What will we be if the Church is no more?

Posted on March 27, 2026 by Chris Goan

I wrote this article for the Iona Community magazine, Coracle. Not sure if it will make the cut, but here it is anyway.

Photo by Adrienn Csiszu00e9r on Pexels.com

What will we be if the Church is no more?

Here is something that will upset many of you- by any measure Church is dying. I should know, because as well as all those statistics, it has died in me. I am part of the new member uptake from 2025, but I do not currently go to ‘Church’. I mean no disrespect to those who are still faithfully serving as Church leaders, priests, pastors or ministers, but my journey through different expressions of faith has brought me to a different place. Rest assured though- I am not done with community making or seeking to explore faith and meaning with others, it is just that – for now at least – I find myself outside the institution.

I am very far from alone – so I want to do my best to speak for those like me, longing for God (even as we struggle to name her.) Desperate for meaning and stories. Angry at how Church has so often been a tool of Empire and colonial subjugation. Suspicious of all attempts to bring us back inside because of our woundedness. Both drawn by – and repelled from – religion of all kinds. Refusing hard boundaries or finger pointing. Seeking deep connections between earth and soul for the sake of the planet. Desperate to see change towards grace and peace in a world that seems to be careering towards the opposite. Looking for authentic examples of how people have transcended these tramlines. Sensing the beautiful beyond in music, in poetry, in acts of protest, in old forest and longing to share this experience with others in ways that feel meaningful. You might well tell me that this is the Church you already attend, which demands the question of why those like me remain outside?

Any examination of UK statistical surveys will show us that fewer and fewer of us participate in organised religion. Recent suggestions of ‘Quiet Revival’ following research commissioned by the Bible Society (1) was seized upon by some, but the evidence continues to point in the opposite direction For example, the most recent British Attitudes Survey (2) shows that young people are not filling up our pews and decline in participation continues. The number of us here in the UK who attend Church even sporadically is now below 10% and is expected to fall further given the age profile of people within Churches. What has not changed however is 40% of Britons who self-identify as ‘Christian’. This has been pretty stable for decades. Three quarters of these people do not feel able or willing to attend Church and this has been a conundrum that we have tried to solve throughout most of my adult faith life.

In my experience, those who are active in religious circles tend to have a very low opinion of Christians like me. The assumptions made are that that we are ‘passive Christians’ or ‘luke-warm’, or ‘back sliders’. Perhaps we are, but what do I feel this calling towards something beyond Church so keenly? Why is it that something new is singing in my soul? Could it be that God is doing a new thing, and this this might not look like ‘Church’ as we have known it?

There has been helpful work done by researchers such as Steve Aisthorpe (Author of The Invisible Church (3)) and Katie Cross (from Aberdeen University) (4) pointing us to a much more nuanced – and even a hopeful – picture of what happens to those who leave Church. These people often retain very active faith, continue to make spiritual communities which explore what it means to be Christian. We might be forced to concede that the largest part of the ‘Body of Christ’ here in the UK is outside formal Church. There may well be a wide range of reasons for this but as Katie’s research has shown, there are commonalities. Many have been wounded in some way by the institution. The slowness of change and the continuance of so many conservative ideas on gender and the rights of women is also clearly a factor. Then there is the wide sense that somehow the Church is no longer relevant, not able to engage in a meaningful way with the omni-crisis of our modern times. There is perhaps too a sense that Church – despite the fine tradition of ‘troublesome priests’ Church has become like cold lava, unable to flow or change. It is like an oil tanker trying to turn in narrow water. It is like all human institutions. It is what Ivan Illich saw happening to all human tools- trending towards the unconvivial.

We do see a rise of some kinds of Churches. They were increasingly American influenced- that no-longer new empire of the self-made individual, whose personal Saviour guarantees life, wealth and happiness, and rejects anything that looks like ‘socialism’ such as collective action on climate change or poverty. If the problems of the old UK protestants often related to our Victorian origins, this new American perspective brought new corruption into the ways of Jesus. It took years to disentangle myself from it all, thanks in part to finding a movement of other people on a similar journey. Many of these too are now outside of Church – a whole generation of activists and leaders burned out on religion. The ‘Emerging Church’ language that was part of our recovery feels ancient now, but looking back, it was a movement away and against more than it ever articulated alternatives. It was about loosening the grip of old religious dogmas, deconstructing meanings and ultimately setting us free to re-imagine and re-engage with what it means to be Christian, but the energy it contained did not result in a new form of Protestantism – there were perhaps too many of these already.

In the decades since all those earnest discussions, blog posts and social media storms, a lot has changed in the world outside organised religion. Here in the rich north we are increasingly excarnate, finding life and meaning through online avatars shaped by algorithms and AI processes we barely understand. A pandemic came and went. The world seemed ever more cruel and heartless. Our politics and our economics offered no new solutions. The climate continued to break down. Inequality got worse. The loudest versions of Christianity became less Jesus-like and more wedded to fascistic politics that serve best the powerful.

Photo by levan simonshvili on Pexels.com

Can the institution of Church respond to this new reality? How many reports and conferences have you been to that have explored this question in the last decades? How many books have your read or even written? How can those good people still active within Church ever find energy to do more work than they are already doing, looking after their aging flocks, running food banks and creches, visiting the sick and ministering to weddings and funerals? What do we do with all these empty buildings?

And what of the diaspora of Church leavers/survivors like me? Are we a lost and aging resource that need to come back into the fold? Or might we yet be part of a new movement? There are so many unanswered questions. Here are a few more.

If people do not attend Church, what does community-making look like? Might it be more ephemeral, more hybrid, more fluid? How do we do this in an excarnate world? What does authenticity look like? What stories bring us together? What stories keep us apart? Can community be made without membership or belonging? What about the children? How do we add power to each other through collective action if we stay apart?

Without the hierarchy of Church how do theological ideas and stories get made and shared? Who keeps all this safe? Who can we trust? Can we influence and inspire without the power or wealth of institution? Without paid clergy or regular meeting spaces?

What does a good life look like in our context? What do we celebrate? How do we live out the counter-cultural kingdom here and now? Where do we need to make peace and proclaim jubilee? Where does justice need to flow like rivers? Where is Jesus calling us to be salt or light?

Who are our prophets? Are these the musicians, the film makers, the poets? Who is seeking to give these people a platform and to celebrate with them? Whose work will light up our souls?

Who are our priests? Are these the networkers, the creators of temporary community spaces, those who carry mercy in their souls and offer radical hospitality?

Where are our cloisters? Where are those seeking to live out radical lives that explore alternative ways of being followers of Jesus? How do we network, support and include these people?

Who is looking after the activists? Who patches them together after imprisonment or tear gas exposure?

Who is offering people ways back into the Cathedral of the forest? How do we make our dogma and practices subservient to Celtic way of the community of all things? How do we provide ways for a mostly urban population to experience this once more, for the sakes of their mental health and the sake of the planet?

