According to research carried out by international research data and analytics group YouGov, and reported at the very end of 2020 the number of people believing in God in the UK continues to decline. Only a quarter of Britons (27%) reported that they actually believe in ‘a god’. A further one in six (16%) believe in the existence of ‘a higher spiritual power’, but not ‘a god’.
Figures relating to church attendance, in the main, show a similar decline. For example, half of Anglican churches, 8000 of them, have just 26 adults or fewer on a Sunday. Encouragingly 10% of parishes are reporting growth, but four times that number report statistically significant decline (the Diocese of Bristol reported a reduction of 12.5% in church attendance between 2014-2019). The Methodist Church in the UK shrank from 305,000 members in 2003, to 170,000 now, and the United Reformed Church from 100,192 in 1996 to 52,060 in 2016 100,192.
(In case we think this is a recent phenomenon, in Britain, the high point of church attendance was in 1851 when around 51% of the population were calculated to be in church on one given Sunday. Numbers have been in decline pretty much ever since).
It’s not all gloom. God is faithful; there are signs in the UK church of life and growth. As Ian Paul writes, commenting on his Anglican tradition: “Whatever these numbers signal, it is not the death of God—though it might be the death of the C of E structured in the way we have known it”.
Whatever these numbers signal, it is not the death of God
Throughout all history, God’s people have always been a minority group. Israel was just one small nation in a hostile world. The first Christians understood themselves to be a marginal group of ‘aliens and strangers’ in their culture. Christians in India, Afghanistan, North Africa, China today – the list goes on – have no delusions that they are anything other than a reviled persecuted minority in their countries.
So how do we respond to these figures? Well, when God’s people in the Old Testament took stock of the decline that they were experiencing, it forced them to cry out to God in prayer.
The context of Psalm 80 is the loss of the Northern tribes of Israel (v2) to Assyrian invasion around 735 BC. The worshippers down south in Jerusalem are shocked at the humiliating desolation of God’s own people (v16). It was a reduction of the faithful of Methodist proportions.
Their prayer was honest and raw (when it comes to prayer, God prefers a vat of honesty to a veneer of holiness). In this Psalm the Asaphite worship leaders in Jerusalem hurl their frustrations and confusion to God. Don’t you remember that we are your people (1)? Surely you can recall that you saved us from Egypt and planted us in a new land (8,9)? All the world saw how you caused us to grow and prosper (10,11)!
So how come you’ve given up on us (12,13)? How long will you ignore our prayers and make us feel bitter and ridiculed (5,6)?
The feelings run deep. The language is intense.
As we in the Western world witness the steady decline in the health, size and influence of the Christian Church, are we similarly moved? Can we share in the honest cries of the Asaphites: Restore us (3,7,19)! Wake up and save us (2)! Return to us: watch over us and smile on us again (14,19)!