(This article appeared in the November 2006 edition of the parish magazine.)
Have you noticed how much religion there is in the news at the moment? There are the horrors of religiously-inspired violence; the Christian BA check-in clerk who was told to remove or hide her cross; the debate over the rights and wrongs of a Muslim teacher wearing a face veil; the discussion about admission arrangements of religious schools – it’s sometimes hard to watch a news bulletin without a religious story.
How things have changed! I don’t think anyone would have predicted all this a generation ago.
In 1943, Winston Churchill gave a speech to an audience at
Churchill was suggesting that power was shifting from nations to ideas. Instead of nations disputing territories, the world was entering a new era in which competing political-economic ideologies would vie to shape the lives of billions. The human mind, not physical space, was to be the front line in a wholly new kind of struggle.
For the next half-century, it looked like Churchill was right. One ideology, Nazism, had already been defeated and the Cold War saw a new struggle between Marxism and the capitalist ideologies of the West. Churchill’s ‘empires of the mind’ were these modern ideas that captivated hopes and loyalties. They offered competing systematic interpretations of the state of humankind and each made proposals that promised substantial advances in the great endeavour of human progress. And in this development, the assumption was that religion was dead, or at least dying. How could religious belief possibly survive when the exciting new ideas were so rational and sophisticated?
According to theologian Alistair McGrath, it has been estimated that by 1960 half the population of the world was nominally atheist. Academics described ‘secularisation’ – the process by which religion was rapidly disappearing in developed nations. The equation seemed straightforward; progress meant the death of the idea of God. In this country, as our churches steadily emptied, it appeared to some that if Christians wanted to offer the world anything, they should quickly ditch their mythologies and superstitions in order to embrace the brave new world of rationality and modernity. Some writers and preachers tried to distil the ‘timeless essence’ of the faith so that they could offer a Christian ideology that was free of any embarrassing spiritual baggage.
The world didn’t listen much to those offerings from liberal theologians of the sixties and seventies. Attempts to change Christianity so that it had a plausible, modern voice might have given the churches something to think about but they hardly changed the world. With hindsight, we can see now that the era of competing rational ideologies as the dominant force in the world order was about to change. In the eighties, idealism had given way to pragmatism; what mattered was what worked.
Public voice
We may feel encouraged that the development of evangelical faith in the eighties and nineties has helped the faith of thousands in our country to grow. But there has also been a withdrawal from the marketplace of ideas and the public realm. We might ask whether in the 1980s, Christian faith (along with railways, telecoms companies and airlines!) became privatised. The Church still had big ideas to offer but it seemed that no one was interested in big ideas any more.
And now thing have moved on again. What we urgently need now are not grand theories but compelling theological responses to issues of identity and to the challenges of living in a connected, highly differentiated and mobile society. This autumn has seen a remarkable shift. Our politicians, journalists and commentators have been willing to discuss the practical issues that arise from multi-culturalism. There have been some extreme voices and we must be very careful not to see one sector of our population as the root of a problem. The Church, once desperate for a public voice and ideally placed to offer insight and perspective, seems to be rather timid and quiet.
At a local level, it’s easy for parishes to carry on as if nothing has really changed. We can plough on with our usual range of activities and events as if we were still living in 1961, 1981 or pre-September 11, 2001.
Parallel Living
How tempting it is to live our church life in a kind of bubble; self-contained and blissfully separate. Indeed, this kind of parallel living, in which communities barely brush against each other but don’t engage, is very close to the heart of today’s concerns.
When we shut out the world around us, it’s easy to pretend that our faith can remain unaffected by the controversies and complexities of a multi-cultural society and a multi-cultural Oadby. If we only focus on the things we need to ensure our churches’ survival and health we distract ourselves from the calling we have to offer real hope to a fractured and broken world.
In this climate, I’m finding the situation and ministry of the early Church inspiring. The letters of the New Testament were written to Christian communities that were immersed in a complicated and confusing world. In
The New Testament writings urged Christian communities to model a new kind of connection – with God, and also with each other and with the world. The momentous discovery that God’s mission was not simply a renewal of the nation of
As the tide of atheism in our world retreats, new questions have emerged. We in the Church have a moment of opportunity that was unavailable to any previous generation in our land. We may find ourselves in a bewildering marketplace of ideas and beliefs - but people are listening.
