By Steve McAlpine (adapted by Alasdair Belling from ‘ No Faith for the King to Defend’ on the Delorean Philosophy podcast)

Much ink was spilled a couple of decades ago when King Charles III – then the Prince of Wales – stated that he would prefer his title to be “Defender of Faiths” rather than “Defender of the Faith”.

The latter has been the title of the British monarch since King James VI of Scotland – no not Henry VIII – ascended to the throne of England. James of the King James Version of the Bible – Defender of the Faith. The title has been handed down since.

Charles, in his multicultural, multi-faith zeal, was keen to embrace the growing religious pluralism of Britain – hence “faiths”. Yet interestingly, prior to the death of his mother, he hinted he’d keep the original title. Also interestingly, he’s changed tact at a time when the latest census data confirms what’s pretty much no news to anyone with their ear to the ground; it turns out there’s less faith – especially less Christian faith – to defend.

As The Guardian newspaper breathlessly reported;

“Census 2021 will probably be remembered as the one in which Christianity became a minority religion in England and Wales. On census day, 21 March 2021, 46.2 per cent of people identified themselves as Christians, compared with 59.3 per cent of the population in the 2011 census, a 13-percentage point drop in a decade.”

The Guardian has often been scoffed at for getting its typography wrong. However, in this case, it’s gotten its facts wrong.

46.2 per cent does not make Christianity a minority religion – unless there’s some other monolithic religion making up the other 53.8 per cent, which clearly there isn’t. It means that more than half the country does not identify with Christianity. That’s significant. It’s a huge drop of more than five point five million people over a decade.

But as for “a minority”? As they say – fuggedaboudit. It’s still the largest religious affiliation!

Now of course that has little correspondence with the number of people who go to church on anything like a regular basis. This was evident with the recent Australian census, in which several million fewer people revealed they were practising Christians when compared to two censuses ago.

The numbers convey one important conclusion; fewer and fewer people are culturally attached to a faith that they have no meaningful engagement with.

Fewer and fewer people are sitting, filling out the census data online and wracking their brains to remember which church it was that they never attended. That might give them a clue to their religion – “no religion”. Indeed that’s the fastest growing category – the so-called “rise of the nones”. Nones – those with no affiliation, who won’t get hatched, matched or dispatched via church methods – and seemingly feel no lack.

As the Catholic News Agency more accurately reports, Christianity is no longer the “default religion” of Britain. With 37 per cent of Britons now claiming “no religion,” it may only take another census or two until the nones become the majority across the Atlantic.

Incidentally, this also shows that, for all of its multicultural mix, other religions are small minorities. Talk about an Islamic overtaking of culture is vastly overblown. Whatever the conclusions drawn from the data over the coming months – and years – are, it’s clear that something has shifted, if not in the practices of Britons, then certainly in their thinking. It’s the same here in Australia – and it’s being mirrored in the USA too. Make no mistake – although the US is coming off a much higher base than either the UK or Australia, the trends are all in the same direction.

I, for one, welcome our new secular overlords

What I don’t mean by that is that the loss of Christianity as a cultural influence will be a good thing. I don’t think it will be. As historian Tom Holland points out, there’s nothing particularly universal about human rights. Most, if not all of the ones that we cherish were birthed from a Christian framework.

The value, dignity and worth of each human created in the Image of God gave us those very ideas. That squatters want to live on Christian land without acknowledging the owners or paying the rent is no proof that such rights are self-evident. They’re plainly not. And what we cherish as human rights are often not cherished in other parts of the world.

But as is also reported in the Catholic News Agency, it’s clear that the drop off is not among adherents. Church figures across a variety of denominations are relatively stable. Here’s Professor of Theology and Sociology of Religion at St Mary’s University in Twickenham, Stephen Bullivant.

“The biggest factor is the gradual, generational evaporation of Christianity over a period of decades. It used to be the case that Anglicanism was the default setting for English and Welsh people unless you had a particular reason to be something else.  But we’ve long ago now shifted to a position where having ‘no religion’ is now the default unless you have a particular reason to be something else.

“Of course, in the long run, it means that the only Christians left are those who have to ‘own’ it. Ultimately, they’re the kinds of countercultural groups — ‘creative minorities’ as Pope Benedict likes to call them — where you might hope to see some kind of counter-trends starting to appear.”

As Benedict said elsewhere – also of the church – “pruned, it grows”.

Perhaps it’s a little like the Rust Belt cities of the USA. Places like Detroit, which suffered economic collapse as crucial industry moved offshore. Jobs were lost, and whole sections of cities went to wreck and ruin. Detroit itself shrank and shrivelled, becoming a pale shadow of its Motor Town past.

Detroit experienced the ultimate pruning. Funnily enough, though, a new Detroit has taken shape over the past decade – a humbler, more realistic one. Detroit is reinventing itself. It can’t be the city it was in the past – those days are gone. But something new can spring up.

My wife and I, along with our daughter, lived in another reinvented city; Sheffield, a former steel town in the UK, that had to reinvent itself for similar reasons.

