England swings like a censor do

  • A church that can no longer hold the 4,000-plus wor­ship­pers? Hun­dreds lined up for the chance to hear a ser­mon? What’s this, some Bible belt revival? Not unless the Bible belt extends over the Atlantic Ocean*.

    Long con­sid­ered an aggres­sively sec­u­lar city, Lon­don has qui­etly become one of Britain’s most Chris­t­ian areas, going from the least obser­vant region in Britain in 1979 to the sec­ond most obser­vant today. Much of that resur­gence in piety is the result of the city’s expand­ing and devout immi­grant pop­u­la­tion. But there is also a grow­ing num­ber of young, highly edu­cated and mon­eyed Lon­don­ers — peo­ple such as Mum­ford — who are turn­ing to the church.

    I’m a lit­tle curi­ous what the immi­grant pop­u­la­tion is that has made such a dif­fer­ence. But of more inter­est is what it is that touched a new gen­er­a­tion of young Brits and soft­ened their hearts for the Gospel.

    It may also be able to openly dis­cuss issues with which Britain’s famously stuffy elite remain uncom­fort­able. Even in cases were all mate­r­ial wants are met, Gum­bel says, there remains a “spir­i­tual hunger” among London’s wealthy youth. “No mat­ter how nice your house or car is, there’s some­thing miss­ing,” he says. “If you go to the pub and ask what the mean­ing of life is, peo­ple will just laugh at you. But if you can find a group of peo­ple who are like you, and want to dis­cuss these ques­tions, it can be a pro­found experience.”

    There’s a les­son in that for us, I think. For some rea­son, it seems like the last thing peo­ple ever sus­pect when they’re con­sid­er­ing how to reach peo­ple for Christ. But in my expe­ri­ence, the more mate­ri­al­is­tic adults become, the more their chil­dren can see the gap­ing hole it leaves in their existence.

    (BTW, it occurs to me that young peo­ple might not get the ref­er­ence in the title. The song you want is this one.)


    Related posts:

    1. If Eng­land were Orthodox …
    2. Lovely San Diego
    3. Edin­burgh
    4. Death and vacations
    5. Cra­dle and con­vert Orthodox

    December 21st, 2008 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • s-p 12.21.2008

    Good post. I think most of us who were raised with “faith” espe­cially Chris­tian­ity shy away from dis­cussing ulti­mate issues when in fact many post mod­ern, unchurched peo­ple are totally com­fort­able talk­ing about them. I think we miss a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties because we’re ashamed/afraid.

  • Nancy

    As a for­mer Angli­can, I find this story tremen­dously encour­ag­ing. I par­tic­i­pated in sev­eral Alpha courses when I was Epis­co­palian and they were very pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences. Too bad we don’t have an Ortho­dox exquivalent.

  • Grace

    I agree. I’m an Anglophile, due in part to hav­ing spent early child­hood there, and I always have a soft spot in my heart for Eng­land and Great Britain. I have dearly hoped to hear of some seeds of Ortho­doxy that have found good soil there, but I don’t know how things really are. It’s very hard to get a read on things like that when you just visit as a tourist.

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