Categories: practical-theology, ecclesiastical-stuff, fresh-expressions
Date: 23 October 2012 09:51:07
Last night we went to the MK Theology Forum event to hear Rev Dr Michael Moynagh talk on the subject of 'From Christian Country to Secular State?'. Moynagh is amongst other things the Director of Research for the Fresh Expressions organisation.
He started his talk by explaining how he thinks Christianity and faith more broadly in Great Britain stands on a knife edge at the moment. There are signs of hope and the ability to flourish but there is a serious question mark because the momentum to decline may just be too big to reverse.
The contemporary data he used to map the decline was primarily based upon the work of Peter Brierley and the material on wider historical context of secularisation that needs placing within came from Callum Brown's The Death of Christian Britain. Using that data he mapped the quantitative decline which has occurred over the last century and highlighted how differences in patterns of attendance on the basis of gender and ethnicity need to be looked at within that overall decline.
He then went on to highlight the paradox which has been created in modern Britain. Whilst there has been this huge decline in both attendance and interest in organised religion the media has created a narrative which is based around fundamentalism verses secular tolerance. There is, he argued, a particular spin given to issues of faith within the media although as with all things it is not all spin there is some element of these stories based in reality. Thus, we are in a situation where allegiance to organised faith is declining but religion seems more in your face than it's ever been and more people are discussing issues around the place of faith than ever before. We are, as some sociologists have argued, in a place of post-secularity.
He then went on to give an overview of the secularisation debate. He started by focusing on the argument put forward by Steve Bruce that faith is in long term decline. Within this strand of thought he also bought in David Voas work on religious transmission and the concept of "fuzzy fidelity" which means that there is not the strong attachment to religion there was before and that the level of attachment falls from one generation to the next. As an argument to support this he used the Co-op funeral music survey data, (which I referred to in this post).
Next he moved on to outline the argument that the nature of faith is changing. This is the idea that people are moving on to post-institutional expressions of faith and are moving from religion to spirituality. I was surprised that he did not directly refer here to the work of Linda Woodhead who has been one of the main advocates of this view.
Finally, he outlined the strand of thought that says church has failed to adapt and it has been self-limiting in relevance, availability and organisation. He used the analogy of the decline of cinema in the late 1970's and said that what the organised religion in the UK needs to do is to recognise that it has lost relevance and it needs to change how it does things. He highlighted particular problems which exist are the way churches set rules and in doing so limit accessibility and how invitations to participate are on our terms. He also highlighted that the way budgets are set in churches the bulk of the money is spent on us.
He finished his presentation by posing the question, can the church adapt? If so what would that adaptation look like?
The discussion which followed was interesting and very positive. Within it Moynagh expanded upon what he had said earlier, and I suspect gave us more of an overview of the material within his new book Church for Every Context: An Introduction to Theology and Practice.
Key points he made included that churches tend to have an attractional come to us approach which is discouraging. Whilst there are examples of growth in Cathedrals (which the Church Growth project I referred to in a recent post is looking to explain amongst other areas) his overall view was that the decline within inherited church will continue. However he was, (unsurprisingly for somebody employed by Fresh Expressions), optimistic about the growth of small new forms of church focused on group whose needs were not met by other churches. He then went on to point out what I think is vitally important inherited forms of church and Fresh Expressions are not exclusive and we need to recognise and encourage the links and overlaps between them. Referring to research in Liverpool and Lincoln he outlined how there were more of these groups than the figures recognised. He then outlined a central strand of his overall argument that whilst the church and its influence could be declining at national level it could actually be becoming more relevant at local level and the difference could be coming from the bottom up.
There is he went on to say no such thing as risk free mission. We are on the knife edge in part because we are faced with the choice of whether we take Godly risk or not. He argued that there is a culture in many churches of wanting to play it safe, but he suggested that this is the argument which will lead to terminal decline.
Towards the end of the session he explained that there is a real issue around how we connect things up. The reality is that if you want to achieve change you have to be organised and so the "anything goes" mentality needs to be resisted. However, that organisation needs to occur with lightness. We need to integrate celebrations and parties. We need to bring different groups and ways of doing things together rather than seeking to pull them apart.
Then he went on to bluntly point out that the bottom of the church is going to fall out of the church between 2015 and 2030 as a majority of current attenders die. And it is the impact of that which we can't predict.
He concluded the evening by saying "Church is God's gift to the world. We are called to serve and we need to keep the huge picture in mind."
Moynagh was realistic yet he was also giving hope. Apart from the male-stream aspect I was refreshed by the evening and agreed with most of what was being said both personally and from an academic perspective. Over the few last years, particularly in saying the dichotomy being set up between inherited church and Fresh Expressions is false it's actually more integrated, I have felt like I've been banging my head against a wall in isolation. Hearing a respected practical theologian who is a key voice in the establishment saying the same thing made me want to cheer.
As a practitioner on the ground seeking to be involved in projects and communities both within and beyond the institutional church it also felt like a really affirming evening.