Christian Revival in Britain?! Spectator article
Gracious Rebel
Shipmate
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-christian-revival-is-under-way-in-britain/
Article in The Spectator for Easter ... reckons there is evidence that Christianity is reviving?! The author believes that many secular intellectuals are recognising that secular humanism has failed and, against all their expectations, seem to be on the verge of embracing faith instead.
Any thoughts?
Edited to add according to a Facebook post the author was frustrated that the Spectator used the word 'Revival' in the title, as that of course has a very specific meaning among many Christian churches
Article in The Spectator for Easter ... reckons there is evidence that Christianity is reviving?! The author believes that many secular intellectuals are recognising that secular humanism has failed and, against all their expectations, seem to be on the verge of embracing faith instead.
Any thoughts?
Edited to add according to a Facebook post the author was frustrated that the Spectator used the word 'Revival' in the title, as that of course has a very specific meaning among many Christian churches
Comments
I think there are minor resurgences in Christianity every now and again, and I don't see this as particularly different.
There's obviously a resurgence in forms of faith generally among the minority of younger people who are drawn to forms of nationalism, the culture war and other ideas associated with the further right. They not to stay long in the kind of church Brierley describes, as their only attachment to liberalism is typically as a counter point in the 'clash of civilisations', so tend to drift towards the furtherest reaches of the Roman Catholic Church or Orthodoxy (Kingsnorth as an example).
On an intellectual level, the figures he mentions are typically interested in Christianity in largely instrumental terms (Holland and Peterson) and while some of them may stick around I don't see that it constitutes a massive move.
I will have to use this comment in a sermon.
I would say Christianity has risen again every500 years in the larger scheme of things for sure. Could probably be traced more often. In American history there has been at least 4 revivals--depending on how you count them. But it seems the pendulum swings both ways. With every revival there comes a period of disillusionment, even a burned-out reaction. We are certainly going through that in the US now. I think we are like 50 years behind Europe in that pattern.
Not in the same geographical region. And that matters.
Or in the same sub-culture in-region. In my city, African and Indian immigrant and heritage Christian groups are booming. In church yesterday, the vicar was wowed by 60 people turning up. In my hall, over 120 red brick university students of African heritage turned up. I have about the same number again today. And will have twice that tomorrow. Yesterday's group are coming back admittedly. They're keen.
Pathetic.
Some of the same things are pressing in on the church even today. Yes, it is coming from other parts of the world, but nonetheless, I am just waiting for the spark.
I must admit as a liberal old fogey I'm not sure I'd welcome that development. I worry about young men exposed to nationalism and what-not online.
I don't think we are seeing a 'revival' as such but certainly some interest in Generation Z.
I must admit, the young men I've met don't fall into the right-wing Internet conspiracy theorist stereotype but it pays to be wary.
Perhaps it was ever thus? Auden, Eliot and Chesterton didn't become Baptists or Pentecostals.
This observation cuts both ways, of course. But I don't see much at your average URC or other mainstream Protestant church here in the UK that you couldn't get at your local Green, Lib Dem or Labour Party branches.
That's not to disparage those political parties but it is to say that mainstream Protestantism has to find something more to offer than a Guardian style sermon or 'Thought for The Day' with hymns.
I don't object to the politics but liberal forms of Christianity have to find something more engaging. Equally, the more theologically conservative churches have to watch out for right-wingers who think they are going to find a spiritual echo chamber for their views.
The Orthodox in the Southern US are seeing an influx of 'Confederates' and assorted crazies.
Earnest zeal and commitment can be a good thing. But it can cast a shadow.
I don't recognise this characterisation at all. Mainstream Protestantism is guilty of being dull at times, but in years of attending Anglican, Presbyterian and occasionally Methodist and Baptist services I've never encountered preaching that wasn't deeply rooted in the Christian faith (that's not to say it was always of good quality). I think the bigger issue is that certainty is attractive, even when it's misplaced or downright nasty. Nuance, ambiguity, uncertainty can risk looking like insincerity or lack of faith.
