Quite a lot of talk these days, following a UK Bible Society report, The Quiet Revival, of green shoots of church growth in the Western world. Also quite a lot of summarising of the report which could be put like this, from an Anglican perspective.
There is a quiet revival emerging. Noticeably, men are becoming Christians.
Good news: they are drawn to Pentecostalism and Roman Catholicism (perhaps especially its most conservative, ritual forms).
Bad news: Anglicans miss out.
!!!
OK, so that is the UK, what about NZ?
Anecdotally, e.g. as church leaders discuss this report and then ask ourselves, any signs hereabouts?, we do see signs of growth in the Pentecostal churches and in the Roman Catholic churches (at this point, talking about Kiwis converting, while acknowledging other growth through migrants to NZ joining congregational life).
Even in the Anglican Diocese of Christchurch, I see some signs of men being drawn to our most Catholic expression of being Anglican, as well as to our most Pentecostal expressions of being Anglican.
Still, early days and all that!
On Friday and Saturday an ecumenical (albeit Protestant) conference was held in Christchurch, called "Little Revolutions", a conference focused on church planting as a way of growing the church, which featured a variety of speakers for plenary and workshop sessions, and which included reflections on both the state of the play re church statistics/belief statistics and [wonderful!] stories and testimonies of God bringing new people into churches and/or new churches starting up.
I wasn't able to get to all the conference but what I was able to get to was encouraging - there are green shoots hereabouts - and, perhaps this is most important, there are some amazing, enthusiastic and talented younger generation church leaders who are intent on contributing to the growth of people who love Jesus and gather together to praise God (= the church!).
There are definitely green shoots of hope in God here and now!
28 comments:
I read the report - well, the key findings. That's an impression increase in church numbers:
• Church numbers have increased by over 50% over the last six years in England!
• More men than women go to church! I was shocked to hear this.
I do wonder if more people/men/young men are attracted to joining Pentecostal and Roman Catholic churches (and charismatic and high church forms of Anglicanism) because they provide more structure and certainly, and, in the case of Pentecostal churches, more peak sexperience, and that this is attractive when "converting" or becoming a new Christian.
We also see, do we not, or at least I do anecdotally, a migration to more broad church forms of Anglicanism and Christianity as people grow or even burn out of earlier stages of faith.
Um, that's meant the be "peak experience" not the fumbled neologism in the last post from me....though could be one way of making Christianity attractive to newcomers?
It is interesting to also consider the latest data coming out of the Pew Research Center. There is a suggestion, in the US context, that the ‘decline’ has stagnated since around 2020. Additionally, the research also gives some interesting insight into what is happening in different age demographics. This podcast episode gives a clear summary of the research - https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/and-also-with-you/id1706914579?i=1000708098924
It is part of God's creativity in creating us that different Christians most easily worship God in different ways. Denominations vary in what styles of worship they consider 'normal', and which they find acceptable. Denominations vary in doctrine too and once it was the only distinction anyone thought about.
As a rough approximation let me suggest that once people automatically went to the denomination their parents went to, more recently new converts are most likely to go to the denomination of the person they identified as having brought them to Christ. And now perhaps converts are going to the church that most appeals to them, regardless of where others are going.
Those who worship God most easily through liturgy see full-blown liturgy in Roman Catholicism. Those whose spirituality responds in song and movement find that most in Pentecostalism.
One of the beauties of Anglicanism is that it is flexible there are Anglocatholics and Anglicostals. Contemplative spirituality and loving God through appreciating nature are accomodated (think blessing of pets amongst other things). Just about any kind of spirituality has an Anglican version. A very Anglican value is 'holding together, accomodating to variety as much as we can'.
But this strength is perhaps also the weakness. Anything Anglicans are doing, someone else is doing more. If 'holding as many together as possible' is not a value, then going with the group whose worship style most completely appeals to you makes sense.
I wonder whether today spirituality/style of worship is everything and doctrine not really a consideration at all. I think in the past we did not give enough weight to style of worship in a believer's relationship with God and now that is the main consideration in leading a new believer to a denomination.
It is sad when people are in a church that does not fit their spirituality. Their worship is hard work for them and their growth in God painstaking. To me it was water in the desert when I finally stumbled on styles of worship where it was easy to be with and appreciate God and to be nourished by him.
But the Anglican Church, in the British Isles at least, isn't making it easy for people to have confidence in its leadership, as Liz here has often emphasized.
Another head of a national church resigns for safeguarding failures...
https://livingchurch.org/news/news-anglican-communion/welsh-primate-resigns-amid-cathedral-leadership-crisis/
One of the leading conyenders to be next Archbishop of Canterbury has significant questions to answer regarding potential safeguarding failures....