I don’t have clear answers to most of these questions but I no longer worry about Church- it belongs to God after all. I am done with trying to save it, or expecting it to be something it is not We still need the formal institution of Church and I always will, but we should also expect the Spirit of God to be at work in new ways. In other words, the title of this piece is redundant. We will never be without church. But we might be without Church- many of us already are.

All of which brought me to the Iona Community, currently exploring full membership. At my application interview, I was challenged about my non-attendance of Church, and I expect to be challenged again – in fact, I look forward to lots of late-night conversations with some of you.

But there is no doubt in my mind that dispersed community has a part to play in this new paradigm that we find ourselves emerging into. By accident we have a vehicle that engages and interacts directly with some of those questions above. I think that is exciting and I hope you do also.

Notes

Fear and loathing in Los England…

Posted on October 26, 2025 by Chris Goan

I am just back from York, where I was attending an Iona Community event. I have started the two year discernment process towards becoming a full member of the community, and this event had two parts- firstly time spent with other new members examining one of the four ‘rules’ that form the basis for membership-

Working for justice and peace, wholeness and reconciliation in our localities, society and the whole creation.

(By the way, if you are interested in the work of the Iona Community, let’s have a chat.)

After this came a day with around 80-90 of the existing full members as we heard from Paul Parker, Recording Clark of the Quakers in Britain. The Quakers don’t have a ‘leader’ – rather Paul’s role is to seek to create good processes for the 450 worshipping groups of friends. He spoke powerfully about quiet diplomacy and the Quaker colective process of testing concern together to develop collective courage. He contrasted the ‘prophet’ role (calling out injustice) from the ‘reconciler’ (seeking to listen and love) role- how they sometimes need to be employed in different ways and in different circumstances. In other words- the two hands of non-violence, in which one is the hand held aloft to say STOP, and the other is open to say ‘I love you, can we talk?’

This discussion inevitably makes me think about the divided and splintered shape of our society just now. How do we engage – as either prophets or reconcilers? Where are the spaces in which either of these things are possible?

And even if we find these places, how will I find the courage?

Meanwhile, there is another fear project going on at full tilt. Fear as a political instrument to create division through hatred and scapegoating of the outsider.

As you might expect, I have been trying to explore some of this through poetry. Here is what I am working on…

Be not afraid

I know you are afraid love -
Who can blame you? This broken world
Wobbles so hard it might
Shake us all off.
And all those purple-faced men 
Looking for someone else to blame -
If they run out of brown people
They might wave their flags at us.

We should beware my love
For there are those for whom your fear spells opportunity. 
They nurture it in toxic tubes, so
To spore the very air they feed us, and
None of us are immune because 
Even those of us with those lumps in our throats
Must still breathe.

So, forgive my riding high on this highest horse 
Because I need to tell you this;
If we always fear of what you do not know
It will rob our future of hope
It will tuck us up in defended spaces
Seeking only safety
Watching the world through narrow arrow slits
Flexing that persistent itch in our trigger fingers
But if we always fear the stranger
How will we ever make new friends?

I know you better my beloved -
Your heart beats beauty on your sleeve.
I know you would mend the broken if you could 
With that clever glue called kindness.
I know you would never eat alone
When someone close was starving.
I know you were never made for hatred 
When  the core of you is love;
When the heart of you is love;
When at the bones of you is love;
When in the mess of you;
Is love.

So love.

Hyper-polarisation and political violence…

Posted on September 14, 2025 by Chris Goan

Even from here in rural Scotland, the death of a 31 year old hard right Christian gun advocate has been inescapable. Perhaps it was the horrific irony of the moment of his death- shot during a discussion about gun violence, or the controversial nature of many of his views, most of which where framed in Christian language as if from some kind of MAGA prophet.

For many on one side of the political divide, he is a martyr for his faith, achieving the Protestant equivalent of sainthood. His ’cause’ is a like a flag to be picked up on the battlefield against rising hoards of athiest islamic left-wing nut-jobs massing at the border seeking to replace the great American theocracy with trans-gender abortion and lesbian weddings.

Meanwhile, over in the other camp, people are actively celebrating Kirk’s death. A young father, aged 31, cut down in his prime is an evil that has been greeted with glee. There have been righteous protestations of condemnation of violence, but always these have been posed alongside discriptions of the outrageous things that Kirk said and represented. The message is clear- he brought this down on himself.

What might this moment represent to us with the hindsight of history? Might it be the moment when we realised that the politics of polarisation an only ever lead towards violencehat – that this kind of language, when used quite deliberately as a political strategy to breakthrough democratic deadlock, might destroy our fragile peace?

Or will it instead mark the point when that destruction entered a new phase towards the end game that was to come? Only future-us can know the answer…

Two important issues stand out to me. The first is this one;

Hyper-polarisation

Perhaps this article from back in 2016 – which already feels like an age ago – is a good place to start in understanding this phenomenon.

Bringing all of this together in Why Washington Won’t Work, Marc Hetherington and Thomas Rudolph paint a picture of a nation overwhelmed by dislike and distrust of the other side and, consequently, a political process incapable of compromise and mired in gridlock. It is easy to see how this sort of distrust and dysfunction manifests itself in assumptions about the motivations (malice, greed, bigotry, moral bankruptcy, or most charitably, naiveté) of those on the other partisan team. Those on the other side no longer just disagree about the issues, they are bad people with dangerous ideas. This paves the way for efforts to delegitimize electoral outcomes and the leaders they produce by way of conspiracy theories and claims of fraud and rigging. Perhaps most dangerously, it also can be used to justify nearly any effort to thwart the opposition.

Let’s be clear- this phenomenon is not going away. In some senses this is because it is a deliberate political strategy- create division using simplistic fear-based stories then exploit this opening by offering a ‘solution’. This is pretty much the whole strategy of The Reform party in the UK, but you can find plenty of examples on the left too. The Cambridge Analytica saga should have been the moment of awakening on the danger to our democracy of this kind of politics, but this seems to have been largely forgotten. Rather than choosing to find ways of regulating and reforming, we moved on.

Polarisation is also an emergent property of our increased reliance on social meda, both in terms of the way that algorythms feed us ever more extreme versions of what it feels will engage our interest, and also because of how we increasingly export a part of our ‘selves’ in the form of on-line avotars that then become places of disembodyment and almost ritualistic tribal defence and offence cycles.

Polarisation perhaps also emerges from our own fragile bruised humanity. This from here;

central theoretical assumption is that ideological extremism is rooted in a psychological quest for personal significance: A desire to be respected and to matter in the eyes of oneself or important others (Kruglanski et al., 2014; see also Webber et al., 2018). People can acquire such a sense of personal significance through the combination of many sources, such as family, work, and the pursuit of meaningful goals. Sometimes people may experience a loss of significance, however, when they encounter grievances such as humiliation, injustice, or insecurities. Such grievances prompt a sense of meaninglessness, and therefore stimulate a desire to restore a sense of personal significance through a worldview in which perceivers are focally committed to specific ideological goals. Put differently, extreme ideologies help perceivers to restore a sense of significance through a worldview in which they appear to be supporting a meaningful cause.