Quite. I attend what is known locally for being a very liberal church. Ticks all the "right on" boxes theologically and politically. But its ministry, activities and preaching are absolutely routed in a particular understanding of God as the source of life, and deliverance from injustice, and living out the seeing Christ in the downtrodden values of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.
I am exaggerating to make a point of course. Please don't misunderstand me, one of the most memorable sermons I've ever heard came from a woman URC minister. She lost her son in tragic circumstances and her raw and rich sermon dealt with that. Marvellous woman.
I've also heard some excellent sermons in Baptist and Methodist churches. I've heard lousy Orthodox sermons.
I'm struggling to get across what I'm trying to say here. It's not a million miles from what @Arethosemyfeet observes, truth be told. I don't think it's a binary thing - that the older sacramental churches ooze certainty and conviction, they create a sense of the numinous with their bells and smells in a way that gives you a 'hit.' Whereas the mainstream non-conformist chapel down the road is far too beige.
Or that charismatic churches create an atmosphere and sense of community and purpose which is lacking elsewhere.
It's not as if 'nuance, ambiguity and uncertainty' are the exclusive properties of one particular type of church. There're the mystical and 'apophatic' elements in the older historic Churches as well as clear doctrinal positions.
Equally, I wouldn't say that more liberal forms of theology can't be 'exciting'. The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, God rest his soul, was liberal in his theology, but nobody could accuse him of being dull.
We have to careful with all these things. 'The best lack all conviction,' as Yeats put it. 'The worst are full of passionate intensity.'
But let me give you an instance. And no offence intended to the Friends here. Given the rather 'mindful' approach of the Quakers and their emphasis on social justice and equality, one might expect them to strike a chord, to tap into the 'zeitgeist'. But for whatever reason the Quakers don't appear to be making much headway - in numerical terms - here in the UK. Not that it's all about bums on seats.
There's a fair bit of woo woo spirituality around but not necessarily aligned to any particular group or movement. The Pagans seem to be active. I saw a whole section of Pagan books in a left wing independent bookshop recently.
But generally, most people are completely indifferent to any spiritual claims whatsoever.
As a broad generalisation though, it does seem that those groups with a bit of zapp and zing, whether in the form of charismatic claims or whizzy gear that looks like it's come from a Lord of The Rings prop catalogue, have been the ones to attract new members. Whether they stick around is another matter of course.
Some studies predict that Methodism here won't survive the mid-point of this century. Non-conformist chapels in my native South Wales have been shutting up shop for decades.
Some bright young things or clever-clogs-es turning up at Anglo-Catholic or evangelical churches is interesting but it doesn't indicate a major resurgence of interest to me. I wish it did.
Two swallows don't make a summer.
The last time I remember reading articles about a potential upsurge in religious observance here in the UK was back in the '80s and '90s. There were also articles I remember about the so-called 'revolving door' syndrome within 'revivalist' groups.
FWIW I think it's worthy of note that some Generation Z-ers are finding faith, but I don't see it as anything like a 'revival' - and I was interested to read upthread that the author had expressed disappointment at the headline.
It's a loaded term.
I wonder if those lost-causers are attracted more to the Gone With The Wind image of the Old South, or to the Dukes Of Hazzard image. Serious question.
As @Twangist and @Lamb Chopped seem to be observing somewhere up-thread, this seems to be a perennial theme every generation or so, high-profile highbrows heading back to Jesus, with accompanying apologists hailing it as some great harbinger of revival.
A few thoughts:
1) Brierley is wrong about "the" Culture Wars. James Davidson Hunter wrote about them in 1992 in "Culture Wars" (in the U.S.) and included a long painfully detailed history of them, which demonstrated that the blame lay squarely on people of religion. I question his points about the rest as well. The secular humanists (standard issue as well as more philosophical) seem just about as well- or poorly-adjusted as the Christians I know.
2) I hear of revivals and rumors of revivals in the U.S. regularly. I find Brierley rather too optimistic in this article. In another forum one participant has me pegged as a deceiving heretic, in part because I didn't just holler, "Praise the Lord!" when he posted about a spontaneous and prolonged prayer vigil that was reported as a revival. "We'll see. Give it six months, a year, 5 years, 10."
