27th May 2013

On holiday in Scotland I went along to church on Sunday.

Given that I am retired it was somewhat disappointing to realise that I may well have been the youngest person attending the service.

The service was sparsely attended.

But the age and numbers in the congregation reflect a reality about the health of the church that the new archbishop is trying to lead.

Richard Dawkins might be pleased to read of this decline as supportive of his own views about the nature of religious belief and the views peddled by the churches.

But I suspect that a much more significant factor underpins not only the decline in church attendance but also the withdrawal of interest in the political process to the detriment of democracy itself.

The political and religious landscape of two nations tells a story.

In the USA citizens’ level of interest in politics is matched by their interest in religion.

People in the US, attend Church, vote and attend town meetings.

Democracy in the US appears to be alive and active.

Whether there is a direct link between these two phenomena is hard to say but a case could be argued.

Certainly the contrast with the UK is clear.

Here church attendance has fallen to a remarkable and disturbingly low level and the average age of congregations is by comparison high.

This lack of engagement in the body spiritual is reflected in the body politic.

Membership of political parties is lower now than at any previous time certainly in the post war years and the percentage of people voting is also lower whilst, it seems, as with church attendance, the average age of those exercising their franchise is high.

I’m not sure about this but I suspect that there might be a connection between active involvement in matters of faith and the exercise of your franchise in politics.

Most of my working life as a vicar was spent in the area of the churches ministry called social responsibility, that area of work has largely been abandoned by the churches.

This decline in social responsibility activity has been a function of declining numbers, a failure to see the connection between faith and society and the pernicious and growing influence of the evangelical wing, especially in the Church of England.

We are a dismissive society: dismissive of the claims of religion, dismissive of politics and politicians.

But whilst we no longer vote for our government we vote in huge numbers for celebrity fame and fortune, dialling the 08 numbers until the lines jam and paying premium rates to ensure that our favourite voice or song wins the latest Overrated Instant Celebrity show.

In the US, there is a public debate between Democrats and Republicans. The Tea Party campaigns against socialism and gun control. Protests are raised, challenges levelled against the President and all he represents and the pulpits are used to promote and protest the issues that are at stake in the body politic, as though they matter and as though faith has something of value to say.

Here the con-dems continue to promote their metropolitan elitism benefiting both the South East in general and their immediate supporters in particular, whilst the pulpits remain anodyne in their promotion of a disengaged and largely irrelevant theology of individual and personal salvation.