Some studies have pointed out the way that this ritualistic process might be compared to religion, in the way that it becomes a set of goggles – or a hermaneutic – through which all facts or opinions become mediated, and this takes us to the second of the issues that occupy my thoughts in relaiton to this dreadful shooting.

Christianity and extreme ideology

Kirk’s avowed and much proclaimed Christian faith has been a central part of both his political activities and the subsequent narrative around his death. As someone with many friendships and social media contacts with people across the spectrum of the Christian faith, I was still a little shocked when I read a post this morning that said something along these lines;

So touched by his life and story. At his heart was communicating deeply held truth and wisdom in many matters, in spite of the flack, and the risk. He might have been outspoken but to me he clearly had a heart to teach, demonstrate and guide a generation of whom so many are lost. When society is chaotic and unstructured people suffer, when we accept God’s ways for life there is joy, peace, security. Above all of his debating he said faith and finding Jesus is most important. Tonight I’m praying people once again find their identity in Christ, who is a firm foundation to build our lives on. Praying Christians can speak the truth in love to a world that needs to hear it.

My first response to this was through the lens of my own place on the polarised spectrum. Had this person not seen all the lies, the misogyny and racism? Had they no concerns about the rise of American Christian nationalism? Surely they must recognise the disconnect between the way of Jesus and the politics Kirk espoused?

Then I stopped and started to think about how extreme narratives are pulling at us all, particularly in the religious sphere. We, above all, have to find ways of building bridges, not barracades. It seems that – sadly – we religious people are very much part of the problem. This from here.

Conservative and liberal Christians, like all liberals and conservatives, are inclined to denigrate those on the other side of the political spectrum; and each side is convinced that the other side is treated more leniently than their own side in the media, and by other third parties that try to give an objective account of matters under dispute (36–39). However, how have Christians on the two sides of the political divide dealt with discrepancies between their own political positions and the apparent dictates of their faith? Some, no doubt, have felt pressure to moderate their positions to achieve greater congruency with traditional Christian teachings. Others may have narrowed their reference group and, for those whose faith is highly central to their personal identity, engaged in attempts at persuasion and proselytism. However, we argue and attempt to demonstrate empirically, contemporary American Christians also have adjusted their perceptions of Christianity itself. More specifically, they have adjusted their perceptions of the political positions that Jesus of the New Testament would hold if he were alive today.

A provocative series of studies by Epley and colleagues showed that the egocentric tendency to believe that others share one’s beliefs is more pronounced when individuals are asked about God than when they are asked about the average American or various prominent individuals (40). The present research is distinct from those studies insofar as its focus is more specifically on such “projection” in the views and also the priorities that liberal and conservative Christians attribute to Jesus Christ. Our specific hypotheses are very much in the dissonance tradition (26). The dissonance researchers reversed conventional formulations by focusing not on the effects of attitudes on behavior but on the effects of behavior on subsequent attitudes. We essentially reverse conventional formulations by focusing not on the effects of religion on political views but the effects of political views on the content of religious beliefs.

What can we do about it?

There is the question.

The egotistical polariser in me wants to call out the lies and wrong doing of the other. The peace maker in me wants to draw us all back towards compassion and the way of love as a precurser to all things. I want the latter to win, in me as well as the world…

… and so I choose to tread carefully. I try not to do battle, particularly one line. When I do so, I try to make sure that I react in service of justice for others, not myself.

And I fail, regularly.

Church leavers research project- be part of the response!

Posted on July 19, 2025 by Chris Goan

Regular readers of this blog may remember previous articles and even podcast interviews with Dr. Katy Cross, who has been undertaking research trying to understand paths taken by people who leave church- the meaning they make and find, the connections they still seek and so on.

Katy is now towards the end of her research, and is entering a ‘creative response’ stage. There are a few ways you can be involved, but the first meeting on-line is Tuesday the 29th at 6PM. If you are on your own journey beyond church, but feel like understanding this better in community then this might be just the place for you.

There are two ways folk can take part:

By attending online workshops to discuss prompts and reflect together. You can sign up here to join in.
By writing up your own reflections in your own time, and emailing these to Katie here.

As above, the first group is meeting on Tuesday 29th July at 6pm on MS Teams.

We hope that Katie will be able to join us on the Proost podcast soon to collect together some thoughts and conclusions about this very important research.

Why do I think this chat is so important? As with this post, there is lots of chat just now about what is emerging in terms of organised religion in the UK. After a long decline, some say (on currently very limited evidence) that there is a ‘quiet revival’ taking place here, with young people, and young men in particular, flocking back into Churches. If this is true – if we are seeing a reversal of the decades-long social trend away from organised religion – then it seems important to understand this and the social forces that might be at work.

On the other hand (and at present I remain in this camp) if this research turns out to be flawed, we also need to understand why so many people within the Church have siezed on it with such uncritical enthusiasm.

Meanwhile there is another conversation that is taking place – for example in Katy’s research – with those who have been activists, leaders and pioneers within the church, but no longer feel able to be part of formal religious structures. What happened ot these people? Where are they finding meaning? How might they shape and influence what happens next?

Even as I write this, I think too of dear friends who continue to work WITHIN the Church, to carry forward acts of grace and mercy, to serve an aging population with critical needs, to run food banks and toddler groups, to set up refugee support groups and to make simple beautiful acts of worship that enable people to deepen their spiritual experience. I think how exhausted some of them are, and how abandoned the conversation above makes them feel…

Things are changing, shifting, shinking and unfolding at the same time. This has always been the case, but it does feel like we are standing on anther threshold. Whilst we mourn what is lost, we can also be excited about what will come.

The ‘quiet revival’ – what does the research REALLY say?

Posted on July 5, 2025 by Chris Goan

Leeds Minster (interior) by David Dixon is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

The Bible Society commissioned a survey from Yougov – a legitimate and credible polling organisation – which they claim ‘busts the myth of church decline’.

You can download the full survey here.

Here are the headline claims, using the somewhat bombastic language from the Bible Society itself.

Key findings from The Quiet Revival

Co-author of The Quiet Revival Dr Rhiannon McAleer says the report shows that what people believe about Church decline is no longer true. ‘These are striking findings that completely reverse the widely held assumption that the Church in England and Wales is in terminal decline,’ she said.

‘While some traditional denominations continue to face challenges, we’ve seen significant, broad-based growth among most expressions of Church – particularly in Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism. There are now over 2 million more people attending church than there were six years ago.’

