Christianity is Finished in Britain, says Church of England Bishop
A long-serving Church of England bishop has predicted that the Church of England will cease to exist within a generation. In an article in the Sunday Telegraph, the Right Reverend Paul Richardson said declining church attendance and the rise in multiculturalism meant that “Christian Britain is dead” (American Humanist Association).
This is a truly remarkable time in human history. Not may of us have lived life on the faultline of a major shift in history and worldview. Is this what it was like when the Greek pantheon of gods and goddesses began to crumble? Maybe.
America is not far behind Britain. American Christianity – and Evangelicalism as we know it – is for the most part floundering, save a few pockets of mega-ministries that may or may not survive the test of time. What is really happening, beyond the handful of mega-ministries that while booming only represent a tiny percentage of the larger population? Church planters everywhere are struggling too. If a church plant actually survives (80% fail) and crests 100 people it is doing extremely well today. So, what is the answer? Seriously? What solution is there for the obvious decline? Is there one? Perhaps not.
I sincerely believe humanity needs to search for a different expression of faith and spirituality. We need to search for one that not only takes seriously the traditions of the past but is also capable of stretching and growing into the present and future. Tired expressions will not suffice. People are smarter than that and they have more accessible information than ever before in human history. Everything has already changed.
I know this much: The emerging spiritual expression must be deeply spiritual and contemporary at the same time. Said differently, a meaningful spiritual expression for our time will have to be expressed in concert with – and evolve along with – all the other streams of human knowledge. Faith can no longer be estranged from all other areas of human understanding and learning. Spirituality needs to be given so much more room to freely grow and honestly evolve. Humanity has always looked back towards sacred traditions past while moving forward into new meaning-making experiences.
A meaningful spirituality for our own time will also be characterized by four important tenets: 1.) The commitment to free and open intellectual and spiritual inquiry, 2.) The belief in the autonomous authority of individual experience and reason, 3.) The study of the ethical dimensions of life and living as individuals sharing global community, and 4.) The search for perspective rooted in ancient traditions and informed by contemporary knowledge and experience.
Some, of course, will say that we need to become even more rigid and dogmatic and exclusive. That sort of expression is to be expected. When a group’s existence is threatened, that group will clench its fists even tighter and become even smaller. This is historically and almost universally true. So, some zealots will become even more close-minded and even more dogmatic and even more exclusive and even more withdrawn from reality. Expect it! That’s the sound of a death rattle.
The rest of us should keep moving forward and try to get involved with what the Spirit is saying to us today, just like all of the characters in our sacred texts had to do.
Of course, we could just say that everyone else is wrong, that their refusal to eat our bread is their own blind fault, and, as if none of the above were true, go on defending the status-quo until our precious sense of self-righteousness outlasts any practical usefulness we fooled ourselves into believing we had.
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I agree with your sentiments, Shawn. On a technical note, “Christian Britain is dead,” doesn’t mean, “Christianity is dead in Britain.” He’s probably talking about the dead of a nationally “Christain” Britain, which happened a long time ago.
Yes, Greg. That clarification is important. In fact, after I posted this, I thought the title deserved a question mark. The Anglican church is in trouble, for sure, but I don’t doubt Christianity is represented in other forms. That said, I think any other form may be in for some very big challenges in an increasingly “secular” environment.
Thanks for that note. It’s an important one. :)
Maybe we could see the “death of Christian Britain” and the “Christian US” as a sign of hope? I’m not interested in living in a culturally Christian United States. I’m interested in following Jesus in whatever culture I find myself. Another way of putting it: In what ways does a “Christian” society empower discipleship, and in what ways does a “Christian” society hinder discipleship?
I think this is a time that we might say “the reports of this death are greatly exaggerated.”
Realistically, the Anglican Church may be in trouble – I really can’t speak to that with any basis in fact. But in the US, the Body of Christ (whether Emerging or Evangelical or whatever) seems to be doing OK to me. Granted I can only speak for the ministries I know personally, but they are doing well spiritually – and that is what matters.
I know my home church is not large, but it is an impacting player in the town that we are located in. The mayor and town council members give ear to the church leaders, not because we are so embroiled in their politics, but because we feed, clothe, and shelter the poor. We provide for children. We act like Christ and his Apostles did, and the Early Church.
I think we need to be careful that we don’t play into the myth of the Church’s failure – if you read the writers of the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment, many of them thought the same, and have been proven quite wrong by history.
Dave – You are right to point that out. I will say this: Christianity will survive, but I really do think our current and popular expression of it will die. I think we are only at the start of a big shift. Many will fall to the wayside because many are totally unprepared to make the shift and completely inept and exegeting this generation’s spiritual needs (that’s what faith is supposed to do, right?).
So, I am not as optimistic as regards the popular expression of Christianity. In fact, I’d say its days are numbered.
Given the lack of a historical precedent, I think future prognostications are probably tenuous at best. As for spiritual needs, do you really think they are that different today than they were 500 years ago (that is actually a serious question, not sarcasm)?
Still seems to me that a saving understanding and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ is paramount on the list. Holy and missional living, prayer and close relationship with God… these all seem pretty timeless.
It seems to me that you can change the vehicle, but the message has never changed, and never should.
Do I think that spiritual needs are different than 500 years ago? Yes, absolutely. The entire setting has changed. Are there still areas of congruence? Of course there are and there always will be but the changes are monumental, to say the least.
Could I ask that you elaborate at some point (here or elsewhere) on specific, concrete, and definable spiritual needs that exist in the 21st century that did not exist in the 16th? Or reversing it, what spiritual needs existed in the 16th century that no longer exist today?
