A paper presented to the Focus on Europe Seminar on 19th November
1997, at St. Andrew's Hall Missionary College.
The State of the Church in Britain
The Observer on the 9th November ran an article with the title "The
British believe in not putting bums on pews", by their religious
affairs correspondent Martin Wroe. The article opens with the words
"People would rather join a bird society than the Church, but
God is still safe"
and then reflects on the details of a survey published as UK Religious
Trends , in which the author Dr. Peter Brierley details statistics
that show that the church going in Britain is in a sad decline. Over
the past 20 years the over 800,000 people have stopped going to church
regularly in England. Birmingham, by no means the most irreligious
place in England, can now only claim that 12% of the population attend
church regularly, and that does not mean every Sunday. At the same
time the article expresses the interesting observation that the statistics
about church attendance do not necessarily indicate the level of religious
awareness in Britain. The Muslim community would like to claim about
10% of the population of Britain (but I suspect that this figure does
not represent regular mosque-goers), and there are other very visible
faith communities in Britain. Further there is a high level of faith
awareness within the population of Britain that is not expressed in
any organised form, which would range from enthusiastic "New
Agers" to people who would be prepared to claim a belief in God,
if only in private, and those who would more publicly claim a belief
in the Divine, the spiritual and miracles. The fascination with such
subjects and phenomena is clearly betrayed by the type and number
of television programmes related to the miraculous, unexplained and
extra-terrestial beings.
The Death of Princess Diana clearly evoked latent spiritual awareness
of the vast majority of the population of Great Britain. What seemed
evident is that many people were both emotionally and religiously
affected by the events. Accepting that there rapidly developed a roller-coaster
of response to the events, one can has to be impressed, and maybe
concerned as well, by the reaction of the crowds. There was a great
need to express grief and mourning to such a level that surely was
not wholly related to the death of one person. The event was almost
a festival and pilgrimage that allowed people to loose their English
reserve and allow emotion, religion and spirituality to take over.
A major problem may have been that they did not know what to do with
these largely unfamiliar aspects of their persona, and so it was allowed
to overflow in aspects of glorification and idolatry. David Cornick
in a paper published in the Expository Times relates such concerns
to the events of the Anfield Stadium tragedy, and draws the conclusion
that there is a much folk spirituality either evident or just under
the surface in Britain and Europe today.
Tourism, too, indicates the rise in level of spiritual awareness,
as there has been a notable increase in the interest in not only the
so-called "heritage industry", but in the religious and
spiritual heritage industry. Churches and religious sites are back
in fashion. One example is a small chapel in the remote Welsh valley
of Pennant Melangell. Visiting this place on a summer's Sunday afternoon
the approach road to the valley will be strewn with walkers and holidaymakers,
on pilgrimage and the site of the chapel will be overwhelmed with
human activity. Attending evensong the worshippers will not fit inside
the building and inevitably there is the bookstall and the souvenir
shop to attract a cash input to the place. Many of the visitors will
have little connection with the established church. Is this the new
expression of Christian faith? This experience, is far from unique,
and similar phenomena will be discovered at Iona, Lindisfarne, and
Holy Wells across Wales and Cornwall.
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