Church for Every Context. Michael Moynagh

where modernization is occurring more slowly, higher birth rates produce relatively large cohorts of more religiously committed young people. These two trends together disguise the long-term trend for religion to become less significant.

      Shorter and Onyancha (1997) found that 40 per cent of people attended church weekly in traditional rural Kenya, but only 12 per cent did so in the modernizing capital of Nairobi (with 20 per cent attending less frequently). Though church attendance in Nairobi increased as the city’s population grew, observers exaggerated the trend because church building did not keep pace with the growing number of worshippers: churches were full to overflowing. It looked as if the churches were flourishing. In reality, church attendance was falling in percentage terms because the urban population was expanding even faster than church numbers. If attendance was measured as a proportion of the population, the church was losing ground. Nairobi illustrates how the global South appears to be following the secularizing trends of the global North.

      Both Shmuel Eisenstadt (2000) and Bruce (2001) have warned against assuming that other countries will tread exactly Europe’s path of modernization. In Eisenstadt’s phrase, there are ‘multiple modernities’, each shaped by the history and culture of the country concerned. Proponents of secularization can argue, therefore, that secularization will look different and occur at a different pace from one part of the world to another.

      A problem of demand or supply?

      The secularization argument rests on the idea that the demand for religion declines as societies modernize. But might the falling demand for religion be due to deficiencies in what the church offers – not shortcomings in the Christian story, but in how the church embodies the story? Has the church lost its appeal because it has failed to adapt to people’s changing needs and concerns? By implication, if the church did adapt, might the decline be reversed?

      The debate about ‘fuzzy fidelity’ may point in this direction. Voas has found that across Europe, as religious practice declines individuals retain a casual loyalty to religion – what he calls ‘fuzzy fidelity’ (Voas, 2009). But religion plays only a minor part in their lives. The pattern is for people to withdraw from church, which leads to an increase in ‘fuzzy fidelity’, but ‘fuzzy fidelity’ then falls over a lengthy period. Individuals become steadily more detached from their religious roots.

      Grace Davie is more hesitant – ‘the role of the churches in western Europe has, in fact, been written off far too soon’ (Davie, 2001, p. 101). The church has the tacit support of considerably more people than those who attend regularly. These supporters continue to identify with the church to some extent, they want it to enact the faith on their behalf (what Davie calls ‘vicarious religion’), they turn to the church when in need (especially at times of death) and they continue to believe important aspects of the Christian faith, even though they do not actively belong to church.

      Unlike Voas who believes that the number of these Christian supporters will inevitably fall, Davie thinks that the decline is not predetermined. Much depends on how the church responds. There is a sizeable constituency of people with some allegiance to the church. They might be prepared to attend more regularly if the church related to them more effectively. Davie (2007, p. 252) notes how in Britain both professional football and cinema attendance declined towards the end of the twentieth century, but then recovered – although patterns changed – as clubs and cinemas found better ways of serving their constituencies.

      Similarly, might the church learn to serve people more effectively? It has not always adapted in the past, but at times it has. The Methodist revival in eighteenth-century England allowed ordinary people to ‘find and live by their own spiritual style’ (Taylor, 2007, p. 455). The Baptists did the same in the rural US and the Pentecostals have done likewise in the global South. Alienated from the formal religion of elites, popular groups have found their voices through more resonant expressions of faith.

      A self-limiting church?

      The possibility of the church adapting is plausible when we consider three ways in which the church has limited itself. If it can remove these limitations, it might better serve those with a ‘fuzzy fidelity’ and encourage their more active involvement.

      The church has been self-limiting, first, in its relevance. It has failed to connect with people’s daily concerns. Callum Brown argues that Christian piety was located in masculinity before 1800, but in femininity increasingly thereafter. ‘Paeans of praise were heaped on women’s innate piety whilst brickbats were hurled at men’s susceptibility to temptation’ (Brown, 2009, p. 195). Churchgoing decreased from the late nineteenth century, and the fall-off was especially marked among men, whose social pastimes were ignored or frowned upon. Yet men still had their children baptized and attended the major festivals. They stayed plugged into church because their wives remained committed.

      In the 1960s, however, the nature of femininity changed radically. Growing numbers of women entered the workplace, while the sexual revolution challenged traditional ideas of courtship and marriage. Women began to see themselves in a different light, but the church was slow to respond. It held on to a traditional view of the family and women, making it seem irrelevant. Women became less involved, and with them their families.

      It is precisely because ‘the personal’ changed so much in the 1960s – and has continued to change in the four decades since – that the churches are in seemingly terminal decay and British Christian culture is in its death throes. . . . The search for personal faith is now in ‘the New Age’ of minor cults, personal development and consumer choice. (Brown, 2009, p. 196)

      Though helpful, Brown sees changes in society as the prime cause of the church’s decline, whereas arguably the church’s failure to respond to these changes is just as important. The church has been slow to engage with the day-to-day concerns of contemporary women (as well as men), while remaining faithful to the Christian story. Other organizations have adapted to social change, but not the church. The British retailer Tesco, for example, started with supermarkets, developed hypermarkets and then introduced Tesco Local. It has retained the brand while innovating the outlets. By contrast, a gulf has opened up between today’s postmodern mood and the modernist feel of the church.

      Second, the church has been self-limiting in its availability. It has become inaccessible on an everyday basis to swathes of people. Members have tended to set the rules – when they meet, where and the form their meetings take – without much thought for people on the outside. Sunday morning worship, for instance, is almost impossible for people who are in employment at weekends, have sporting commitments at that time or whose family obligations take them away on Sundays.

      More important is that any worshipping community will put other people off. Identity is based on identifying with particular groups of people and not identifying with others – ‘birds of a feather flock together’. This goes beyond older congregations not appealing to the iPod generation. Obvious and less subtle cues, from social background, to educational level, to values and interests, will tell a visitor whether the congregation contains ‘my kind of people’. Most people find it difficult to join a group that seems strange and different. Large segments of the population, therefore, will not identify with the church for social rather than religious reasons, and this necessarily makes the church self-limiting.

      Rational choice theorists, such as Roger Finke, maintain that the scale of church attendance is linked to the number of options available. Put simply, if the church narrows down the options for people – in terms of when they can worship, the style on offer or the social nature of the groups they can join – fewer will be likely to attend. Well discussed by Grace