I can clearly see that the circumstantial situations have changed in this transitory material world. How the material changes interact with the spiritual being is something that I don’t necessarily see.
So, looking for a few specific and tangible examples to better understand this.
Dave – I’m going to expand these thoughts in a separate post. I’ll say this in the meantime: The world is much, much smaller; we have more information in a Sunday newspaper than a person 100 years ago would have collected in a lifetime; cultures are clashing; ecological stewardship is a pressing theological issue; our cumulative collection of empirical data and consequent understanding has grown dramatically.
Presently, popular expressions of our faith barely address any of these issues. largely because while all of these streams of thought have continued to evolve and grow, our faith expression and understanding has not.
That said, we still deal with same issues as our spiritual ancestors as regards the basic human condition, but we have ignored everything else to our own peril.
Jesus said something about the Sabbath being made for humanity to communicate the idea that humanity was not created for the Sabbath. Expanded, that basically means religion was created for us; we were not created for religion. Christianity, for the most part, has made tools out of all of us. Thus, our present situation which I would argue is worse than most think.
“the world is much, much smaller; we have more information in a Sunday newspaper than a person 100 years ago would have collected in a lifetime; cultures are clashing; ecological stewardship is a pressing theological issue; our cumulative collection of empirical data and consequent understanding has grown dramatically.” – Shawn
Really? These are new and original spiritual needs?
Culture clash is nothing new – you know the history of the Roman world.
Ecology is nothing new, either – famine, drought, and plague are nothing new. Just look at the Black Death in Europe, or the Great Hunger in Ireland. The change of climate in Britain and North Africa is another good example. Ecological disaster is important, but not new.
Knowledge has always increased – those in the Middle Ages believed themselves to be light-years beyond the Ancients, as Descartes saw himself in a class above Aquinas. Yes, we know a lot more than our elders did. Our elders knew a lot more than their elders. And so on.
I’ll look forward to your further posting on this, but I think these are material circumstances, not spiritual needs. Men and women need a Savior, a Lord, a Comforter, a Friend, a Counselor. This doesn’t change, though the world around us does. This does not call for a reactionary rejection of all that has come before, it calls for a change in approach, an embracing of new material issues – but without neglecting the core of the faith, which was, is, and always will be Jesus Christ, the Cross, and the Empty Tomb.
Dave, you wrote “Culture clash is nothing new – you know the history of the Roman world.”
Yes, I do. Roman Imperialism and the forced occupation and urbanization of agrarian culture were pretty heavy, indeed. But Globalism and it’s capitalism is another beast completely. Also,I have a hard time equating the pluralism we are experiencing today with the pluralism of the 1st Century just because of the global scale in which we operate regularly now. Remember, when the phrase “the world” is used in the texts, it was in reference to the world “they” realized, which wasn’t very big, or round for that matter. I’m not just talking about a culture clash; I’m talking about the global village and all that goes with it. Most of our theology is not even close to being capable of addressing such things.
Dave, you wrote, “Ecology is nothing new, either – famine, drought, and plague are nothing new. Just look at the Black Death in Europe, or the Great Hunger in Ireland. The change of climate in Britain and North Africa is another good example. Ecological disaster is important, but not new.”
Famine, drought, and plague were understood to be controlled by a god or the gods, even in the Bible. Today, we know better, I hope. If not, then I have to go and have an argument with God about Africa and it won’t be pleasant. The Black death in Europe was actually spread even more by Christians who gathered together in large groups to pray against it. Some of these things we can’t control, ultimately, but I do hope we have matured as a species enough to actually take responsibility and act as responsible stewards of God’s creation. For so long, we didn’t care. In fact, much of traditional theology sends us towards fatalism and irresponsibility as regards the planet (after all, it’s all going to burn, right?). Again, our theology needs to be stretched in this area, and for the most part it isn’t. I have hope, however.
Dave, you wrote, Knowledge has always increased – those in the Middle Ages believed themselves to be light-years beyond the Ancients, as Descartes saw himself in a class above Aquinas. Yes, we know a lot more than our elders did. Our elders knew a lot more than their elders. And so on.”
I agree, our knowledge of our reality increases through the ages. Our theology, however, does not. It’s the one damned up stream of human understanding and knowledge. I am in no way suggesting that we will master all of the mysteries of the universe! I’m simply saying we don;t have to act and think like we know nothing. The majority of believers do not read their bibles with the understanding that the earth is not flat, there are not four pillars holding up each of the four corners, heaven is not directly above it, and hell is not directly under it. Does it matter? Yes. It’s a huge hermeneutic issue that if acknowledged would change the way we express faith in culture. And that only one – one – example. There are many, many more. We ignore it all and not only act like the bible fell out of the sky as is, but also like we have mastered the universe. Today, if there was any day, this sort of approach to spirituality is counter-productive.
Faith should be addressing the context and needs of generations. Ours is not doing that. Is it helping in a few areas concerning aspects of our basic human condition? Sure. But that’s aiming really low if that’s all it is doing. I would say we aim pretty low because we are scared of losing that sense of self-security that we never had or were offered.
I really do think everything has changed and so should our theology, at least if we want to address these changes. I’m also not suggesting that the core of the Christian message is to be discarded to do so effectively. I would suggest that we all have divergent opinions of what that core actually is …
Dave – I responded in the comment above. I’m starting to really dislike the way I have comments set up to display. The box gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Perhaps there is a metaphor or illustration for us in this event! LOL! :)