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3velqy9rzo
Does our church in Aotearoa, NZ, and Polynesia have a better safeguarding record, or does the British Isles have more public awareness and investigative media?
Dear Mark,
In response to your last question:
1. I would not want to determine whether anything is "better" here than there via an internal review!
2. It does go without saying that the UK has a very strong investigative media; but I am confident that egregious failures here of the kind appearing in recent years in British media would be the subject of media investigation by journalists here.
I do accept your point 2, and as we've had no primates needing to resign this far, it feels we are a little further down the track than the UK. But who knows. I guess I'm most with how trust issues tend to generalize, from one part of the world to the next. It is in the strong interest of the Anglican Church here to have the next ABC entering the role with a clean record and slate re safeguarding.
Interesting podcast and discussion - thanks Alice. Some interesting findings, like...people don't get any more religious as they get older (when they have kids or retire), and that 90% of Americans subscribe to "spiritual" beliefs. Given the latter, are we still in "secular" times? Not America, at least.
Here's some more interesting Pew Research on American Christianity (a little more dated, from 2008):
83 per cent of mainline Protestants, 79 per cent of Roman Catholics, and 57 per cent of evangelicals believe that people in other religions can obtain eternal life.
It is good to see majorities of Christians across board here getting it right, regardless of the often unhelpful teachings of their own churches!
What a lot of this discussion - green shoots of growth, more men becoming Christian, Christian numbers holding in some places, large majority of Americans affirming "spiritual beliefs" (whatever they might be, and where where and what were they when Trump was elected?) - often loses sight of, perhaps, is that becoming an atheist or agnostic might be an incredibly important part of one's spiritual growth. It might be a really important stage to be at, rest in, and, indeed, eventually grow out of, as the Spirit calls us to ever more mature expressions of life and faith. This perspective has long been made and recognized by the literature on spiritual development, stages of faith etc., though it often seems lacking in church discussions.
Do you think Jacinda Ardern will grow out of atheism? I think she was brought up as a Mormon but she rejected all that for socialism and atheism. She seems to me to have a completely secular, naturalistic view of what human beings are, as Darwinism, Marxism and Freudianism teach us, viz. that life is the result of random, purposeless processes (Dawkins), that materialism is the ttue account of reality ('spirit' doesn't exist, everything is matter, including thought, which is simp,y brain activity) and religion is just a form of displacement and neurosis (Feuerbach, Marx, Freud). Of course, I reject these ideas entirely, but aren't these the core beliefs of socialist atheists like Jacinda? I wonder how much the socialist atheist in her struggled with the Mormon teenager she used to be. Of course, Pascal knew that all of us ard really running awsy from God and the fear that there really is a Judgment Day at the end of our lives.
I have seen a number of commentators say that unlike all previous Prime Ministers, Jacinda would be afraid to appear on any street in NZ for the opprobrium she would draw from many for the catastrophic harm she caused over covid mishandling and demonising her opponents - not exactly "kindness"!. Maybe she will have a chance to think about this in her Harvard study.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
On the other hand ....
we have this catastrophic picture of a church in terminal decline, the Incredible Shrinking Anglican Church in Wales: blasphemous mocking of our Lord by its choir, drunkenness, sexual immorality, serious misuse of money, a lay clerk called 'Esme' with a five o'clock shadow - and this trans-focused BBC report doesn't give you half of it, nothing here about the Dean of the Cathedral whom Andy John appointed. No doubt the ex-Archbishop was offered a good retirement package and put on gardening leave until the end of August. And these people think they can give moral guidance to society!
How many sincere Christians have been grievously hurt by these flagrant acts of unfaithfulness?
How many cynical pagans have been confirmed in their unbelief?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg34410dx7o
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Jacinda demonstrated great kindness even in the face of misogyny and hate. We had very few deaths in NZ from Covid compared to other countries. She faced a whole string of disasters with courage and empathy for those affected. Such commentary is appalling and untrue, William. It does you no credit to repeat it here.
"Empathy" does not mean affectations of "kindness" or the head tilting of a primary schooteacher talking to children. It is not a performance art. It actually has a fairly precise meaning in social work theory: it means the imaginative ability to understand and SEE the world from the perspective of the OTHER person, like thousands of New Zealander prevented from entering their own country by a totalitarian edict, or those NZers who lost their jobs and homes because they would not be coerced into accepting an untried vaccination, or people excluded from seeing dying loved ones. "Empathy" does not arrogantly describe itself as "the sole source of truth" but recognises its own lintellectual imitations. "Empathy" does not decry imperial titles and financial privileges as a good leftwing egalitarian - and then grab the title and the money on the American liberal gravy train.
