Last week the Times of London published a survey of Anglican
clergy’s opinion on a range of matters*. The survey was itself controversial in
terms of its design and the respondents, leading to some commentators
questioning the whole validity of the survey. Survey methodology is something I
have studied, not least for my work with the ACC. But let’s not get into those weeds here and
now – there are plenty of places to look that up. Where I want to go now is with
one of specific questions in the survey – are we still a “Christian
country”?
So how would we decide if a country was Christian?
The survey assumes that the opinion of clergy is
significant in saying whether England is or is not a Christian country, maybe
through some kind of voting majority. The survey also talks about the history
of the country. We might use the values
of a country – assuming we could objectively assess them – to decide if it was
Christian. Another possibility would be
to look at the government and legislation of the country. The UK has Bishops sitting by right in Parliament. Does that make it more a Christian country
than Canada (which does not). To take
another approach, a Muslim country might be defined as one which has Sharia
law. But Christianity does not have the
kind of laws which Sharia does – not even the ten commandments!
As a statistician I would like to have some kind of objective
number that tells us whether our country is Christian – but what would the
number be? We might use the number at
church on a Sunday. Interestingly we
know from the USA that there is a gulf between the numbers who self-report attending
and the numbers who would be observed objectively. We might use the numbers of members which
churches report – although the numbers mean very different things in different
churches! We might use number of baptisms
– if only every church baptised in the same way we do. Ooops – there’s not even a consistent policy among Anglicans.
We might use numbers from the Canadian census – again
recognising that reporting standards may not
be what we would like. If we go with the this than we get the following
from Statistics Canada: “In 2021, more than 19.3 million people reported a
Christian religion, or just over half of the Canadian population (53.3%).
However, this percentage is down from 67.3% in 2011 and 77.1% in 2001.”** I think that number is surprising to many
people, particularly in the Church. It
is common to hear talk of “post-Christendom” within the Church, as if
Christianity has been wholeheartedly abandoned by the culture and population. In the UK census in 2021, 46% of respondents
described themselves as Christian. But according
to the Times survey only 24% of clergy believed that England is a Christian
country.
Christianity in Canada
We in the church seem to have a lower view of the
Christian-ness of our country that the general population does. What are we seeing? And why does this all matter?
There are a number of areas it is tempting to comment on
here. The end of white hegemony in the
world, our countries and our churches is one issue, the scope for
“revival” is another. But here we will stick to one issue we have data for. The numbers for Christian-ness of our
population seem to run in the face of the decline of Church membership and
attendance.
So where are all these people who tell the census that they
are Christians, but whom we never see in Church. If we delve a little deeper into the numbers
we see first that 30% of the population self-declares as Catholic, and only 3%
self-declares as Anglican. Secondly 8%
self declares as Christian, but not as any denomination or group.
Within the Anglican population the number is around 1.1
million people self-declaring, whereas our internal membership claims 290
thousand Anglicans. In other words there are four times as many people who say
they are Anglicans as we have on our roles (and don’t let me get started on the
value of that statistic!).
Who gets to define a Christian?
And what all of this means is that there are very
different definitions of who is a Christian. It is not the C and E (Christmas and Easter)
attenders who are missing from membership – those numbers are about half our
membership. Three-quarters of self-declaring
Anglicans feel that they do not need to attend, or even be connected to a local
Church in order to be an Anglican. Their
definition of an Anglican is very different to that of clergy who, according to the Times survey, apparently
feel the England is not a Christian Country!
And that leaves us hanging because we do not have much data
on what it means to declare yourself as a Christian. No data and so no understanding. But let me end with this…. I think there is a comparison to be made with
the modern phenomenon of the widespread self-declaration of gender. If our friend, colleague, or family member
decides that they have been mis-gendered we now accept that. We use the gendering that the person prefers.
If we are privileged with a close relationship to that person we might seek to
understand more and to support them more. We do not presume that we have the
right to define who they are.
Who defines if this is a Christian Country? I would suggest that the opinion of the
clergy in the Times survey is not the significant thing. I suggest that Canada is a Christian country
because the majority of Canadians define themselves as Christians. They might not fit the definition of Christian
that we would hold, but that does not make them wrong. It is the job of the Church, among others, to
understand what being a Christian means to them.
* https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/the-times-surveys-church-of-england-clergy-opinions/
** Statistics Canada The Daily, Wednesday, October
26, 2022
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