Posts Tagged ‘Research’

The media this week carried the news of the arrival of a delegation of Muslim scholars at the Vatican for a serious dialogue designed to deepen mutual understanding in the hope that the tension and hostility between Christianity and Islam can be lessened. It’s a worthy aim and behind it stands some longer-term developments. For some 100 years, Islam has been experiencing a deep-seated renewal of its life and witness after several centuries of decline and self doubt.

That renewal is complex and contains many competing schools, ideas and ideologies. Those who have come to the Vatican represent a more mainstream opinion as compared with the radical streams that have given rise to terrorist ideologies. There is a competition within Islam for the minds and hearts of Muslims.

This 20th century development within Islam raises many broader questions for Christianity. Not the least of these is whether Christianity, so vibrant in many parts of the world, can be renewed in its western expressions. In asking this question we are bound to ask, what is it that causes major faiths of any kind to be renewed and how would we begin to recognise such developments?

The answer to the second question about how we would recognise renewal, is not in the first instance about numbers. Certainly, at a later stage, growth in numbers follows renewal but it is not what we would look for initially.

I would suggest that the early signs that we should look for would be anything that is redolent of deep intellectual and spiritual renewal – not one of these but both working together in a symbiotic relationship. So, looking at Christianity in the west, can we see the stirrings of spiritual and intellectual renewal?

A further question flows from these considerations. Callum Brown in his book The Death of Christian Britain, suggests that the 1960’s witnessed a decisive break in the pattern of western Christianity. He describes in a fairly convincing manner the failure of Christianity to transmit its faith from one generation to another. He takes this as an indication of the final and possibly permanent death of Christianity in Britain.

If one is talking about the continuation of denominational life in a rather unchanged format then Brown is almost certainly penetratingly accurate. However, we do need to ask the deeper question, how is religious faith actually communicated and how do religious institutions renew themselves?

John Finney’s groundbreaking research into how people become Christians reveals that the role of family in the transmission of faith may not be as crucial as Callum Brown seems to suggest. Finney’s work is a helpful start but we need much more work to help us understand the complexity of the renewal of faith. Such work might help us in the delicate task of interpreting the complexity of what we see around us.

According to press reports over Christmas the UK became a Catholic country recently.  A combination of a census of sorts, a desire for a headline and the formal admission of Tony Blair into the Catholic church produced a news item worthy of the silly season.  What the headline alluded to was the contentious claim that more people worshipped in a Catholic church on one particular Sunday than worshipped in an Anglican church on the same Sunday (a statistic contested by the Anglican church). The rise in Catholic participation at Mass was less to do with the rush of the English to convert and much more to do with the presence of large numbers of Eastern European migrants (mostly Poles) in church.

Harmless enough you might think and at one level its on a par with a poor Christmas cracker joke but at another level this kind of headline carries with it a huge amount of mis-information that can be distinctly dangerous.  The more significant figure is that 1.7 million Anglicans attended church as an average over a single month – a fascinating figure – and that the Catholic Church is in freefall as far as the indigenous population’s attendance at Mass is concerned.

And that is why the attempt for a cheap headline is dangerous – it actually conveys the exact opposite of the truth in terms of mission trends.  The broader measurements suggest that something very interesting is going on under the surface.  There are some signs that the Anglican church is coming to grips with the challenge of mission in the UK and equally there is a huge danger that the Catholic church – so important in the long term for mission in Europe – is in danger of being lulled into a sense of false security over the temporary rise in attendance produced my migrant workers.

This short piece is part of a much longer article to be available on the Together in Mission web site at the end of January.

The BBC Radio 4 Today programme carried a fascinating report on a pilot piece of research that was getting ready for the Mystery Worshiper project to be held in January 2008 (see announcement below). The originators of the concept are the Ship of Fools (see their web site) and the idea has been taken up a notch by using a professional company that normally uses mystery shoppers to help stores think through their impact on customers.

The pilot involved visiting churches in the Telford area and used researchers who do not normally attend church. In every case their view of the church changed for the better. They found a warm welcome and a great atmosphere. They reported that what they found made them want to return. Those of us who are familiar with church life can recognise that picture. Church life (with some exceptions) is generally better than the image that the un-churched have.

But it is also clear that the task of connecting with those who do not come is much more Herculean than simply a smart ad campaign to persuade people to drop in. Its not just about the shop window, helpful as that can be. The task of building relationships with our community is much more profound.

I was immensely moved by a research project undertaken by one of our students. As part of the research, they invited some young people to look around the church building that was connected to a youth project. Those who looked around had not visited the building before and were positively impacted by what they saw. One young person saw the point. They commented on the fact that a great went on at this church and they could see that the people who worshiped here clearly cared for others. Moreover, they were alive to the problem of communication. They urged the worshipers to get out there amongst the community to be more effective in getting the message out. What we need are not so much mystery worshipers and some not so mysterious worshipers deeply involved in community life.

The following announcement is taken from the Christian Research Association website:

“CHURCHES throughout the Midlands are preparing for the visit of an unannounced visitor to their pews, the Mystery Worshiper.

Dozens of researchers are set to descend on a secret list of churches on Sunday 13 January – reporting on the comfort of pews, warmth of welcome, length of sermon and much, much more.

The project will be run by the Christian Research Association and the Heart of England Christian Resources Exhibition, to be held at the Telford International Centre (21-23 Feb 2008). Supporting the initiative is www.shipoffools.com, founders of Mystery Worshiper.”