This is a sample article featured in the January 2001 issue of Quadrant.

 

 

BELONGING AND BELIEVING

 

“Churchgoing is good for you!” might be a populist summary of Robin Gill’s latest book, Churchgoing and Christian Ethics.  The Michael Ramsey Professor of Modern Theology at the University of Kent at Canterbury has analysed a variety of surveys - including some from Government, Australian and Christian sources, and especially the major British Social Attitudes Survey conducted every year by the National Centre for Social Research.  In every case he has looked at the data broken down by the frequency with which people go to church, although the way this is actually measured varies between surveys.

 

Belief and frequency

He quotes from a MORI poll undertaken for the BBC in 1993, which shows significant differences between those who attend weekly and those who attend fortnightly.  95% of those who attend church weekly say they believe in the resurrection, but only 79% of those who attend fortnightly.  Likewise belief in heaven is 93% (weekly attendees) /76% (fortnightly), miracles 88%/69%, the virgin birth 81%/55%, the devil 75%/52% and hell 69%/51%.  It goes the other way for belief in astrology – 18%/31%.  However, praying every day follows the same pattern 80%/30%, as does reading the Bible every day 33%/7%.

The British Household Panel survey of 1994 showed the same general finding - that beliefs and values are more strongly held by those who attend church most frequently, as this chart shows:

 

 

  

 Robin Gill illustrates his thesis by hundreds of other examples, and uses them as evidence to propose a new, fourth, theory of churchgoing.  He helpfully summarises this and the other three theories.  They are shown in the middle two columns of this Table, to which Christian Research has added the first and last columns:

 

Theories of churchgoing

 

Belonging

The importance of this book and its Cultural theory of churchgoing is that it gives a theoretical basis for a statement frequently now made: “People need to belong first, and then they may believe”.  His theory explains in part why the Alpha course is so popular – people join the group first, and may then come to believe.  One Anglican vicar moved to an open baptism and communion policy (everyone was welcome; receive a blessing instead of the bread if you wish) and found his church grew – people recognised they could belong to the church community, and maybe they came to faith later.  This theory undergirds the finding that today for many faith is a journey.

The warning implicit in these findings is however severe: “A loss of Christian beliefs does seem to follow and not precede a decline in churchgoing.”  As churchgoing is currently declining, is Christian belief also declining?  Robin Gill quotes these statistics too, and shows an alarming increase in disbelief (10% of the population did not believe in God in the 1960s, 27% in the 1990s).  How do we encourage people to belong while they still may be interested in doing so?

 

Source: Professor Robin Gill, Churchgoing and Christian Ethics, Cambridge University Press, 1999, available from Christian Research, £17 including postage.

 

Numbers for chart:

 

 

 

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