Christianity: dying in the West?

“A landmark in national life has just been passed,” said The Spectator. The latest British Social Attitudes survey has revealed that, for the first time ever, the number of people describing themselves as having “no religion” has exceeded the number who self-identify as Christian. Just 15 years ago, almost threequarters of us still regarded ourselves as Christian; now, just 44% do. By contrast, 48% of us regard ourselves as non-believers – double the proportion of five years ago. This decline in faith is a big change for Britain, and raises many questions. “Is it appropriate that we are still invited to swear on the Bible in court?” “Is it right that the Lords Spiritual should still have a role in the Upper House, or that church and state should have any formal connection at all?”

The figures will “make for sobering reading over vicarage breakfast tables”, said Elizabeth Oldfield in the FT. What some might call “cultural” Christianity is no longer our society’s “default position”. It’s not that we’re all becoming militant atheists, said Giles Fraser in The Guardian: if religious affiliation is shrinking in Britain, it is because of our culture of individualism. Religion begins “not with the metaphysics but with the taking part”, and here in Britain we’re “less and less a society of joiners”, and more and more a society of isolated consumers. But looked at from a global perspective, “God’s prospects look a lot better than Mammon’s”. By 2050, the Pew Research Centre predicts, Christians will have grown in number to almost 2.9 billion, Muslims to 2.8 billion.

But it would be wrong to write off Christianity in Britain, said Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph. It may be in poor shape today, but it has been through rough patches before. On Easter Day in 1800, for instance, just six people took communion in St Paul’s Cathedral. The Church of England was in “a dire crisis” back then, with churches standing empty, scepticism on the rise, and priests being accused of being out of touch. The Church bounced back, partly because faith “became fashionable again”, but mostly due to dedicated missionary work. The Anglicans made the faith relevant again by campaigning for causes such as workers’ protections, the outlawing of child prostitution, and the welfare state. “That’s what’s missing from 21st century British Christianity: evangelisation.” There aren’t enough nuns, priests and vicars out there trying to win souls. Without that, Christianity won’t recover in Britain. “The Social Attitudes Survey proves that you can’t rely on inherited tradition to bring people into the pews.”