More men than women go to church

The Quiet Revival shows that men (13 per cent) are more likely to attend church than women (10 per cent). And as well church decline being reversed, the Church is also becoming more ethnically diverse, with one in five people (19 per cent) coming from an ethnic minority. Close to half of young Black people aged 18–34 (47 per cent) are now attending church at least monthly, according to The Quiet Revival.

It’s also great to see that Bible reading and confidence in the Bible have increased as well as church growth. Some 67 per cent of churchgoing Christians read the Bible at least weekly outside church.

This is the key statistic. It would seem to point to a massic uplift in church going, particularly in the 18-24 range. Young men now seem four times more likely to go to church than pre pandemic – at least according to this survey.

(For the statistics geeks, the actual data collected by the survey is here.)

Church Services by Alan Stewart is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

This rather startling survey has been greeted by some with incredulity. It seems to be describing a trend that has reversed a decades long decline in church attendance in the UK. Many have greeted it with rejoicing. Could this really be true?

There have already been webinars and conferences that are using the term ‘quiet revival’ to describe what people are claiming as a ‘move of God.’ The lesson, it is claimed, is that this is the beginning of an awakening of spiritual seeking in younger generations, and evidence of the fact that yound men in particular are searching for meaning.

This all sounds like a good thing, right?

We might not have noticed it, but are we seeing an actual revival?

So why do I feel a deep sense of scepticism? Is this just my post-church cynicism? I am on record as having very mixed feelings about the word ‘revival’ (this from 11 years ago for example) after being previously part of expressions of religion that saw this as the only valid aim of Christian activity.

I think it is much more than that, however. A long time ago I was a social science graduate, and if we had come accross a piece of research or a survey that had suggested a social phenomenon that was different to all other sources of data, we would have immediately placed it on the ‘need more examination’ pile. We would have to look at other sources of evidence and test any conclusions that might be made by exposing them to wider scrutiny and comparison. One survey is never enough to declare a brand new social trend…

…particularly when other sources of information seem to directly contradict this survey.

For example, the British Social Attitudes Survey – the largest and most authorative survey of social trends in the UK – found no evidence of an increase of religious attendence, noting instead a continual decline.

It seems I am not alone in my sceptism. More or Less, the BBC radio 4 programme that explains – and sometimes debunks – numbers and statistics used in public life spent some time examing this issue today- it is well worth a listen.

Next, let me point you to this excellent piece on The Church Mouse Blog.

Here is how the Church Mouse frames the problem some of us have with this survey;

The most extraordinary claim is that, in the past six years (i.e., since just before the pandemic), the Church in England and Wales, across all denominations, has grown by more than half, from a total of 3.7 million regular worshippers to 5.8 million. The report says that it is largely the young who are driving this, in contradiction to our previous assumption that every generation is less religious than their parents.

The evidence for these claims comes from a large survey undertaken by a highly respected polling organisation, YouGov, that whether they had attended a church in the past month, among other questions. The same question set and methodology six years previously reveals a 56% increase in attendance.

And none of us noticed.

The Church Mouse goes on to say this.

Some of the churches where the Bible Society reported significant growth actually count the number of people who walk through their doors, and the numbers don’t match.

The most robust data set by a UK denomination is from the Church of England. Each church counts the number of worshippers during the same period each year, and the numbers are compiled to create a robust, consistent data set. The data shows that over the past six years, the Church has shrunk by between 10-20%, depending on how you count it…

…The same methodology can be applied to the data for the Catholic Church, the next largest denomination. The report said that it has grown from 23% of attendees in 2018 to 31% in 2024, meaning it would have grown from around 850,000 regular attendees in 2018 to 1.8 million in 2024, spectacular growth of almost a million regular worshippers.

The Catholic Church in England and Wales reported regular mass attendance down around 20% from pre-pandemic levels, to 555,000 in 2023 from 702,000 in 2019.

Between them, these two denominations have reportedly grown their regular attendance by almost 1.5m people, out of the total reported growth (According to the Bible society survey) of 2.1m, or over 70% of the total growth. But Church attendance data simply does not back that up.

Is this all hot air intended to inflate church ego? (Sorry, could not resist in relation to the photo above.)

The simple answer is that we do not know.

But either way we need to explain why this survey is so different. Here are the possible reasons for this as I see them just now.

Data collection problems/survey bias

Yougov knows its business, but rougue findings from one-off polls and surveys are certainly possible.

Many have pointed out that saying you go to church is not actually the same thing as going to church, and people do seem to exagerate their church attendence. Might the fact that apparently more people have exagerated their attendence in itself be an indication of church being a more desirable option?

Or perhaps there was an error in earlier surveys, and in pew numbers collected by churches? All of them? Over decades?

Timescale

Has the survey picked up sometihng interesting that has happened in the last year? has the decline flattened out? Is there a new trend? The comparison figure of actual numbers collected by churches are all earlier. This seem implausable but…

What does ‘church attendance’ actually mean?

Must we include the many on-line expressions of faith – apps, streaming, etc etc? If so, perhaps people are now exposed to wider digital forms of church and so are including these in their answer?

What about Churches that don’t collect or publish stats?

Perhaps the increase is all in the non conformist, independent churches? There is other evidence that some of these are indeed growing, particularly independent and evangelical churches. The trouble is, this is from a lower base, and the Bible Society survey asked people to list their religious affiliation- leading to the claim of growth in mainline churches that simply is not evidenced by other sources.

Young men?

I have a slight discomfort about this, in that there appear to be other trends happening in that age group. There’s a growing divide between young men and women, with men increasingly drawn to conservative, traditionalist or right-wing political movements (while women tend to lean more liberal.) This trend, linked ot the influence of ‘Celebrity Christians’ such as Jordan Peterson is not one that I find comfort in. Might this be the reason for young men apparently seeing Church in a more positive light? The attraction here might then be narrow moral certainty rather than the teachings of Jesus.

Church of St James the Great, Salt by Alan Murray-Rust is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

My conclusions then…

This survey is interesting, but we need to treat it with a great degree of caution. There are major difficulties with drawing any conclusions based on this one survey, and the Bible Society itself has used language and great fanfare that I find highly questionable.

Whatever is going on is not revival.

It might hint at a change to come, but only time will tell.

ARTISTS CALL – weekend exploring the theme of Mycellium, with Proost.

Posted on June 23, 2025 by Chris Goan

Here is a quick update on the Proost meet up for artists in Glasgow. First, the key details;

PROOST MEET UP, 2025

Date: 3rd October 2025 (6:00 PM) to 5th October 2025 (4:00 PM)
Location: St Oswald’s Episcopal Church, King’s Park, 260 Castlemilk Rd, Glasgow G44 4LB

Hosted by: Proost, in partnership with local Episcopal and Church of Scotland Churches
Cost: The gathering is free, with the aim of making this gathering as accessible as possible for all.
Accommodation: Informal hosting options are available for those who need them, and we’re happy to provide guidance on nearby accommodation options to help you make your stay as comfortable as possible. Let us know how we can assist you!

WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?

Many of you will remember Proost as it used to be- a publishing platform established on the edge of what we used to call ’emerging church’ or ‘missional groups’ or ‘alt worship’. It gathered a community of creatives who made poetry, art, video, music, liturgy and much more. For many of us, it gave a sense of belonging and connection – and ways to collaborate with other artists in both gathered and dispersed events. We live in different times now, but if anything, creatives need these connections more than ever.

We need art that engages, that challenges, that allows us to go deeper.

We need to hear from people who are otherwise marginalised.

We need to speak of justice and peace, so challenge where appropriate.

We need to take allow our art to connect with the deep spirituality of the earth.

The landscape of faith and culture has changed a lot in the decades since Proost first came on to the scene. Communication technology has made publishing easier, yet at the same time so much harder because of the sheer volume of content being produced. Funding streams and generating income is a massive challenge. Against all this, we have a powerful tool called community.

This is our dream for a new Proost- the means by which we combine our voices, our creativity and our resources to transcend the limitiations imposed by our context in service of justice. We think this is a holy pursuit, made ever more urgent by the crises gathering around us- wars, climate breakdown, inequality and political/economic impotence.

Much of this discussion has been taking place via two podcasts…

The main feed

The poetry feed

… and we have made a start with some collaborations around Advent and Lent.

But we feel that community also needs to make physical connections. We need to come together in one place, to share stories, to make plans and art together.

WHAT WILL WE DO?

The idea is simple- choose a theme and then invite people to respond to it using their art – music, poetry, painting, dance, pottery, photography, animation, video – or anything else.

We will make space for as many contributions and expressions of creativity as we can comb together in the form of installation or performance. The only limitation is that you need to bring those contributions in person!

We are so grateful to St Oswald’s Episcopal Church (King’s Park, 260 Castlemilk Rd, Glasgow G44 4LB) in partnership with local Episcopal and Church of Scotland Churches for generously hosting this weekend.

Installation space will be in and around the St Oswalds. (This will include a large mushroom-related ceramic offering!)

Performance opportunities will be via 1. A great big Ceilidh on Saturday night – dancing, hopefully interspersed with all sorts of other poems, songs and stories. 2. Sunday afternoon event. Both will be open to local people.

We want to keep Saturday day-time for discussion and chat amongst Proostians – working out together what seems important, and how this project might progress. There will be themed discussions led by different members of the team.

WHY MYCELLIUM?

This is the theme we have chosen for our meet up. Some of the reasons for this will already be in your heads, but here are some ponderings that might help unleash your own creative responses.

Soil science is advancing rapidly – we now need to stop thinking of soil as just inert dirt. It might be more accurate to regard it as a living entity all on its own – but if that is a little fanciful surely we need to understand that it is a complex ecosystem- one which almost all other land based life on the planet depends upon. Without soil, we die. Crucially, the role of mycelial networks in connecting, communicating and making communalities is increasingly being understood to be so much more important than previously thought.

Mycelium is the way that trees ‘talk’ to one another. Think about that- one life form relies upon another lifeform in order to share nutrients, warn of disease and so much more.

We modern humans tend to think about the natural world as being characterised by competition, the elimination of weakness and ‘survival of the fittest’. We have taken Darwinian ideas, misunderstood them and used them to justify our economics, our politics – even our spiritualities. The more we understand about mycelium, the more we need to think again.

Perhaps the ‘survival of the fittest’ might better be understood to mean that we survive best when we seek to fit with our context – when we seek connection and community.

What are we connecting with? Does mycelium only represent a way to understand human interrelatedness – with both each other and with the wider natural world? I would argue however that we might consider this connection to be much deeper than that.

These ideas have always been at the heart of the Christian story, not least the mystical traditions and the Celtic wisdom traditions, both of which have long emphasised that it is through God that all things live and have their being. In the Celtic understanding, God is to be found at the centre of everything, even us. We encounter him by going deeper.

Richard Rohr, in his magnificent book ‘The Universal Christ’ show us a different window into this way of understanding, in which the Christ is ‘another name for everything’ – the cosmic consciousness through which the universe expanded and came into being. We are all held in this commonality and invited to participate according to the deep truth of love.

As followers of Jesus, there seem to me to be so many other resonances here.

Unity and Oneness:

Jesus called for a unified community, where individuals, despite their differences, are “perfectly joined together” in their minds and judgments.

Body Analogy:

He used the image of a body with many parts, each playing a vital role, to illustrate the interconnectedness and interdependence of his followers.

Love for Neighbour:

Jesus emphasized the importance of loving one’s neighbour as oneself, which encourages cooperation and mutual support within a community. Compassion and love are a natural law that we need to be drawn towards.

Serving Others:

He demonstrated the importance of serving others, highlighting the value of helping those in need and working together for a common good.

Collaboration and Partnership:

Jesus encouraged his followers to work together, emphasizing the importance of partnership in living as agents of the Kingdom of God.

HOW TO GET INVOLVED?

We need ideas, songs, poems, film, images, dance, liturgies. We will ‘curate’ these in advance and include as many as we can. HOWEVER- this is about community, so we need you to bring your ideas, not just to send them. We will make the event together.

We have some very limited funding, and the offer of some accommodation. We don’t want money to be an obstacle for anyone.

This is the start of a new thing. Come and help shape it. On saturday we want to explore ideas together- to talk of Poesis and dream of how art and spirituality move togther and miight lead us forward.

If this is interesting to you, what you can do is

This will not commit you to anything- we will keep you informed, that is all.

If you have ideas you want to talk through,or want to know more, or have questions, we would love to hear from you- you can get in touch via the website, or drop me a message via the comments below, or send me an e-mail at thisfragiletent@com

Antichrist…

Posted on March 1, 2025 by Chris Goan

I was thinking about the book of Revelation today – perhaps the most controversial book in that library of books that we know as the Bible. I grew up in a kind of religion that took this book and used it as a lens to understand world events, particularly (but not exclusively) what has happening in the middle east.

This was before all the current madness, stemming from things like the Left Behind series of books, and all the American Christian Zionism.

Back then, we had people like Hal Lindsay and The Late Great Planet Earth. It was the same stuff and it earned him a fortune.

I still know people who live within this bizarre world view, in which world events are viewed through a particular, modern, Capitalist and elitist interpretation of scripture. In some ways this is the first and ultimate of conspiracy theories- ground zero. All the ingredients are there- the special secrets that will open your eyes to ‘reality’, the sense of being part of a special selection, the cataclysmic alternatives, the network of others who see things like you do and constantly reinforce your world view.

There is also the unforunate side effect of how these ideas, now almost mainstream in the US, have made victims out of already oppressed people and become a wierd distraction for many at best, perhaps actually morally corosive.

