In the last week there have been two notable bits of media coverage of evangelicals in the UK. The first was a late night BBC documentary, the Battle for Christianity. It presented Christianity as battling to stay alive, but flourishing in some areas. Notably, these were all evangelical. The presenter, a now slightly liberal Pentecostal professor, Robert Beckford, did his best to present the hope for Christianity in its broadest terms, but it was a hopeless case. He pointed out that the only parts of the church flourishing were those that held often unacceptable moral views in our liberal society. He failed to join the dots on this connection and expressed a vain hope that evangelicalism might continue to grow, but his form of it, i.e. with a slightly more liberal approach to issues such as gay marriage – he quoted the now discredited research which shows that a large proportion of under 30s Anglicans supporting same sex marriage.
But, despite the Professor’s best efforts, the reality was there for all to see. The only full and growing churches were evangelicals (of various hues, it must be admitted) which took a conservative line on these moral issues. Join the dots!
The second piece of coverage was more broadly about Christianity. It was the annual survey in The Times on registered places of worship. Now, such a survey is almost completely meaningless for three key reasons. First, Anglicans are excluded from the survey. Second, it is only concerned with registered places of worship and many meeting halls and church buildings are not registered. Third, and perhaps most importantly, no distinction is drawn between the size of occupancy and the building. It could be 4,000 Christians in one place, it could be 4.
In other words, we must not draw too many conclusions from it (unlike The Times!). Nevertheless, there is one clear message because it gives a scale of churches closing (Methodist, Baptist, URC, even Catholic), Mosques growing, but Evangelical/Pentecostal churches also growing. In other words, it is clear where our Christian hope lies. Don’t give up.
Denomination/Buildings/Growth since 2010
Scientologist (11/100%)
Pentecostal (2,012/39%)
Hindu (213/30%)
Muslim (1,263/26%)
Buddhist (87/24%)
Evangelical (607/17%)
Sikh (256/7%)
Jewish (366/2%)
Other Christian (7,629/1.5%)
JWs (923/-1.5%)
Baptist (3,224/-1.8%)
Roman Catholic (3,558/-2.5%)
Friends (362/-3%)
Salvation Army (830/-3.2%)
Methodist (7,267/-6.3%)
URC (1,530/-8.4%)