In her 1994 book ‘Religion in Britain since 1945’ Grace Davie, a sociologist, commented: ‘The overall pattern of religious life is changing. For it appears that more and more people within British society want to believe but do not want to involve themselves in religious practice.’ Her book had a sub-title ‘Believing without belonging’. Few would claim that change of this kind has ceased in the last quarter of a century.
If anything, the change has accelerated during the last 12 months. What Grace Davie called religious practice (i.e. attending services of worship etc) becomes more difficult when churches are closed and when a stay-at-home pattern of life is changing the nature of participation.
Not surprisingly, alternative reactions have been forthcoming. In what it calls a ‘post-Christian wilderness looking for signs of hope’ Nomad Church offers another way of going about things. ‘Nomad church collective is making disciples of Jesus by taking the Gospel to the margins of society.’ In Nottingham and Loughborough, Junction Church provides a meeting-point for those who feel disaffected by traditional church life and are kicking over the traces. The margins are seen in fact as the 95 per cent of people who have nothing to do with the institutional Church.
It is not necessary to accept the conclusion that the Church is in terminal decline and that the remedy is a church-less Gospel. The Church, as it has been said, is an anvil that has broken many hammers. But the general disaffiliation from institutional religion has to be taken seriously. When Thomas Arnold lamented the state of the Church in the early 19th century, he could not have ever foreseen the extraordinary eruption of activity in terms of worldwide mission and renewal of worship that took place in the following years. We should not forget that the Supreme Lord has a way of doing more than we can expect or imagine when we pray. We must be prepared to look beneath the surface of things. The grace of God can come as a still small voice; it can also prove to be volcanic.
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