Perhaps these ideas are even antichrist.

I will not be deconstructing end times eschatology in this post. If you are interested in digging deeper into this, then I would recommend this podcast;

Keith Giles – Ending the End Times (N264)

Back to my cogitations on Revelation. I was thinking about how we might (as with Keith Giles’ account) better approach this book as a confusing veiled analogy of the danger of Empire.

How powerfull, charismatic and despotic individuals can first seem like messiah, but then turn out to be beasts.

We do not have to look far to see examples of these kind of individuals. Ones for whom death, destruction, exploitation and subjugation are just political tools, used casually for personal power and profit.

But I will not name any person ‘Antichrist’. I have heard Christians name many people this way over the years. The Pope, Gorbachev, Putin to name but a few.

What I think I can call antichrist are those things that are against the teachings of Jesus – those things that are contrary to a movement towards goodness otherwise known as ‘the Kingdom of God’.

There seems to be a particular kind of antichrist-ness that uses the Bible as a means to achieve its aim. I find myself loathing this most of all – Jesus did the same. He seemed to reserve a special kind of anger for the religious people who were users, profiteers, division-creators, victim-blamers and hate dealers. Think about these examples;

The Sermon on the Mount:Jesus directly challenges the teachings of the Pharisees by emphasizing the importance of inner motives and true righteousness over outward actions.

“Woes upon you, scribes and Pharisees”:In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus delivers a series of pronouncements condemning the religious leaders for their hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

Cleansing the Temple:A dramatic act where Jesus drove out those selling animals and money in the temple, criticizing their commercialization of a sacred space.

There is danger here of falling into that same old dualistic us/them, good/bad, holy/profane trap in which we retire into a trench built of sandbags full of our own rightness. But despite this danger, after conversations this week I am going to say this. Christians have no monopoly on Christ. We are all capable of being antchrist. This is true in the small things and the big things.

Lets subjugate everything to love, to kindness and to compassion – particularly towrds the weak, the poor, the broken. Anything else is empire. Anything else is antichrist.

Things like this

Indigenous spirituality 1 – can we learn from where we came from?

Posted on February 13, 2025 by Chris Goan

Australian Aboriginal rock art, 28 000 years old

A few months ago, I started a conversation with some people about indiginous spirituality. I had this itch that I wanted to scratch to do with how the Celtic tradition that I had found so deeply compelling might have some things in common with other indigenous spiritualities, so I reached out, looking for others who had connections and knowledge that I lacked.

Celtic idigenous traditions

My quest faced lots of problems. Firstly, reaching a definitive understanding of my own tradition is far from easy. The indigenous religion of the Celts stretches back thousands of years into myth and legend so it is hard enough to say much that is certain, and even harder to understand meanings that belong to a former culture and time. What little is known about the pre-Christian Celts mostly comes to us through highly questionable records of an occupying Roman Empire. Christianity came to these islands and first assimilated, then colonised the tradition, burying it under layers of ‘progress’. Some have tried to tell the Celtic story anew in order to make it meaningful – to me and others – but it can be hard to tease apart the facts from the fancy.

Perhaps this is part of the appeal to spiritual nomads and outsiders to institution like me. What we know as ‘the Celtic wisdom traditoin’ has a malleability that allows us to make it fit into whatever we want it to fit. It has subjective utility, but might be seen to lack authentic objectivity. In acknowledging this reality, it is then for each of us to decide whether the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

For me, they most certainly do. Perhaps this is because I am a poet, more driven by spirituality of the mystical kind. Travelling in this tradition connects me with something visceral deep inside. It is a ‘feeling’ as much as an intellectual acceptance. I quite understand why friends of mine, more driven by systematic interpretation of scriptures might take a more cautious view.

Like all religious technologies, we must travel with a certain caution, looking around for other perspectives- paying particular attention to those that Empire has marginalised.

Celtic cross, Inner Hebrides, West Scotland

What do we mean when we talk about the ‘Celtic wisdom tradition’ then?

We have some tantalising clues in the form of stories and legends. Mostly these are survival traditions out on the fringes of the Celtic world- which like all cultures colonised by empire, retreated to the distant edge of its former hearlands – Atlantic coasts and islands or to rural Ireland and Wales.

We can also have some clues about the nature of this tradition from what is absent and outcast from mainstream religion. By this, I mean things that have been suppressed and persecuted that once belonged to ordinary believers. I have said more of this before, here for example. Many others have described and lamented what happened when indigenous, authentic and local spiritualities become subject to the priorities of institution and Empire.

Finally we know it as a deep ‘yes’ that we feel in our souls when we hear about ideas like ‘original goodness’ and hear how all things are connected and held together.

Colonialism and Christianity

Across the world, almost all indigenous cultures have been subjected to our colonial expansion – from St Kilda to Sarawak, through Australia and the Americas and so on. The Celtic experience might have begun earlier, but in many ways it was the same. Religion was an essential part of the ‘civilision’ of ‘native’ cultures – a conquest of the spirit alongside economic or geographical.

There is a problem here for followers of Jesus, in that Christianity has often been the religion of the worst and most oppressive forms of colonialism. I think however that the Celtic experience might heip us to decolonise Jesus from the religion that was made in his name. If we are right to describe Celtic Christianity as an assimilation of a the teachings of Jesus with pre-existing ideas, in such a way as to deepen and give further shape to the connections to earth and spirit, then we might conclude that this version of Christianity did not have at least some of the oppressive overtones that came later. Perhaps colonialism was done to Christianity as much as facilitated by it.

This does not get Chrsitianity off the hook. It remains a religion of the middle east, defined and propogated by the West, that grew and expanded because of the pursuit of Empire and profit.

Perhaps we should burn it all down and start again… but where do we start? How far back do we need to go? Whose teachings and example might be most helpful? Is there really a purer, less compromised, older and more true indigenous spirituality that we can still encounter?

This is still my quest, and it led to me reaching out towards some other people who were trying to make sense of the spirituality they were encountering via indigenous people in their parts of the world- two very different parts of Australis, Canada and Middle England. It has been an interesting journey so far… five white people, trying to make sense of black, brown and red religion.

Can we make connections with other indigenous cultures?

Part of my motivation fot this journey has been a desire to remake/rediscover a religious story that was more earth-connected, more able to provide us with a mass movement away from the damage we are doing to eco-systems. It was this ‘earth connectedness’ I felt in my Celtic roots that seemed to find echoes in other indigenous traditions – connections to land and place, to animals and holy mountains, to the spirit in other things. At least, this is what I had heard glimmerings of in films and books.

Perhaps there was more than this. I started to wonder if all the condemnation of ‘primative’ religion I had grown up with – which was characterised as animistic, or pagan, or pantheistic – had lost some things that really mattered. We were told of the foolishness of a belief that trees or rocks or lizards have spirits. How backwards to worship simple totems or forest spirits. After all, we have the wisdom of the Bible. Look where that got us.

