Advent Reflection: Post-Christian Britain now needs a Christian minority fuelled by the audacious hope of the gospel

The recent revelation that the 2021 census revealed Christians to be a minority for the first time really should not have been met with the flurry of news headlines that it was.

That only 46% of the population now identifies as Christian can surely be attributed to a greater willingness of the non-religious to describe themselves as such, and the decline in those being baptised by parents who, in the past, were more likely to think it something to get done even without any serious religious convictions.

For secularists, it was an opportunity once again to campaign for their treasured goals of disestablishment of the Church of England and removal of bishops from the House of Lords, neither of which anyone without too much time on their hands could care less about. For Christian commentators, it provided fresh meat to fuel the whining victim complex which, like all things culturally disastrous, seems to have been imported from the United States.

Of course the reality is that meaningful statistics such as church attendance figures, have shown that for decades practicing Christians have constituted an overwhelming minority of the population, so a dip in self-identification to below 50% tells us nothing new. Yet the falling of this absurdly generous measure of Christianity’s hold in Britain to below 50% seems, for those who welcome and lament the fact alike, to provide a watershed moment of confirmation that Britain is now a post-Christian society.

 

What I do not understand, above all, is why Christians should be so preoccupied with being a minority. Jesus says many things in the gospels, most of which speak of a hostile world in which his followers can expect persecution, hatred and ridicule. Unfortunately this leads some rather entitled Christians to see persecution everywhere, believing this to be a sign that they are successfully following a Christian path. Yet Jesus meant that proclaiming his name would lead his followers to violent torture and death, not that they would be able to opine in comfort the loss of their majority status whilst revelling in it as a sign that they are being nobly martyred.

What has actually happened is rather different, certainly in Britain. As the church lost more and more of its social functions to the state, apathy towards the Christian religion grew even as self-identification as Christian stubbornly persisted. With such indifference, nobody was prepared to fight for a privileged place for the Christian religion in British public life. Christianity must, rather, in all domains but a few ceremonial remnants of a Christian past, compete as an equal, just one perspective among many. Christians can no longer expect any incompatibility with their faith and what they are expected to do in their workplaces and public duties to be treated any differently because their concern is rooted in a Christian perspective, rather than any other.

 

As Christians we now need to accept this as a fact of life. In my view, it is not one to be mourned. Religion has never been a force for good when it has got too close to politics and the levers of power. We now have no such political power, a fact recognised but feebly resisted by the established church with its constant but futile compromising on everything and metamorphosis into a charmless mouthpiece of trendy left-wing crusades over gospel spirituality.

What we do have, though, is good news. The gospel is good news. Advent prepares our hearts for good news. Hope, peace, forgiveness, healing and a profound encounter with radical love are all bound up with the shocking claim of the Christmas story that God, far from being the remote tyrant or whimsical sky fairy of the detractors’ taunts, has made himself known to us by coming as one of us, situating himself right into the heart of humanity and siding squarely with the poor, the forgotten, and the lowly.

If we had any confidence at all that we as Christians are the bearers of good news, whether preached or lived out in our example, we’d recognise that being a minority, that having something important to say that many need to hear, is a privilege for which we should be grateful.

Our lack of political clout now is simply a matter of reality; our hope in having political clout is one we should now let go of, and do so joyfully. Maybe it was nice while it lasted, although that’s open to dispute. Even so, it’s gone and gone for good. Post-Christian Britain now needs a Christian minority fuelled by the audacious hope of the gospel.