Martin Robinson, Director of Theology and Mission
of the Bible Society, helps to make sense of the current situation of
the church in this country by looking back to the 18th century and what
we can learn from the past
In recent months I have heard media claims that Islam is the fastest
growing religion in Britain, that Buddhism is also the fastest growing
religion in Britain and that the Mormons will soon be the second largest
faith after Christianity. It would be difficult for all these claims
to be simultaneously true but each was made on the basis of carefully
collected statistics.
A radio programme recently declared that the number of Christians
attending church in Britain had never been fewer, but also expressed
alarm at the growing influence of the Christian lobby at Westminster.
How can Christians be simultaneously be fading into insignificance
and exerting considerable influence?
These competing claims and dubious analyses suggest that the contemporary
landscape in Britain is extremely complex and that great care needs
to be taken in understanding what is actually taking place. In this
article I want to suggest that some longer term historical assessment
might help us to interpret what is taking place.
The Wesleyan Revival
The beginning of the 19th century offers a fascinating case history
which might offer some salutary lessons for today. At that time Christian
leaders were very pessimistic about the future of Christianity and
its influence on the nation. That can sound strange to our ears because
we are aware that the revivals associated with Wesley and Whitefield
had been underway for some 60 years and were destined to change the
shape of Christianity in the 19th century. How then can we make sense
of the simultaneous gloom about the future of the church and the presence
of revival?
The answer is that we interpret the significance and influence of
those revivals through the lens of what happened well after Wesley
had died and not through the contemporary experience of Christians
during the 18th century revivals. If we try and enter into the experience
of those living in 1800 without a knowledge of what was to happen
later some fascinating perspectives emerge.
First a reading of Wesley's journals remind us that the whole country
was not gripped by revival. Wesley often met with hostility and rejection.
Revivals were often very local in their impact.
Second the actual number of converts in the revival were perhaps
not as many as we might imagine. For example, by 1776, some 36 years
after the first revival broke, the Methodists numbered some 30,000
members. Clearly there might have been some converts in the other
nonconformists denominations and other converts remained in the Church
of England.
The future is determined by committed minorities
Third, the greatest period of growth in church membership took place
after the first phase of revival was ended and not during the revival
itself.
The first fruit could be described as the manifestation of unusual
religious experiences which were shunned by the religious mainstream.
The second fruit was the creation of new denominations (often Methodist
networks). The third fruit was represented by a very gradual renewal
of the historic denominations as members and leaders were influenced
by revival thinking. The fourth fruit was the gradual social engagement
of the revivalists. It could be argued that it was not until the fourth
fruit was felt that the full impact of the revival began to produce
significant church growth in the 19th century.
That remarkable piece of social engagement by leaders such as John
Newton, Hannah Moore, William Wilberforce and others (later known
as the Clapham Sect), produced a new social vision for the nation
and changed the perception of the wider population of the value of
the Christian message. Some scholars have noted that connection between
church growth and the social and political engagement of the churches.
Viewed in this way we can argue that what mattered about the period
1800 was not the numbers of converts produced by the revival as much
as their spiritual vigour. The revivals produced the committed grass
roots activists who were able to work for the social transformation
of the nation.
Lessons to Learn
What might we learn from this kind of analysis? We need to ask what
future historians might make of the period we are now living in. Is
it possible that they might look back and say that the revival began
in the mid 1960's with the emergence of some unusual spiritual phenomenon
that some call the Charismatic Renewal? Might they look back and comment
that the next development was the emergence of some new denominations
that sprung from these phenomenon and that the historic denominations
were renewed from the same spiritual wellspring?
That is a possibility, but the alternative scenario is that such
developments could also be seen as irrelevant reactions tot he overall
demise of Christian influence. The interpretation that is offered
will depend not so much on what has been but on what will be. Is it
possible for the products of the spiritual vigour of recent years
to engage society such that it is decisively changed?
It is precisely because the alternatives are so open that it is hard
to make an assessment of the current landscape. History demonstrates
that the future is determined by committed minorities and not by apathetic
majorities. What counts is not whether church attendance is up or
down but rather on the quality of the spiritual commitment that emerges.
One reading of our present time is that the most significant factor
is not he decline of overall attendance but the fact that hundreds
of thousands of people have become Christians in the last thirty years.
Those who now attend church are more likely to do so because they
have had a profound spiritual encounter than merely through cultural
assimilation. We may be seeing the emergence of the kind of church
that can positively engage our culture in a campaigning direction
precisely because it is sure of its spiritual identity.
Reprinted with their Kind Permission from Quadrant's Leadership
Letter under the title "Weighing the times or Measuring the Numbers"
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