I remembered well the simple goodness of Bob Randall’s Kanyini;

I first encountered Bob as a commentator on cultural breakdown, whilst I was working as a social worker amongst men and women in mental health services, within broken communities in the UK, not Australia. Back then, any implications for religion seemed secondary. Now they seem inseperable.

But in the face of so much variety, so much diversity, is it really possible to make any general statements about indigenous spirituality? Can we claim that it is more ‘earth connected’ or more authentically human? Is it ‘better’ than what we have have experienced in our religious institutions?

This is the conversation I have been having with my four friends from far away – more of this to come.

I will leave you with a quote from the First Nations Version New Testament. This is a book written in English by a first nations pastor in America, working first with prisoners, later with others trying to reconcile the words of the Bible with their own culture and it’s colonial history. Here are the beatitudes, through first nations eyes.

It is the same, but also very different.

BLESSINGS OF THE GOOD ROAD Matthew chapter 5

3“Creator’s blessing rests on the poor, the ones with broken spirits. The good road from above is theirs to walk.

4“Creator’s blessing rests on the ones who walk a trail of tears, for he will wipe the tears from their eyes and comfort them.

5“Creator’s blessing rests on the ones who walk softly and in a humble manner. The earth, land, and sky will welcome them and always be their home.

6“Creator’s blessing rests on the ones who hunger and thirst for wrongs to be made right again. They will eat and drink until they are full.

7“Creator’s blessing rests on the ones who are merciful and kind to others. Their kindness will find its way back to them—full circle.

8“Creator’s blessing rests on the pure of heart. They are the ones who will see the Great Spirit.

9“Creator’s blessing rests on the ones who make peace. It will be said of them, ‘They are the children of the Great Spirit!’

10“Creator’s blessing rests on the ones who are hunted down and mistreated for doing what is right, for they are walking the good road from above.

11“Others will lie about you, speak against you, and look down on you with scorn and contempt, all because you walk the road with me. This is a sign that Creator’s blessing is resting on you. 12So let your hearts be glad and jump for joy, for you will be honored in the spirit-world above. You are like the prophets of old, who were treated in the same way by your ancestors.

SALT AND LIGHT

13“As you walk the good road with me, you are the salt of the earth, bringing cleansing and healing to all. Salt is a good thing, but if it loses its saltiness, how will it get its flavor back? That kind of salt has no worth and is thrown out.

14“As you walk the road with me, you are a light shining in this dark world. A village built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15No one hides a torch under a basket. Instead it is lifted up high on a pole, so all who are in the house can see it. 16In the same way, let your light shine by doing what is good and right. When others see, they will give honor to your Father—the One Above Us All.

FULFILLING THE SACRED TEACHINGS

17“When you hear my words, you may think I have come to undo the Law given by Drawn from the Water (Moses) and the words of the prophets. But I have come to honor them and show everyone their true meaning. 18I speak from my heart, as long as there is a sky above and an earth below, not even the smallest thing they have said will fade away, until everything they have said has found its full meaning and purpose.

Remaking religion 7: a return to that word ‘hermaneutic’…

Posted on January 31, 2025 by Chris Goan

This is a continuation of a series of posts in which I have been grappling with the religion I have inherited but often find myself deeply at odds with. I have this idea that what is happening to Christianity in the western world is not an end, but a transition. Lord knows, we need our holy stories more than ever to lead us towards better, to inspire the next generation and make leaders out of the old one. In these posts, I have been trying to describe what I think the shape of this transition might look like, sometimes through observation and discussion with others and sometimes by striving to get beyond my cynical frustration and letting loose hopeful imagination.

You can find the old posts by using the search box above- try ‘remaking religion’ as your search criteria…

…or if you are not in the reading mood then we have discussed some of the issues on a podcast, here.

Hermaneutic

I have spoken about this word on this blog over the years. I have usually tried to define it this way; the set of googles/telescope through which you view the world.

The optical distortions within these goggles- acknoledged or not – affect what we see and how we understand what we see.

I think this word is central to how we approach any renewal efforts towards religious story making.

I will start with a confession – I have developed a bit of a youtube habit. I would like to pretend that this arises from my deep interest in ideas- philisophy, economics, history, sociology, religion etc., but the algorithm does not lie. It knows me better than I know myself. Each twitch of the finger over the remote control is recorded as if as my unguarded conscience. So it is that alongside some material that does relate to high minded pretentiousness, there is a whole lot about car renovation, cricket, metal detecting, oppositional American politics, sailing and all sorts of other nonsense which allows me to switch off and not think. However, the algorithm sometimes serves up pure gold and the other day this came in the form of a video from the Centre for Action and Contemplation, of Richard Rohr talking about how Jesus used and quoted scripture.

Now perhaps you would have skipped along the feed towards something less cerebral – I almost did but I gave it a try, as much to save it for later. Instead I watched the whole thing, all one hour and eight minutes, despite all the other things I should have been doing.

It turns out that Richard Rohr – who I believe offers a vital prophetic, apastolic perspective to our generation – had things to say that were of great importance to my quest for a renewal of religion. He does this with a playful gentle kindness that always makes me listen all the harder. Here is the video in question;

There is so much about what RR has to say here that I find myself saying a soul-deep YES to… but towards the beginning he says something like this;

You must define and clarify tour hermeneutic- your science of interpretation. If you don’t have a consistent hermeneutic, you can make scripture say whatever you want. If we don’t make clear at the beginning how we approach scripture and the way we give it authority, then we are really not worth listening to because it will just end up being ‘opinion’. You will then just find texts that affirm your opinon.

Richard Rohr

Even the most faithful of my critics – with much justification – might point to this Remaking Religion series and accuse me of doing exactly what RR warns us against. I am expressing opinions then, if I seek to anchor this in scripture at all, then I do so only in ways that justify my opinions.

Some might chucle and suggest that my hereneutic is youtube!

Perhaps my critical friends might go even further than this, and point out that my failure to base most of my arguments on scripture is indicative of my wearyness, my cynicism towards the scripture itself and there would be truth in this criticism. I feel as though I have escaped from what I now view as a a prison in which the iron bars were made out of scripture. No wonder then that I, and others like me, are less interested in ‘proving’ or ‘evidencing’ truth based on narrow versions of scripture because the whole idea of ‘biblical authority’ feels like a prison gate. Having said that, any cursory read of this blog will notice that I am certainly not done with the bible, neither do I in any way reject the treasure and wisdom it contains.

What RR does in this video – and many others have done alongside him – is hold a mirror up to the religious traditions we were parented by in our faith and in doing so, pointing out that they too had substantial unconscious bias arising from their hermaneutics. They too then backwards interpreted scripture in such a way as to confirm these biases.

