By Catherine Pepinster
People in Britain are attracted to churches at different ends of the Christian spectrum but not the “mushy middle”, according to speakers discussing “Does The Future Have A Church”, organised by the think tank, Theos.
Growth in congregation numbers are being seen at Orthodox and evangelical churches, but not so much in the Church of England, they said.
The event, held at the BMA headquarters in London’s Tavistock Square, replaced a long-planned lecture by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, which was cancelled after he resigned in the wake of the Makin Report into John Smyth’s physical abuse of children.
Welby’s resignation and the crisis in the Church of England was raised during the Theos event, when panel chair, Nick Spencer, a senior fellow at Theos, asked how much damage this had done to the Church.
According to Madeleine Davies, senior writer at the Church Times, people’s views of the Church of England depended on whether they encountered it in their own lives. With fewer than 700,000 attending Anglican services each week, this connection was small.
The biggest shrinkage for the Church of England, she said, was what she called the “nominal fringe” – those who might come into contact with it through weddings, funerals and school events.
Justin Brierley, author and presenter of the “Re-Enchanting” podcast, also suggested that people distinguished between the national and parish level of the Church of England.
He suggested they would not be put off the local church by what had happened at the top. “People can distinguish between their personal experience and institutional failures”, he said.
But Mary Harrington, a contributor to the Unherd website, warned that the local church was overburdened by the managerialism that had been typical of Justin Welby’s time: “You have churches with 10 superannuated members yet it is bristling with safeguarding officers”.
Elsewhere, Christianity is growing, according to the panel, due to migration which has brought many more different forms of church to Britain.
Bishop Mike Royal, a Pentecostalist who is general secretary of Churches Together in England, pointed out that the organisation now has 54 member denominations, with the Orthodox Churches having three million members between them.
Evangelical churches were also growing, he said, with “an incredible groundswell of these churches in communities with people setting up churches”.
But he warned that numbers might not stay high in these churches, as migrants become more settled. He pointed to the experience of the Caribbean community in the 1950s and 1960s which has seen later generations move away from their community’s churches.
According to Mary Harrington and Justin Brierley, churches at either end of the Christian spectrum are benefitting from people’s desire for intense experience of something different from the rest of their lives.
While Orthodoxy and evangelicalism prosper, they said, what Harrington described as “the hollowing out in the middle” and Brierley as “the mushy middle” is suffering.
The days when atheism was attractive, said Brierley, with the New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins attracting huge audiences and readerships, are over. Instead, “people have opened up to the possibility of God again and are reaching out for stories that are ultimately satisfying and more meaningful. They want a form of faith and religion that feels like it has some stability.”
For many people, the crisis of the age is loneliness, and churches are well-placed to offer encounters that people might not otherwise have. “That is a strength of the church and it is rare elsewhere,” he said.
According to Daisy Scalchi, head of religion and ethics for BBC television, this search for meaning is also evident in what viewers look for in what they watch. “People want to explore questions around life, death, meaning, purpose, connection and family”.
If the church is to play a part in the future, though, the panel thought that much of that would be down to its continuing role in social action, which has seen it provide services in previous centuries that were eventually taken over by the state – such as education and poverty relief – and fill gaps in recent times, through services such as food banks and warm spaces.
Bishop Mike Royal warned that sometimes it feels as if church organisations were expected to clear up society’s mess, and so evangelical churches are now engaged with broader issues of justice.
The issue of who is my neighbour was the key, he said, and that meant welcoming people – anyone, not just believers.
“That idea of social action”, said Royal, “that’s a western thing. It’s about love. And we should demonstrate it”.
