Abstract
This summer edition of Theology offers some interesting pointers to the future. Stephen Heap uses his extensive work for the Church of England on higher education to explore what he sees as new directions in universities. Although the sociologist Tony Walter now sees himself as an agnostic, he nevertheless remains fascinated with funeral rites. Many readers with pastoral experience will recognize the trends that are now emerging in what he terms ‘life-centred’ funerals. I doubt if I am alone in finding ever-expanding funeral eulogies difficult to balance emotionally and time-wise within the constraints of a funeral service. Gordon Leah makes another imaginative connection between theology and literature with a focus, this time around on Conrad. And David Newton offers a helpful comparison of the different theological styles of Rowan Williams and Stanley Hauerwas. Finally, Anthony Bash, the veteran of Christian forgiveness (especially in his academic study Forgiveness and Christian Ethics, CUP, 2007, and the parish-based Just Forgiveness, SPCK, 2011) contributes this month’s Difficult Texts looking at Luke 23.34 and Acts 7.60 (of course on forgiveness).
Thinking of pointers to the future, 20 years ago two American statistical social scientists, Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler, came to visit me in Northumberland where I lived at the time. I was deeply flattered because they brought with them a copy of my book The Myth of the Empty Church, published only months before, with annotations on almost every page. They had many interesting questions about the mass of historical churchgoing statistics that I had collected, but one question stood out over the others: Why had I not made greater use of opinion poll data on religious beliefs to plot changes over time? My answer was that opinion polls kept changing their questions about beliefs, so it was difficult to compare them over time. They showed me that I was mistaken. Gallup Polls, in particular, tended to ask the same (sometimes crude) questions for decade after decade. These, at least, could be compared, as could data from British Social Attitudes.
They were right. So over the next two years we worked together, eventually producing a detailed comparison of religious beliefs and non-beliefs in Britain over six decades for the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 1 Basically this comparison showed that, although urban Anglican churchgoing had started to decline in the mid-nineteenth century, Christian belief remained quite strong when it was first measured scientifically in the 1940s, but it had been gradually eroding during the second half of the twentieth century, with unbelief (‘no’ instead of ‘don’t know’) increasing and with non-traditional beliefs (e.g. in reincarnation and fate) persisting in about a quarter of the population. Thanks to Hadaway and Marler’s timely intervention this article has been widely cited ever since.
Ben Clements,
Surveying Christian Beliefs and Religious Debates in Post-War Britain
(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016); 144 pp.: 9781137506559, £45.00/$67.50 (hbk)
This recent book by Ben Clements brings our comparison up-to-date and adds to it significantly. He acknowledges that he was helped in this task (as I was when I wrote The Myth) by the doyen of British religious statistics, Dr Clive Field. 2 Anyone making claims about changing Christian beliefs in post-war Britain would be wise to consult this excellent book first.
Clements corroborates our 1998 conclusion that there is ‘a significant erosion of belief in God. People in present-day Britain are much more likely to admit that they do not believe in God with a resulting decline in those who say they do believe in God or simply don’t know.’ 3 The percentage of those saying that they are convinced atheists remains low (4 per cent in 1981 and 8 per cent in 2008), yet ‘theistic belief and the personal salience of God have been consistently higher amongst women or older people’. 4 In other words, many younger people, and males in particular, are at least agnostic – the very people who are least likely to be found in church. Again as we found in 1998, belief in afterlife, heaven and sin is still held by around half of the population, but belief in hell and the devil by less than a quarter.
None of this shows a massive decline in Christian beliefs (Clements does not examine evidence about non-traditional beliefs) but there is some continuing erosion, especially among the young. Frankly that is exactly as I would expect – without any exposure to formal religious teaching or worship the religious beliefs of the young (ethnic minorities apart) are likely to become ever vaguer. Not, I am afraid, a very comfortable pointer to the future.
In the final part of his book Clements looks at three areas of current debate: science and religion; faith schools; and disestablishment. Unfortunately, only the first of these areas has been surveyed for any length of time and it is measured through a fairly crude, variously phrased, question: ‘How much do you agree or disagree that … we believe too often [trust or depend too much] in science, and not enough in feelings and faith?’ However even this question is indicative: before 9/11 up to half agreed with it but by 2010 less than a third did. It is not difficult to guess why that is so. Faith schools also evoke mixed feelings, as does the established role of the Church of England (actively supported by only a quarter of respondents).
This book is studiously impartial and, as a result, is all the more useful. For churches it might act as a warning: the more estranged from worship the British become the more traditional Christian beliefs are likely to erode. Like it or not (I don’t) that is what opinion poll evidence, gathered now for some 75 years, suggests.