by Brian Turner
March 20, 2008
When checking the strength of a house or garden project, my father used to say (with a sardonic chuckle), “Firm as the Church of England.” These days such a comment would provoke even more mirth, if not dark thoughts about the fate of our mainstream Christian churches.
During the past year, at least three widely reviewed books – by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris – are hostile to the Christian churches. They depict Christianity as factually untrue and socially harmful, a depiction that, while far from new, seems to be getting renewed coverage. For many Christians, such books are likely to make irritating, if interesting, reading.
Such views are not unrelated to the present state of Christianity. So just what is the present state of Christianity? In what ways do the challenges facing St. John’s resemble those faced by other parishes and denominations? Pierre Berton’s “The Comfortable Pew”, published in the 1960s, looked at Canada’s Anglican churches with a somewhat jaundiced eye. Since that time, average attendance at Canada’s mainstream churches has slipped from 60% of the total population to around 20%. Many of us can remember crowded churches, even in small towns, and probably wonder what we are doing wrong.
Reginald Bibby and Kurt Bowen have each written surveys of the Canadian churches (available in public libraries ) that are more sympathetic and based on reasonably reliable polls and questionnaires. Bowen’s book “Christians in a Secular World” (2004) is the more recent and, I feel, more balanced account. He separates the population into categories such as Catholics, mainline Protestants, conservative Protestants, seekers (such as new age devotees), and non-religious groups, as well as non-Christian faiths. His many charts and tables provide a look at both the spiritual beliefs of these groups and the personal behaviours of most of their members. It seems that beliefs vary much more than day-to-day behaviour. The variety of specific beliefs ( such as the existence and exact nature of hell ), is remarkable, even among conservative Protestants and Catholics. There is, however, at least one important behavioural difference between people involved in a church and the secularized majority. Church people appear to be more heavily involved in social action than seekers or the non-religious.
My own parish, St. John’s, is typically involved in issues of poverty, gender relationships, and the day-to-day realities of being a downtown church, surrounded by hopelessness, disruptive behaviour, and crass commercialism. Many of us think that trying to be helpful is simply the right thing to do, whether the pews fill or not. Kurt Bowen sees the easy acceptance of secularism as a threat to the traditional generosity of Canadians. He writes, “In a word, our civility is threatened.” Life satisfaction, concern for others, marriage, family, friendship and volunteering may all fail to thrive in a fully secularized world. Each of us can choose whether to be secular or involved in the life of a church. The faith that doing the right things is the only way to behave – regardless of what it does to our attendance on Sundays - may provide the strength to sustain us. It may also provide the only hope of a foundation upon which the church can grow during the years that lie before us.