Worse than this, the bigger and more ‘successful’ these hermeneutics became, the more invisible they were, the more unasailable, the more they were given the authority of ‘truth’. The more they were seen as coming directly from God himself, as if on a velvet cushion from the sky. (Strange then, that this truth often seemed to fit well with a set of priorities that confirmed the power structure of the empires they grew within and continued to support.)

The continuing attempt to preserve the crumbling remains of the 13thC Dunkeld Cathedral

What do we do with this insight?

What might it mean as we try to remake our religion in our shifting changing context?

I think we have to refuse to get back in theological prison, and instead start to use scripture in a very different way, which involves reading it through a deliberately different hermeneutic – one that remains faithful to tradition, but free from it also.

JESUS

RR does a brilliant job in trying to describe how Jesus approached scripture, and how this seems radically different to the way we have read it. Selective quoting from just 4 OT books are recorded in the gospels- sometimes miss-quotes! Actively disagreeing/wrestling with scripture

HIERARCHY OF TRUTH

As Pope Francis puts it, not all truth is equal. Some comes first. Not every sentence in scripture can or should be given equal merit as if it were heavenly law.

INCLUSION

Jesus always includes. Critique the in-group, make the outsider the hero.

MERCY

Always Jesus started with love, continued with love and ended with love

PEOPLE OVER DOCTRINE

I loved the way that RR described the difference it makes when we engage with theology though connection to people as opposed to approaching people through theology.

PRINCIPLE OVER FINE PRINT

Back to that hierarchy of truth thing- if we can ‘prove’ something using ancient scriptural texts then we must also subject that text to the bigger principles that the text contains. We know this as Christians because that is what Jesus did.

Remaking religion 5: mission…

Posted on November 14, 2024 by Chris Goan

I am just back from a late Autumn canoe trip on Loch Arkaig, a place of sublime beauty, lined with ancient woodland and high mountains. We stayed in a bothy maintained by the Mountain Bothy Association, who make it freely available to the wide community of walkers, climbers and paddlers. There were four of us, and amidst the usual profanity and age-related moans and grouns we spent a lot of time talking about things that mattered. (I made a short video about the woods, here.)

In many ways, this landscape captures the best of what the Scottish landscape and history has to offer. The huge expanse of the mountains around a twelve mile long loch. Wild boar, deer, eagles, Ospreys (who had left for warmer places when we were there.) The Caledonian pine forest there feels holy, in the way it demonstrates connectedness, but also what being there does to me deep inside my chest.

Approaching St Columba’s isle – Island Columbkill or Chalum Cille – Loch Arkaig

Out in the loch is a very small island with the remains of a chapel so old that no-one knows when it was built. It is known as St Columba’s chapel, and the island as St Columba’s island – who knows, it may well have a connection to one of the saint’s missionary journeys.

I always find myself wondering about what motivated Columba and his fellow Irish missionary monks. What problems were they trying to solve? Was it always about saving souls? Did they see themselves as right and the pagan world they set off towards as wrong? The assumption in the old stories always seems to be that these questions had obvious answers. Of course they were ‘right’, and of course those who had not encountered the Christian story needed to hear it. In a black and white world, colour is confusing. Better not to see it.

But perhaps I judge Columba (and his generation) too harshly, because their mission was not the same as those that came later – or at least I don’t think so. Theirs was a mission of peace to a world of tribal/clan conflict. What came later was much worse. Celtic Christianity developed and flowed amongst the culture and traditions of its time – perhaps even sitting alongside older spiritualities rather than replacing them. There is a much longer conversation to be had about this, but my point here is to wonder what might be the mission that religion would/could send us on now. What problems might/must we engage with? What cultural context might/must shape our mission?

It is worth saying right now that the religion we are largely leaving behind continues to make mission. I have been (rightly) critical of some – the legacy of which has left toxic stains across the world. Those kinds of missions had as much to do with cultural and economic conquest as they did with religion. They were a product of empire, a means of colonisation and subjugation. But despite this dark legacy, there have always been people motivated by their faith who have become activists of a different kind- peace makers, feeders of strangers, animal lovers, adventurers. Even now, if you look to the workforce of charities around the world – from our city streets to the furthest flung war zones – you will find that an outsized proportion who are there because of their religion. We should celebrate these people, and the way that faith has sent them on missions of healing and goodness.

My strong feeling is that people of faith have a duty – we might even say a religious obligation – to engage hopefully and critically with the context in which we are living. This means bringing as much passion, integrity and energy to bear as we can, illuminated by a set of principles not of this world (not of empire) but of another, sometimes known as ‘the Kingdom of God’.

This might mean opening our eyes to the spirit of our age, and exposing it to a different story- to the considerations of the Kingdom of God. At a time of widening inequlaity, of climate breakdown and mass extinction, of war-by-drone waged on defenseless children, we surely do not have to look very far…

This Kingdom of God always had a different set of priorities – above all, it was a call towards living in compassionate community with each other and with the beautiful world we are part of. In so many ways this simple, radical message was always at odds with the logic of empire, and as such, the counter-cultural part of the message was often reduced to a far less problematic priority of personal individual sins – particularly sexual sins.

Furthermore, the dualistic message that the old story was bound up in (saved/unsaved, evil/holy, sacred/profane) was never a good fit with the Jesus story, let alone the indigenous religion of the Jews. It was, however, a good fit with the logic of Roman exceptionalism (or all the other empire exceptionalisms that have followed since.) It has been so easy to forget this inside the small rooms we have made out of our personal religion – to imagine ourselves as special, and anyone outside our ‘chosen-ness’ as dwelling in darkness.

But this takes me back to the first post in this series, which is to wonder how a (religious) story might inspire action – or mission.

If we embraced that part of our tradition that calls us back towards connection to the earth – with our non human brothers and sisters – what missions might this inspire?

If we embraced that part of our tradition that calls us back towards radical inclusion of the outcast and outsiders, how might we use our homes and communal spaces?

If we embraced that part of our tradition that calls us back towards honouring the poor what will that mean for our comfort and our bank balances? When will we have enough? What will we share with those who have less and how will we share it?

If we embrace that part of our tradition that calls us to make peace with our enemies, then how will be relate to those around us? How will we hold the war-mongers to account?

And if these are the priorities of our religion as it seeks to make a mission in our broken and hurting world, then what collective rituals and practices might assist us, encourage us and inspire us? Where will we make our church, and what will it look like?

Mostly the mission this might send us on will be human-scale. Those who get to influence great events or act as major change agents have a rare and precious opportunity.

The rest of us use what power we can within our arms reach – and this is not a small thing. A mass movement of individuals can be more powerful than a King, but what might create this mass movement in an age of a million divisive voices screaming at us through all those little screens?

If not a religious story, committed to action that is as loving and truth-centred as we can make it.

There is nothing else worth living towards.

this fragile tent

a blog about small beautiful things

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