Christianity in decline? I’m not so sure
ISPENT part of the weekend, as I suspect did many, mooching around the packed stalls at a Christmas market.
I was in Winchester where, as in Exeter and many other cities, the tradesmen and women selling their scented candles and bottles of locally made gin are gathered together in the shadow of the cathedral.
Thousands of people wandered between the stalls, munching on giant German sausages and buying gifts for an upcoming festival that marks the birth of Jesus. Yet few – even on a Sunday, with market business in full flow – took time out to cross the threshold of the great church and say a few prayers or join in the hymns on the first Sunday of Advent.
The confirmation that England is no longer strictly speaking a Christian country came yesterday with the publication of the 2021 Census data on religion. For the first time ever in a census, fewer than half the respondents declared themselves Christians – down to 46.2% compared to almost 60% a decade ago.
More than a third of the population now say they have no religion – up from a quarter in 2011 – while the growth in the number of people from ethnic minority backgrounds in England and Wales has helped to fuel the jump in those declaring themselves followers of other religions.
So what are we to make of these results, other than the obvious – that the long, slow decline in churchgoing is continuing and that Britain is becoming, year-by-year, an ever more racially and ethnically diverse country?
There will be those who are worried by the decline in declared Christian belief and link it to a more general collapse in morality. Yet I am not at all sure they would be right.
For a start, the rise in support for non-Christian religions means that the decline in Christianity does not automatically translate into a lack of religious belief of any kind. While overall the number of people responding ‘no religion’ to the question of their beliefs is up, the picture is shifting, rather than moving decisively in one direction.
And, even more importantly, the teachings of the Christian church still hold significant sway across society, even if fewer people declare themselves to be active practitioners of Christianity or even believers in a Christian God.
Most of us obey the law, most of the time. The majority also behave in a way that, while we might not see it as overtly ‘Christian’, matches the teachings of the church and has become, over 2,000 years, codified into a way of life and of seeing the world that has been given the stamp of approval by the Christian church.
In difficult times, like the Covid pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis or other more localised problems, we tend, as individuals and in groups, to help out our neighbours, give as generously as we can afford to charity and support those in need – even perfect strangers.
We see it as the right thing to do – but there is no denying that such behaviour comes from Christian teachings and is not necessarily hard-wired into the human brain but learned, absorbed and followed.
Theological and philosophical works explore this link between human behaviour and religious teachings in much more detail and not all agree that the connection can readily be made. It may be that early Christian church leaders saw that it made sense to hijack the best aspects of human behaviour and link it to their creed, just as they turned Pagan mid-winter festivals into Christmas.
As I ate a bag of roasted chestnuts and gazed up at the carved stonework of one of England’s finest cathedrals in Winchester, it was not hard to conclude that the Christian church has made a rather tacky descent into commercialisation and compromise as its former role has declined.
But maybe we should look at it in a different way... that the message is less about a belief in a superior being who controls all life on earth and more about a way to behave.
And maybe, measured on this scale, Christianity hasn’t fared too badly at all in 2,000 years.
‘We see being kind as the right thing to do... but it comes from Christian teachings’