Church is growing in most continents

Geoff Weekes (Opinion, August 11) reminded me how Christianity has been a revivalist religion since the birth of the Church at Pentecost.

British history is littered with stunning personal testimonies of conversion and stories of community transformation.

Consider Holman Hunt, who painted ‘The Light of the World,’ which hangs in Saint Paul’s and at Keble College Chapel in Oxford.

From the Outer Hebrides, to the factory or shipbuilding communities of our industrial cities, historical reports of the type mentioned

by Mr Weekes are commonplace.

A UK shipyard allegedly opened a silo, for stolen tools or materials to be returned to, following a spiritual awakening.

Assizes or court sittings may have been empty or seeing few cases after some revivals.

But the modern UK Church is selling off properties and reducing its staff in our time.

This is interpreted as a terminal collapse of religion but in reality the opposite observation is true.

In most continents, bar our European one, the Church is growing as never before.

Even in our UK situation, where the media gleefully point to signs of decay, the invisible Church may be silently growing.

The internet allows people to explore the case for faith on multiple helpful websites looking at the robust strength of evidence for faith (Bethinking.org, Weeflea.com,

Alpha Course, Christianity Explored).

It’s hard, perhaps impossible, to run away from the reality of Our Lord as a genuine historical character. It’s even harder to run away from the ubiquitous presence of human conscience.

The secular media have thus taken to using sham understanding of science to undermine the credibility of belief. A 2-3 minute online broadcast on Christianity Explored website [‘Doesn’t science explain everything?’ John Lennox, Professor Emeritus, Oxford University] knocks down this fallacy.

I think the UK Church will grow again, but not necessarily in the immediately visible form of the past revivals, as recounted by Geoff Weekes, where manifestations were abundantly clear for citizens to see or historians to document.

I was in a cathedral bookshop last week and purchased a superb 12-page booklet for £3 (‘The Light of the World’ by Eric Hayden. from Tim Tiley Ltd).

The story of Holman Hunt’s life, and his famous artwork, captured the essence of Christian truth wonderfully, perhaps way better than the spire costing towards a million pounds stretching above the cathedral bookshop.

When I read my Book of Common Prayer or Bible, the ability of the invisible Church to eclipse the institutional Church comes as absolutely no surprise: plus ça change...

J T Hardy

By email