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mission-shaped evangelism

Can Post-Christian Britain be religious and secular?

For a thorough investigation of this subject, see my forthcoming book Mission-Shaped Evangelism, 2010
Canterbury Press.

In countries with a Christian tradition, many people own a Christian affiliation as an expression of their cultural heritage. This is illustrated by how many people are happy to identify themselves as Christian in census questionnaires.

Fewer people hold religious beliefs. Even fewer people adopt religious practices, chiefly regular church attendance. All these have been falling in Britain. The European Values survey shows the percentage claiming to be Christian fell from 84.4% in 1981 to 75.8% in 1999.Mori recorded 83% as Christian 1992, falling to 66% in 2007. In 1947 45% of the population believed in a personal God but in 2000 this fell to only 26%. Attendance has fallen from about 50% of the population in the mid nineteenth century to about 9% attending monthly in 2005.

Yet new beliefs are emerging, especially amongst younger adults. So of 18-24s in 2005, 46% believed in restless spirits, 44% believed it possible to contact the dead, 37% in Karma, and 15% in magic. But secularization exponents have argued this just represents entertainment, with little evidence of a commitment like that shown by churchgoing in Christianity.

However, some countries like China and Japan have been secular for a long time. In these societies, 'client based religion' works inversely to the Christendom pattern. Personal religious practice is the cultural norm, religious belief less common and religious identity very rare. Western New Spiritualities seem to work the same way. Identification with the new spiritualities is very small, non-traditional beliefs more common, and even more participate in personal religious practice. The New Spiritualities growing in Britain since the 1960s can't be measured in the same way Christianity has been and cannot be dismissed, but as client-based religions they will not reverse secularization, rather they may be perfectly suited to function and grow within it. The question then is 'what kind of Christianity might also flourish in a spiritual and secular Britain?