As with this. We'll see.
I''m a fan of hindsight.
3) Two Christain friends from my work world are a GenY and a GenZ. They have real scars just from having survived some of the nonsense fads that went through, and have changed, evangelical churches in the last 30 years. They are in the church but looking for church homes, where they feel they are better understood and can fit. They are looking for a different kind of "revival", something that allows them to use their brains and skills, too.
4) Yes, "revival" has a specific meaning, maybe meanings depending on church culture, in the US.
If it's the same Brierley who used to compile the annual statistical survey of UK church attendance trends - not always accurately - he may welcome any apparent advance.
On @Gramps49's thing about Hard Rock enjoying a 'revival' in Finnish churches. Heavy rock has always been a thing there and it's hardly surprising the churches have imbibed it.
I will resist a Hellish comment on this Western Easter Day. Christ is Risen!
Knitting and related things are about all I know about the Hebrides. What about this last "revival?"
Quite what one is to make of this sort of thing, I know not. It seems rather arbitrary, localised, and transitory...
(I was rather amused by the comment that some ministers disapproved of the evangelist Campbell because he wore BROWN shoes!
Indeed.
A link to something explaining the toxic elements of the Revival would be helpful. I suppose we could imagine what they might be, but first-hand evidence would be preferable!
I was surprised to hear that reading 'The People's Friend' was considered inveterately sinful.
Growing up in South Wales I knew people whose parents had been converted during the 1904-05 Welsh Revival. That was always surrounded by myth and pious legend.
It was definitely a 'thing'. A Baptist church near us baptised 60 people during the 18 months the Revival lasted. But it wasn't all sweetness and light.
There was something of a reaction against the Revival, which is understandable. There's only so long you can stand in a chapel singing 'Here is love vast as the ocean' in English or Welsh over and over again.
I don't know whether this applied in the Hebrides but in Wales it was largely a young people's thing - think 'churched' or 'semi-churched' young folk with a strong background in cultural Christianity getting swept up by tides of emotion. There needed to be some outlet for their energies and with many of them that was later directed into Labour Party politics or the Eisteddfodau or Welsh Nationalism or other causes.
The revivalists put a big emphasis on 'self-emptying' and such like and effectively wore themselves out. Evan Roberts had a breakdown. You can't keep that kind of passionate intensity going indefinitely.
I used to be a bit of a revival geek and read up all sorts of accounts of various movements and 'awakenings'. There were a few 20th century ones here in the UK. Wales in 1904-05 - with a few smaller scale ones elsewhere such as the Colne Valley near Huddersfield, and larger ones abroad - in India for instance.
Then there was Lowestoft, Yarmouth and the North East of Scotland in 1921 with a revival affecting the East Anglian fishing ports and the Scottish herring fleets.
Some Pentecostals would claim that the Jeffreys Brothers 'campaigns' in the 1930s constituted a revival. I wouldn't go that far but they did have an impact, particularly in Bristol and in The Potteries.
The Hebridean revival in the 1950s is generally seen as the last of the old-fashioned religious revivals. My late mother in law knew someone who'd been involved. Lots of hellfire and damnation.
This person reckoned there were two revivals, a highly emotional and largely spurious one, and another quieter and less dramatic which they felt had a more lasting and beneficial effect.
People said similar things about the Welsh Revival and there were all sorts of controversies over which was the genuine article.
A few years ago there was a so-called revival in my home town which was discussed on these boards. All sorts of extravagant claims were made. And again there were people arguing about which church had the real deal. None of my unchurched friends and relatives down there knew it was happening. People were coming from the Midlands and all over for these whoopy-doopey meetings which nobody outside of churchy circles were aware of.
Sorry for the lengthy post.
Thanks for the article.
Like KarlLB, I was wondering about a more well-rounded view.
@Gamma Gamaliel thanks for more info on revivals.
I can only report what I've seen - some of those who came to faith through it seem to have derived the impression that those unaffected by it had had their chance and were now beyond salvation. This was said, in pretty much so many words and with approval, by a retired Kirk elder invited to speak at a Good Friday service here about 10 years ago. To say I (and the Kirk minister, and the Baptist minister) were horrified would be an understatement.