But the main point of my post wss not Ardern's lack of self-knowledge or her vanity and weakness for American celebrity culture (which are obvious to anyone watching her) but to enquire where socialist atheists like her get their supposed universal values from. I suspect a good part of it is her Mormon upbringing, rebelling but not fully escaping even as she embraced socialist atheism. I think the Jesuits are broadly right: the first seven years of our lives do set the course for the rest of it. Most of New Zealand's problems and possibilities can be understood in the light of that basic developmental fact.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
"it means the imaginative ability to understand and SEE the world from the perspective of the OTHER person"
That's precisely what she did in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre, William. In the context of a targeted hateful attack by a white supremacist on those at the mosques, she came, and was present and respectful to that community through the humility of wearing a head covering, joining them without awkwardness in their grief. It was her natural response in the little time she had before turning up. She took no personal credit for it either, but characterized it as part of NZers' collective refusal to succumb to the gunman's intention to sow hatred and division. As it turned out her response got broadcast around the world, sending a very positive message globally - it effectively cancelled the evil repercussions that the gunman hoped would follow on after his murderous rampage.
In the case of Covid, decisions were made in extremely difficult circumstances under enormous pressure, in consultation with experts. It wasn't a question of lack of empathy but of saving as many lives as possible. The low death toll meant many families were spared the grief of losing a loved one.
Gosh William, it's so obnoxious - making windows into other women's souls...
I wasn't talking about the mosque murders - althoughI thought the hijab wearing was a bit strange in a secular feminist in secular New Zealand. But no matter. It should be clear to anyone who read my comment I was talking about: a. Ardern's shameful exclusion of thousands of New Zealanders from returning home (completely unjustified); b. arrogantly calling herself 'the sole source of truth' (very Trumpian!); c. forcing people into unemployment who didn't want to be vaccinated; d. taking the title of 'Dame' and megabucks in America, after a lifetime of saying she was a good socialist and republican. I submit she actually has little knowledge of people who profoundly disagree with her, or the contradictions in her own thinking. But she is hardly alone in this; strong self-belief is both a strength and a common failing in politicians. I think it is now recognised that she was an accidental Prime Minister, propelled into office by the mercurial Winston Peters, then on the global stage because of the mosque murders.Appearing on liberal programmes like 'Colbert' in America encourages self-belief but doesn't ground one in reality.
One could mention also the chronic problems afflicting the NZ economy that scarcely seemed to improve during her premiership: child poverty, houses too few, too cold and too expensive, low productivity, thousands of young people departing to Australia looking forwork and homes. Where is the empathy for all these struggling people? And did child poverty in New Zealand get any better?
But she does know how to read polls and when she saw the forthcoming disaster for her party (or herself) instead of defending her policies to the nation, she jumped waka. You need to consider why she provokes more hostility than any NZ PM I can recall in my lifetime. Why is this?
Anyway, Peter's blog is about religion, not politics, and I don't want to try his patience further. My original question was about where socialist atheists like Ardern derive their value systems from, and I think it was her Mormon upbringing, overlaid by years of working for Tony Blair etc. People whose entire lives from school have been in politics are the last people who should be politicians.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
One last comment on this thread, then I'll shut up (here). If Brendan Tarrant thought he was going to spark off an anti-Islam war in New Zealand by his horrific massacres, he was even more deluded than anyone thought. New Zealanders are not really hot headed people and the small and peaceful Muslim communities don't represent a challenge to the majority. NZ's context is very different from the UK and Europe, where there have been many cases of Islamist terrorism and many communities (Birmingham, Blackburn, East London, Malmo etc) have large, activist Muslim populations and there has been evident 'white flight' from these places. Illegal immigration has greatly exacerbated feelings in Britain. Once again, NZ is blessed by its geography (dinghies can't make it across the Pacific) and the pragmatic peacefulness of most of its people. The massacres were utter atrocities but there was never a risk that a religious war would be ignited.
My one regret as a Christian is that the murderer was not executed for his horrific crimes, as the Bible and Catholic teaching mandates. (Francis was quite wrong on this, as Professor Ed Feser showed in great detail.)
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Dear William,
I think we could find some agreement without running Jacinda Ardern down as much as you do.
1. Yes, her Mormon upbringing was surely very influential (and the several reviews I have read of her book make this point).
2. Yes, she got a number of things dead right and the nation showed its understanding of that by its incredible vote in 2020 - the first, possibly the last, time one party under MMP has received a majority. Among those things were taking a rigorous approach to Covid, including lockdowns and quarantines which now, in hindsight may appear "over the top" but, at the time, let us not forget, seemed a very good way to minimise spread of Covid.
3. Yes, she was (and is) a politician.
4. Yes, politicians are imperfect and make misjudgements.
5. Yes, (as Hipkins now concedes) Jacinda and her cabinet got the second general lockdown and its very long extension for Aucklanders wrong ... and a price was paid at the 2023 election.
