Spirited away: why the end is nigh for religion

November 4, 2004

Christianity will be eclipsed by spirituality in 30 years, startling new research predicts. Our correspondent reports on the collapse of traditional religion and the rise of mysticism

IN THE beginning there was the Church. And people liked to dress up in their best clothes and go there on Sundays and they praised the Lord and it was good. But it came to pass that people grew tired of the Church and they stopped going, and began to be uplifted by new things such as yoga and t’ai chi instead. And, lo, a spiritual revolution was born.

It is unlikely that you, the average punter going to your aromatherapy or meditation group this evening, imagine that you are revolutionising the sacred landscape of Britain. But, little by little, you are.

Study after study appears to prove that people are increasingly losing faith in the Church and the Bible and turning instead to mysticism in guises ranging from astrology to reiki and holistic healing. The Government, significantly, said this week that older people should be offered t’ai chi classes on the NHS to promote their physical and mental wellbeing.

More and more people describe themselves as “spiritual”, fewer as “religious” and, as they do so, they are turning away from the Christian Church, with its rules and “self last” philosophy, and looking inwards for the meaning of life.

Twice as many people believe in a “spirit force” within than they do an Almighty God without, while a recent survey hailed a revival of the Age of Aquarius after finding that two thirds of 18 to 24-year-olds had more belief in their horoscopes than in the Bible.

If you don’t believe it, take a walk around Kendal, Cumbria, population 28,000. Since the millennium dawned, the ultra-traditional home of the mint-cake has been the subject of a spiritual experiment. Linda Woodhead and Professor Paul Heelas, both specialists in religion at Lancaster University, chose the town to measure the growth of the “holistic milieu” and the decline of Christian congregational worship.

The conclusion of their new book, The Spiritual Revolution, is dramatic: Christianity will be eclipsed by spirituality in this country within the next 20 to 30 years. Many people believe that this “New Romantics” movement will prove more significant than the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

This is gloomy stuff for the traditional churchgoer. Only 7.9 per cent of the population now attends church, down from 11 per cent 20 years ago. Although holistic practices are still comparatively small (less than 2 per cent of the population nationally participate) it is the phenomenal rate of growth not just among the young but also the middle-aged and much older that is threatening to overshadow traditional churchgoing.

Kendal mirrors the national statistics with eerie precision: 2,207 people in the town — 7.9 per cent of the population — attend church on Sunday while 600 — 1.6 per cent of the population of the town and environs — take part in some kind of holistic activity.

During the 1990s, when the town’s population grew by 11.4 per cent, participation in the “new spirituality” grew by 300 per cent. Woodhead and Heelas contend that “mini revolutions” have already taken place, and point out that in Kendal the holistic milieu now outnumbers every single major denomination apart from Anglican. (There are 531 Roman Catholics, 285 Methodists and 160 Jehovah’s Witnesses.)

“If the holistic milieu continues to grow at the same linear rate that it has since 1970 and if the congregational domain continues to decline at the same rate that it has during the same period, then the spiritual revolution would take place during the third decade of the third millennium,” they write with prophetic zeal.

If you were searching for a symbol of this revolution, you need look no further than the United Reformed Church in Dent. This building was once the nucleus of the Christian community of Dent, a quintessentially English village a few miles outside Kendal. But over the years apathy crept in and the congregation declined until it was down to one. To raise money, the church hired out its old schoolroom as a spiritual meditation centre. Local interest in meditation ballooned. When the church was forced to sell the building the meditation group bought it and refurbished it. Now it is flourishing where the old church failed. One of its trustees is a Church of England warden.

So what does meditation have that conventional worship does not? Neutrality, suggests Elizabeth Forder, who runs the centre. “We are not affiliated to any religion and there is no belief system imposed on anybody here,” she says. “I was brought up a Christian, but it held no real meaning for me. I would class myself as a universalist, believing that all religions offer the same end. At its simplest, meditation is giving the body and mind a very deep level of rest, freeing us to be ourselves.” She mentions an 87-year-old man who used to belong to the congregation and now meditates regularly.

If disaffected churchgoers are seeking neutrality, they are also in flight from judgment. “I don’t want to be preached at any more”, “I’m sick of being made to feel guilty” or “I don’t need to be told how to live my life,” people will say when asked why they stopped attending church. And when they speak of their spiritual malaise, they use the language of the therapist’s couch. One Kendal woman in her forties summarised her spiritual shift thus: “A one-hour service on a Sunday? It’s not really enough time to address your self-esteem issues, is it? I didn’t find any help in the churches. I found it in a 12-step programme. That was the start of my personal journey.”

Critics will say that this is merely the end product of a prosperous me-me-me society that has encouraged navel-gazing and pampering of the self via routes ranging from personal therapy to facial massage. This is too simplistic, insist Heelas and Woodhead. “It is standard to lash this kind of thing and cite it as evidence of the narcissistic self,” says Woodhead. “But I would say it is inaccurate to say that people are doing this just for pleasure. Trying to become yourself but better through your relationships with others is a very noble activity.”

SOURCE: Times Online (UK)