If you try to become all things to all people, you will eventually become nothing to anybody.
The Church of England is facing a generational catastrophe with only 2% of young adults identifying with it, while seven out of 10 under-24s say they have no religion, research reveals.
C of E affiliation is at a record low among all age groups, and has halved since 2002, according to the British Social Attitudes survey. Far fewer actually attend church services on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, the trend towards a secular society has increased over recent years. The BSA survey found that 52% of people had no religion in 2017 compared with 41% in 2002. However, the proportion last year was slightly down on 2016, when 53% said they had no religious affiliation.
The demographic breakdown in the new data is particularly unwelcome news for the church. Younger people are significantly less likely to identify with the C of E than older age groups, and evidence suggests that people rarely join organised religion in later life. The trend indicates that affiliation with the C of E could become negligible with successive generations.
Beginning in 2003, at some incarnation of this site or other, I made what Internet reputation I have describing and commenting on the Anglican free-fall. I had been blogging largely unnoticed for two years but the Anglican controversy actually got me read and occasionally quoted.
After the Episcopal Organization gave a pointy hat and a hooked stick to Gene Robinson, Anglican tensions, which had been building for decades, suddenly blasted out into the open. Were Anglicans Christians in any meaningful sense of that term? Or did they have the same relationship to the Christian church that the Shriners have to Islam?
When Rowan Williams and his Real African WordsTM gamed the 2008 Lambeth Conference so that the Issue dividing Anglicanism was never seriously discussed and no worthwhile proposals were put forward, people without a mindless affection for the Anglican "tradition" knew that the game was up. Aside from freely and enthusiastically providing pseudo-spiritual cover for the Important Secular Cause of the Week, the Church of England and the rest of "official" Anglicanism no longer offer anything worthwhile to anyone at all.
If the C of E truly wants to change its current situation, it knows what it has to do. That it is absolutely terrified of doing what needs to be done means that Great Britain may end up with some large and really fancy Pentecostal churches very soon.
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We were assured that just one more innovation, in the interests of "justice" and "fairness," would open the floodgates and attendance would soar. Unexpectedly, as the Instapundit likes to say, this proved not to be true. The floodgates opened and people left.
The CofE has not only failed its membership by failing to preach the apostolic faith, it has failed the country. The UK desperately needs to have a vibrant Christian witness to counter the growing threat of Islam and its radical versions in particular. Abandoning the people to a weak-tea secularism with vestments is irresponsible and the opposite of Christian love.
Yup. All the Church of England has to do is adopt an actual principle or two or tell the secular culture no once in a great while and this pseudo-Christian dumpster fire slowly begins to improve. But Canterbury doesn't have anywhere near enough courage.
Or any courage at all, akshilly.
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