Radical Faith

Home

Book Reviews

Thought Map

Historical Jesus

Debate

Plain Guide

Honest Sermons

Richard Holloway

Roots

Questions

Assorted

Links
About this site
The Dedicated Life

A Holy Grail
An enduring problem with most writing and thinking about the present state of the worldwide Church has to do with finding alternatives to traditional Christianity. Very few, if any, have been able to suggest convincing or compelling ways of being Christian without the traditional baggage.

If an alternative exists it may be the so-called "new age spirituality" which appears to be growing in the West. Or, as the authors of this book put it, more and more people prefer to call themselves "spiritual" rather than "religious". 

But what is meant by "spiritual"?

The task of this book is to pursue the holy grail of today's study of religion - that is, a theory which explains both the decline of traditional forms of religion and the rise of others. It therefore offers a thesis which

... attempts to make sense of both decline and growth by relating them to a single process - to what Charles Taylor (1991) calls "the massive subjective turn of modern culture".

This major cultural shift to a quest for quality of life has led, so it seems, to a continuing drift away from life lived in terms of roles, duties and obligations given by an external authority. Instead there is a focus on life lived by reference to one's own subjective experiences:

The subjective turn is thus a turn away from "life-as" (life lived as a dutiful wife, father, husband, strong leader, self-made man etc.) to "subjective-life" (life lived in deep connection with the unique experiences of my self-in-relation).

Religion sacralises life-as; spirituality sacralises subjective-life. But subjective-life spirituality isn't the same as "spirituality" in Christian circles. The latter is subjective in that it may involve intense experiences of joy and awe. But it is objective in that it focuses on something external and higher than the self.

The claim by many is that life-as expressions of the sacred are in decline; and that subjective-life expressions of the sacred are growing. A "spiritual revolution" is taking place. If this is true, then we can expect the former to die out sometime in the future. As life-as forms of the sacred decline, the subjective-life forms should grow and flourish.

Patterns of the sacred
This book is about an ambitious attempt to provide hard data to test claims concerning a spiritual revolution. The team, headed by the authors, invaded the small town of Kendal in north-west England. Its population of 27 610 seemed the ideal size to represent an average English community. It was large enough to provide a reasonably representative sample, yet small enough to examine in some detail.

They defined four main types of life-as to be found mainly in Christian congregations:

• Some stressed the distance and difference between humanity and God, and the subordination of the former to the latter;

• Others stressed humanity as the focus of the divine. To serve people is to worship God, who shares our humanity in Jesus;

• The gap between human and divine was highlighted by some, yet bridged by the Holy Spirit entering into the subjective experience of the individual;

• A final grouping closed the gap between divine and human by stressing that the former is more likely to be found in inner experience than in the externals of religion such as the Bible and the sacraments.

In contrast, the team found in Kendal a thriving holistic milieu. It consisted of typical New Age activities. The most popular was yoga. That was followed by a host of versions of massage, aromatherapy, homeopathy, reflexology, tai chi, reiki and the like.

The authors sum up the differences between the two types of approach to life. In the "congregational domain"

... self-understanding, change, the true life, is sought by heeding and conforming to a source of significance which ultimately transcends the life of this world ... [there is a] deferential relationship to higher authority ...

In the holistic milieu

... self-understanding, change, the true life, is sought by seeking out, experiencing and expressing a source of significance which lies within the process of life itself ... [there is a] holistic relationship to the spirit-of-life.

Between the two lies a great chasm. Very few, if any, people are active within both spheres.

Decline and fall
The bulk of this book consists of a lucid exposition of the data assembled by the Kendal team. It goes on to survey similar information in the United States. On the whole, dry-as-dust facts and figures are presented well enough to hold the reader's interest.

The data reveals that the churches in Kendal are in fact declining and the holistic milieu is growing. This finding is broadly backed up by other surveys in Britain and in the USA.

Most importantly, however, the growth of the holistic spirituality in Kendal is not compensating for the decline of the church-based spirituality. Even in the United States, where spirituality is a far greater force in proportion to the population than in Britain, the same decline in overall spirituality is the case. The authors conclude about Kendall:

Our conclusion is simply that [the holistic milieu] does not go deep enough to add weight to the spiritual revolution claim.

At the same time, it is those churches which focus most on traditional doctrines and forms which are experiencing the greater decline. 

Although the book doesn't refer to particular instances, it appears that Anglican and Roman Catholic churches are the main losers. The winners seem to be evangelical and Quaker congregations, though both are nevertheless declining. The decline appears to be bottoming out at present.