I've heard similar stuff from C of E clergy, of course.
Just a few miles from here is Mow Cop, a prominent millstone-grit outcrop which was the scene of the UK's first 'camp meetings' in the early 1800s - the start of the 'Primitive Methodist' movement, a largely grassroots working class affair which sought to restore Methodism to what they considered to be its early purity and power.
The revivalist Hugh Bourne and William Clowes were influenced by accounts of the Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky and by an eccentric American evangelist called Lorenzo Dow.
There was religious revival on both sides of the Atlantic in 1859-60. Here it particularly affected Wales and Northern Ireland.
These things appear to occur in largely 'Christianised' settings - generally with nominal or 'cultural' Christians imbibing religious fervour, at least for a time. That said, there have been significant 'people movements' such as that among the Lisu people of Myanmar, largely through contact with 19th century American missionaries.
I've seen something of the so-called 'Gypsy Revival' in Spain, a religious movement among Romany people and Travellers that began in France in the 1950s.
It has affected Gypsy and Traveller communities here in the UK too.
I'm no longer a 'revivalist' of course, but I wouldn't write these things off entirely. As other Shipmates have said, we need more nuanced accounts. I was shocked, for instance, to read accounts of sectarianism in North Wales - in this case directed against Anglicans by non-conformists (the boot was usually on the other foot) during the Welsh Revival.
I've also read of promising young footballers and other sports players being deterred from pursuing their interest (and vocation?) by revivalist enthusiasts at that time.
I've also met people whose grandparents were put off religion entirely by the Welsh Revival, as well as those whose forebears were converted through it.
I'm not sure the established church will survive until it comes to terms with judgmental attitudes to people seen as being in "irregular relaionships". I'm not sure it deserves to.
FWIW, the St John Passion was stunning. Particularly the end chorus when the amateur singers came to the front with the professional soloists and led the audience in the singing of that final beautiful chorale. As had happened at the first performance 300 years ago. A real Easter moment for me. Also for the gay singer. Who said that taking part had given her hope for the first time in many years.
The church needs to rediscover the values of belonging and acceptance.
As an aside, I think in this case the causation runs the other way and is a backwash of living in a once 'Christian' culture.
Plenty of independent churches don't recognise 'irregular relationships.'
The Church in Wales (Anglican) does. I imagine the Church of England will some time soon. Whether that will arrest the decline in church attendance in and of itself remains to be seen.
Interesting aside. Could you expand on this?
I'm afraid It's not a particularly profound point; there's a large overlap in the UK between the social formations that made up the non-conformist movements and those who were most likely to be active in the formation of the Labour Party, and something of that heritage has been handed down (and occasionally refreshed).
Thanks. I was too abbreviated. In a conversation with Peter Brierley, who produced a number of books on the decline of the numbers of Christians in the UK, I asked what he thought, from his research, what might be the underlying cause. He observed instantly that most of the denominations were way behind social understandings in their approach to irregular relationships. He included folks living together and same sex relationships. He observed that if denominations didn’t get their act together a number would probably die.
BTW I don’t know if he is related to Justin Brierley.
(And if you like classical music, do listen to the St John Passion - it’s on BBC iPlayer. Well worth it.)
Thank you for spelling that out. I think it might have helped me become a little more clear about why, when it happens, I find it difficult. When the preacher concentrates on 'greed is bad, and re-distributive tax policies and the parties who espouse them are what we need more of' they may well be right. But they also seem (only to me, of course, and this may be a worthless observation) to be speaking proudly into a ... context? ... of imagined waistcoat-ed plutocrats who are very 'other' and very 'to blame'.
This might all be OK - folks might like to do the 60 minute hate on a Sunday morning when thinking of recent political leaders and their plutocratic shenanigans - but it is done every day in the Guardian, and across most breakfast tables in the Islington-in-Manchester suburb near which I live - and one definitely, definitely does not need to be in church to hear it like it is 1906.