We noticed, even then (some fifteen years ago) the complete lack of church engagement in that city. If you’ve been involved for some time in church planting or re-establishment, you’ll not be surprised by the stats.

Another thing; the “nones” aren’t necessarily “not spiritual”. They just see no place for religion. As US journalist and religious observer Tara Isabella Burton says, people craft self-religions that they don’t recognise as such, but which contain the hallmarks of meaning, purpose, transcendence and community – those sorts of things.

My wife and I went to a Nick Cave concert just recently. It was … a religious experience. There was something transcendent about it. A review of the gig we attended had this headline; “Nick Cave slays fans with his version of the gospel of love.”

Another review ran the following line; “Cave has long been the stand-in for people with no religion”. In other words, he offers transcendence – that pesky “won’t-go-away” desire for something more – something that leaves all the experiences of this world almost enough.

Of course, those ticking “no religion” on the census are not necessarily thinking about it that way. But as an eyewitness, I can assure you – the concert was a deeply spiritual experience with a great dose of bathos about it. It helped too that every second song was Jesus-infused. Perhaps he’s sneaking something in. or perhaps it’s just a great sales pitch to people looking for something outside of themselves.

All of this is against the backdrop of the new atheist movement that swept the West about two decades ago. Remember them? They seem old now. Old – or as is the case of Chris Hitchens – dead. Their chief spokesman Richard Dawkins is now aged 81. In a recent interview with The Australian newspaper, Dawkins came across as almost nostalgic for a more certain and zealous time, when atheism would be the default. More than that, he also came across as dismayed that his push to diminish the role of religion has seen, in his own words, “his own side turns against him”.

Dawkins thought that once science and rationalism won the day, things would settle down. Zealotry would be a thing of the past. But what has he found? He’s being “cancelled” by the quasi-religious zeal of those who hold the gospel of sexual identity and gender.

“I’d never worried about religious fundamentalists disliking me, but when it’s your own team, it’s upsetting. It’s a remarkably foolish thing for them to do because all I did was to raise a subject for discussion,” he said.

It’s almost as if people need something significant to hold on to. Something that gives us more meaning. We may be made of the same stuff as stars, but so are cane toads!

Dawkins is starting a national tour of Australia. It will commence a couple of months after Jordan Peterson, the eminent psychologist, finishes up a national tour to packed audiences, delivering two-hour-long lectures (followed by a Q and A) to audiences as big as 13,000. A friend of mine at the Sydney event – one of 9000 crammed into the Convention Centre – said it was heavily populated by young people – young men in particular.

Fancy that – Nick Cave and Jordan Peterson selling out in one country at the same time. Let’s see what kind of crowds Dawkins pulls. The search for meaning and transcendence continues, even as Christianity cedes from the scene.

So What Can We Do About This?

So here we are in the west with a seemingly inevitable decline when it comes to Christain adherence. There’s certainly a component of our society that sees Christianity as part of our cultural problem, not the solution.

There are some intriguing and dangerous threads in the story. But perhaps a word from an Aussie theologian with some US ties. Michael Bird, in his book Religious Freedom in A Secular Age, calls for a more “weird” expression of Christianity. That the distinction between those who are Christians and nones sharpens – to be as obvious as possible.

The reflex for some – as they see the inevitable decline – is to soften the edges of the faith, make it more like the broader culture in the vain hope of a lovelorn boy who keeps thinking if he changes himself enough, the girl will finally want him.

As church in the west turns in lower percentages the tactic seems to be “lower the bar, lower the bar”.

What if – counter-intuitively – the bar should be raised? What if the weirder the better? What if – somewhat like Detroit – the church in the West decides that the past isn’t coming back? That being the chaplain to the state isn’t an option. What if this is the last King of England to defend the Faith as a public act? What if “proclaiming the Faith” that very few have any experience of becomes the new norm?

Stephen Bullivant’s words are a good reminder; that once again Christians will have to “own it” and become a counter-cultural creative minority.

And what will that look like? It will certainly mean being different to the culture in terms of how we do relationships. How we view what it means to be human.

It’ll also mean a different picture of how we do community in an increasingly lonely culture. It’ll mean a different approach to how we approach money in an increasingly greedy culture. How we forgive in an unforgiving world. How we exercise self-denial in an increasingly self-indulgent west.

Make no mistake – there are cracks on the edges of our post-Christain society. The promised liberty of the sexual revolution is proving to be bondage for millions. The unity of the sexual minority movement is coming apart as the LGB splits off from the “T”.

The search for meaning and identity goes on with no stable base upon which to land.

The desire for purpose and the huge rise in anxiety – none of these things are coincidental in the west. Something has to give. What will it be?

Here’s the question to land on. By the time William is King of England in ten-fifteen years’ time, what will the percentages look like in, for example, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand? What of the Faith will be left to defend in the Commonwealth?

Tides go out but tides return too. As GK Chesterton observed a century ago, Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a god who knew the way out of the grave.

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