In short, the authors have made a persuasive case for their case that the decline of the churches derives from the same or similar factors which have stimulated the growth of the holistic milieu.

Problems, problems
Anyone involved with holistic spirituality will have been struck by what seems to be an obvious imbalance: far more women than men are involved:

According to our questionnaire survey, 80 percent of those active in the holistic milieu of Kendal and environs are female; 78 percent of groups are led or facilitated by women; 80 percent of one-to-one practitioners are women.

Although the percentages are perhaps less extreme in the churches, the same kind of discrepancy is to be seen in their congregations. In other words, both traditional religion and New Age do not attract many men. The same imbalance seems to apply worldwide.

So if New Age is to be interpreted as a spiritual revolution - and the authors conclude that it most certainly does not have either the force or the depth to be called that - then the revolution is confined to only half the human race. 

My own view is that any Christian gospel which does not attract men as much as women is doomed to fail in the long term. This is not a superficial problem. It rests at the heart of the Christian faith as we know it today. At present the gospel does not and cannot speak persuasively to the common man.

This book is necessarily focused on Britain and the United States. The authors are aware of this focus as a severe limitation to their thesis. This is because they have not covered the majority of the Christian world. Their lens takes in only the opulent West. In Africa, Latin America and the Far East the traditional, life-as Church is growing fast.

The real revolution
I was a little disappointed that the authors did not point out a conclusion which is glaringly obvious from their data. I think a significant detour into the area of the secular was necessary. Let me explain.

In the UK the data from Kendal and from other surveys of the British population indicate two things clearly:

1. A fairly large proportion of the overall population remains deist. if not Christian. Averaging the figures out, about one in three would for certain believe that the divine lies behind (so to speak) the physical world. If God is not named, then a spiritual force or influence is. The figures for the USA are somewhat higher - though not as high as some claim.

2. The committed, church-going population is elderly. It makes up at most around seven percent of the UK population. In the USA this is probably between 25 and 35 percent - though once again the figure is often exaggerated.

Those who claim that a spiritual revolution is happening will be disappointed to learn that the holistic milieu accounts for little more than two or three percent of the population - and probably less.

Moreover, the growth of New Age spirituality is not strong or quick enough to posit that it will either rapidly replace church-going Christianity, or significantly penetrate the overall UK population. Much less will it impact the rest of the world.

Twenty or thirty years from now, on a straight-line projection, New Age spirituality may overtake formal Christianity, which will by then have declined much further. But this prediction depends upon too many unknowns to be even moderately certain. For example, the figures indicate that neither the churches nor the holistic milieu are attracting younger people in any great numbers. Future growth will be stunted unless this changes.

The glaring conclusion which this book sidesteps is that the situation in the UK and the trends in the USA are bad news for both types of spirituality. In the UK the secular outlook on life has already captured 80 percent of the population. In statistical terms this is about as complete a takeover as can be expected.

In the USA all indications are that the same trend continues apace. The proportion of secular worldviews to the total population is probably growing faster than most churches are prepared to acknowledge. 

My prediction is that the secular understanding of the world and the universe will always conquer the spiritual - provided only that a society is willing and able to extend education and stimulate prosperity. In other words, spirituality whether traditional or New Age will remain with a minority in a society where truth and justice reign. The authors write that nevertheless

Short of radical change - such as would be brought about by a long lasting collapse of the standard of living, for example - it is highly unlikely that the quest for "quality of life" will not remain firmly on the agenda [in the West] for the foreseeable future.

But being "on the agenda" is a far cry from rapid, penetrating growth. If the findings of this book are correct, the secular outlook is already supreme in the West. Given this, the churches are merely fiddling while Rome burns when they encourage a spirituality which doesn't grip the mind and imagination of the secular person.

It's likely that the West's morality rests upon what the authors call "sacred capital". There is a good case for supposing that interest in the holistic derives in part from that capital. People who are, as it were, tuned into the sacred, but are disillusioned with the churches, find their home in the holistic. But

... if the declining sacred capital scenario is correct, the holistic milieu is going to run into difficulties. Its momentum will suffer if there are fewer "believers" around who are seeking an alternative to the Christian religion of their younger days.

A clear message from this book is that there are few signs that Christians - apart from a few brave souls - have grasped the nettle of how to bring Jesus of Nazareth to the secular soul. 

If Western societies were to collapse, we might expect a general return to ancient world views. But I suspect that the secular mind is here to stay. The human race has in that sense grown up. There can be no long-term return to childhood.

[Home] [Back]