deadwood has to go; the corrupt leaders who simply want to protect the institution; the boring and anaemic Christianity-lite that just wants everyone to feel warm and fuzzy; this tedious chasing after secular affirmation. We need holier, humbler and more Christlike leaders who aren't dazzled by the hollow illusions of the world. Resurrection requires that one first dies, and some trees need forest fires to germinate.
"Let's try posting that comment again, with 50% less gibberish!"
DeleteI'm not offended if that's addressed to me, but if you could expand on the comment I might even agree!
@ Prof - Lain meant her own comment which she deleted!
Delete@Prof, it was directed at me. I posted a comment that had some typos, missed out a couple of words and didn't make sense. I couldn't allow it to stand, to reposted it.
DeleteThat's a relief, I'd had a few pints when I posted the original comment and was a bit worried that it had showed 😂
DeleteAgreed - it's society that's obsessed with sex, not the Church.
ReplyDeleteThe Church has remained constant in its teachings on sexuality = God designed humans to express their sexuality in marriage.
Our culture has undergone dramatic changes - the widespread use of contraception, abortion, pornography and homosexual “marriage.” Yet, Jack never hears homilies on this subject in church - just disputes on the internet!
Isn't it the uneasy consciences of those taking sexual license that the issue - not the Church's teachings?.
Proverbs says the guilty “flee when no one pursues” (Prov. 28:1). Those who engage in sexual sin know they are violating the Christian vision of human sexuality and suppose that in Church there must be constant condemnations of what they are doing. This is not the case!
I think society's obsession with sex is symptomatic of its having lost touch with the transcendental bliss that comes from knowing God, so it chases cheap base fixes: food, drugs, sex, and so on - each of which gives powerful but temporary hits of dopamine 'bliss', but in which one ultimately needs to indulge more and more extremely; hence the rise of increasingly depraved and violent sexual imagery, obesity, drug addiction, etc.
DeleteI think that the mistake that the Church makes with sexuality is that it divorces sex from God, the material from the spiritual, the outer life from the inner. This started centuries ago, when the Church became too prim to speak about it (and now, ironically, speaks of little else), and has morphed into what we hear today. The mission of the Church is not to make people behave in the bedroom, it's to make people holy: then they will behave in the bedroom for themselves. There's too much focus on trying to change outward behaviour (establishing shibboleths is easier than nurturing love), and not enough on changing the soul - circumcise the heart, not the body, and the rest will follow.
The Church believes that its teachings on sexuality aren't simply arbitrary, or that God hates people enjoying themselves. It believes that sex, as traditionally understood, is a reflection of the relationship between God and his Church and a participation in his love, life and creative power; that's what makes it 'good' (teleologically speaking). The misuse of sex turns it into an idol to be pursued in its own right, turns people into means to an end, and is ultimately an illusory pleasure. Strip away God, and you just have stuffy rules: there's no point in the Church continually telling non-Christians to be straight and monogamous, simply because the spoilsport God that they don't believe in says they should be. Teachings on sexual mores are for those within the Church (1 Cor. 5:12-13). Christianity isn't a religion of negative commandments, it's a religion of positive and life-giving truths, but we never hear these because sexuality now dominates the public conversation, instead of being a tiny part of it. The Church should ignore the bait: the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.
@ 雲水
DeleteSee comment below.
And as I say below, the Church has seen to be hypocritical on this matter, in ways that are deeply shameful, and people are rightly saying "shut up, we have seen and heard how you actually behave, I'm not going to listen to you"!
DeletePope Francis in 2013, six months into his papacy:
ReplyDelete<<"A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing.
“This is also the great benefit of confession as a sacrament: evaluating case by case and discerning what is the best thing to do for a person who seeks God and grace. The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better. I also consider the situation of a woman with a failed marriage in her past and who also had an abortion. Then this woman remarries, and she is now happy and has five children. That abortion in her past weighs heavily on her conscience and she sincerely regrets it. She would like to move forward in her Christian life. What is the confessor to do?
We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.
“The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.
“I say this also thinking about the preaching and content of our preaching. A beautiful homily, a genuine sermon must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation. There is nothing more solid, deep and sure than this proclamation. Then you have to do catechesis. Then you can draw even a moral consequence. But the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing. The homily is the touchstone to measure the pastor’s proximity and ability to meet his people, because those who preach must recognize the heart of their community and must be able to see where the desire for God is lively and ardent. The message of the Gospel, therefore, is not to be reduced to some aspects that, although relevant, on their own do not show the heart of the message of Jesus Christ.”>>
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2013/09/30/big-heart-open-god-interview-pope-francis
Yes I remember mundabors reaction!
DeleteJack gave up reading Mundabor a while ago.
DeleteMe too. I occasionally peep in for a bit of a laugh.
DeleteIt shouldn't really come as a massive surprise that the percentage of British people identifying as Christian is currently less than 50%. However. The sermon at our church this evening was The Light That Never Goes Out. Amen.
ReplyDelete