6. Yes, (as Hipkins kind of concedes) Jacinda gave Grant Robertson too much financial rope ... for which a price is being paid, and for which, likely, a consequence in 2023 was Labour losing office.
So, she has done good and hasn't been perfect ... that is not news.
What is news is that in NZ there are people with visceral hatred for a woman in leadership, despite it being the 2020s: now that is worth reflecting on - the actual nature of our collective character - not the flaws and foibles of any one of our political leaders.
Hi William, not NZ -- larger context of white supremacy networks -- US+other
Two selections from [1]:
"On April 27, 2019, a gunman killed one and wounded three in a subsequent attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue near San Diego. That gunman was inspired by the killing of 51 Muslims in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, six weeks earlier, and the massacre in Pittsburgh."
"For example, the manifesto of the Christchurch, New Zealand, mass murderer explicitly sought “to incite violence in the US… with the ultimate aim of civil war, balkanization and the destruction of the ‘melting pot’-ideal."
This, from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point:
"In our analysis of the Buffalo attack, we found that each of these attacks, and dozens of smaller instances of violence and attempted violence, followed a “cultural script.” In each instance, this crop of extreme-right terrorists who claimed inspiration from the Christchurch attack have sought to exceed its death toll, incite further violence, and honor the attacks with their own violence. The Buffalo and Bratislava attacks conformed to all three of these aspirations, this cultural script was also attempted in the failed plots in Italy and Sweden. There is a kind of “wiki effect” to these attacks, with each individual attacker contributing to the larger product of the far-right extremist movement...." [2]
*
Peter, thanks.. "visceral hatred for a woman in leadership". That's it in a nutshell.
[1] https://politicalresearch.org/2020/08/31/battle-bullet-advancing-vision-civil-war
[2] https://religiondispatches.org/broken-courts-big-lies-and-genocide-rehearsal-a-review-of-2022-and-what-we-can-expect-from-2023/
Where was the "visceral hatred" for Jenny Shipley or Helen Clark who ws PM for much longer?
T.
"What is news is that in NZ there are people with visceral hatred for a woman in leadership, despite it being the 2020s: now that is worth reflecting on - the actual nature of our collective character - not the flaws and foibles of any one of our political leaders." (Peter).
Absolutely.
"You need to consider why she provokes more hostility than any NZ PM I can recall in my lifetime. Why is this?" (William).
See above.
T, look online. Here's what I found in one article (quotes are Helen Clark):
Then, when she became the leader of the opposition in the 1993 election, “the gender issue was at its most acute”.
“There was no experience of having a woman [in that role], no experience of having a woman as prime minister, and very few relevant offshore experiences, so the media didn’t really know how to handle it and they would focus on things that were really completely irrelevant to the ability to do the job.”
If you were alive at the time, you’ll remember it. Jibes about Helen’s gender, sexuality, appearance, wardrobe, vocal pitch, the fact that she was child-free – it was all fair game.
“I did hear in the deep south of New Zealand, about vehicles driving around in 2008 with “Ditch the b****” bumper stickers on them,” recalls Helen, with a touch of amusement. [...]
Helen’s watched Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s rise and has found it “amazing” that she’s being attacked for things like having a child, or being “too nice” or “a weak little woman”.
Yes, that was before the Internet and it's monstrous half-son, the Manosphere.
Sir Ian Taylor was pretty much 'Team Jacinda' as he said himself. Why did he turn against her? According to his open letter and his chat with Sean Plunket, because of her cruel and totally unnecessary travel ban which stopped thousands of Kiwis from getting home, including people wanting to see a dying parent (like Jacinda is doing now), and pregnant women. One kid didn't get to see his dad until he was two years old! As Taylor said to Plunket, 'We worked out a quarantine way for everyone to get home safely and covid-free - but she refused to listen!' This is what all the anger was about.
Sir Ian Taylor - a liberal, not a misogynist!
T.
Yes, it's a good letter! Raised really important points without outright misogyny or Williams' dissection of her soul and projection of his favourite philosophical conflicts into her....
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360743654/ian-taylor-dear-jacinda-most-difficult-letter-i-have-written-you
"The turning point came for me on the day you featured on the cover of the New Zealand Woman's Weekly, in designer clothes, smiling, styled, and celebrated."
It's an emotionally manipulative letter. Absence of "outright misogyny" doesn't make it good. It seems an aggrieved male can easily gain support by hating on the looks, smiles, style and celebrity of a woman (look at the number of times he attacks her simply for being on the cover of magazines).
Perhaps it's a kind of envy that women have power to attract attention in this way? Remember the tradie from Christchurch and his Turn Ardern campaign of turning magazines around on shop shelves if they featured Jacinda?
Those are fair criticisms, Liz. No need to get into the Women's Weekly stuff, you're right. It's woman hating.
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