Whereas (and again, this might be just me) the Why of 'greed is bad, and everyone has equal worth' is, IMV, rather badly served by our general public debate. As is 'you, and I, are bad, just like plutocrats - and this both matters very much, but as it turns out is remarkably not a cause for despair'. We still have a lot to say, and it heartens me when we say it.
I'm sorry, I am probably doing a good impersonation of those steely-eyed self-important local preachers speaking anachronistically to the wrong audience.
This probably isn’t revolutionary and certainly not steely eyed. I’m not sure that politicising unselfish values is the way discipleship works. Belonging provides a basis for serious conversations about values. Also for providing practical demonstrations of those values. It’s hard to trust a stranger who either makes you feel guilty or tells you you are wrong.
They wish there were more Wesleyan hymns and less virtue-signalling dirges where we sing to God and apologise for how middle-class and privileged we all are without actually doing anything about it.
They love their church to bits and find every Sunday a time of mourning as they hear of yet another member who has died of old age or else not resumed attendance after the pandemic.
I mean no disrespect but there's not a lot there you couldn't get from The Guardian online.
@Barnabas62 yes, my late wife was a big Bach aficionado and I've been listening to the St John Passion on CD this weekend. I remember seeing a performance of it with her many years ago. I'll look up the Gareth Malone version.
@Barnabas62 - I've not met Peter Brierley but remember his annual stats. I've heard other people say the same. I can see why they say that. But I don't see masses of people queuing up to join the Church in Wales or the Scottish Episcopal Church since they agreed to conduct same-sex weddings.
Nor do I see people queueing round the block to join the Quakers who were the first religious group to accept 'irregular relationships.'
The Methodists in the UK are on the verge of extinction. Sadly. That's got nothing to do with their stance on Epiphany issues. They're going down the route you describe but I don't see that reversing their fortunes. If they'd done it 5, 10, 20 or 25 years ago I don't think it would have stemmed their decline.
One of the things that worries me is that the RC and Orthodox Churches will probably receive enquiries from single-issue refugees from churches that introduce same-sex marriage ceremonies. I don't expect a tsunami of them, but there will be some. I'd rather people came for reasons other than that we don't ordain women (yet? give it a few hundred years 😉) or marry people in 'irregular relationships'.
Coming back from Epiphany territory, I don't see any upsurge in interest in Christianity because vicars tell jokes or the RCs have 'clown masses' every now and then or there are Messy Churches with balloons and poster paint or we all get down wiv da kidz.
If all the churches adopted more liberal attitudes to 'irregular relationships' tomorrow it would certainly bring us all in line with wider society and we'd probably be applauded for doing so - by and large. But from a purely 'utilitarian' perspective I'm not sure it would lead to more bums on seats. I know you are not suggesting that this would be the only reason for doing so.
I think there's more to it than churches being out of synch with contemporary social mores.
Taking an example from J S Bach, one of the revolutionary things about St John Passion was that it was written in German (not Latin) so the congregations and audiences could understand it in their own tongue. Gareth Malone decided to follow Bach by using the English translation. And I know musical buffs well enough to know that that decision will have offended some purists!
Thinking about values again, In the 100 best church jokes there is one between a new Bishop and a church warden of 40 years duration in one of his parishes.
Bishop; That’s a long time. I suppose you’ve seen many changes?
Church Warden; Oh yes, and I’m proud to say I resisted every single one of them.
My comments were primarily about the origins, social mix and thus rhetorical style rather than content. Though given many groups origins in the world of Lassalle's Iron Law it's not surprising that they'd concentrate on certain parts of - say - the Magnificat. The other big pole would have been freedom from addictions - largely alcoholism. So if you remove that and the supernatural element, it's no surprise than the first predominates - even if it's sometimes a case of people bringing culture back into the church with them.
Going back to the OP, the church Brierley mentions has fairly high 'production' values (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdWWc-frHwY ) - on par with a scaled down cathedral service - which in an age of 'authentic experience' also don't have a problem filling their seats. I'm sure a lot of them do very good work, but not sure it adds up to broad appeal.