One of the reasons as to why there is a decline in the levels of church participation is the continued rise in cohabitation. Brierley (2006) study on the 2005 English Census had revealed that there was a steady rise of 5% in the number of ‘co-habitors’ from 1995 to 2005 (10% to 15%), he also estimates that in 2015 20% of the population will be following this trend (Brierley, 2006:2). There are several reasons as to why individuals, significantly the younger generation, choose this form in opposition to the traditional marriage. More and more people viewed it as a trial marriage with their sex life still being present, with “considerable postponement of marriage without loss of a convenient sexual partnership” (Davis, 1983: 38). However there is a particular emphasis on “sexual freedom” (Thatcher, 2002:10) as there is no matrimonial or civil contract which ties couples together.
The church promotes the traditional family structure of a nuclear family labelling it as ‘good Catholic family’ which forms of “an intact family of Dad, Mom and multiple kids” (Foley, 1995:55). This view marginalises all other forms of family structures, more some than others. The act of cohabitation before marriage has been frowned upon in Christianity principally by the Roman Catholic Church stating that cohabitation is “under the rubric of free unions” (Thatcher, 1999:105). As well as categorises those who co-habit “with adultery, divorce, polygamy and incest as grave offences against of marriage” (Thatcher, 1999:105). These statements from religious bodies provides a glimpse as to how, not only co-habitors, but all other forms of family structures prefer to live without religion due to the strict and rigid commands it follows and how not adhering to it is living by sin. It also shows the rejection of the churches’ traditional teaching by the members of society and prompts questions about the balance of reasons for it, vary from the inability of the churches to connect with people’s real experience.
An interesting discussion which had risen from the 2005 church census was that “around half of the churches have no 11 to 14 year olds attending and well over half have no 15 to 19 year olds” (Brierley, 2006). There are many reasons for why the current generation have rejected the church, but I shall discuss in the part of the essay the how youth programmes have profited from their loss. Hervieu-Leger (2000) reinforce this claim by stating that there has been an apparent broken link from the previous generations to the current generation’s “Christian chain of memory” (Hervieu-Leger, 2000) which has led to a loss of church involvement and “Chrisitan consciousness” (Collins-Mayo et al. 2010: 14,). Savage et al. (2006) argue however that the decline in church attendance amongst young people is not a recent occurrence and that it is a “continuation of a trend set by previous generations…(due to there being) a progressive atrophying of the churchgoing habit” (Savage et al. 2006: 14). The youth do not have the once assumed expectation to attend church gatherings, added with the “shortage of adults with the necessary knowledge and skills” (Savage et al. 2006: 14). It begs to differ how does the youth view the future generation without having resources in place to educate and nurture them.
Many of the commentators on youth and Christianity have made correlations between Grace Davie’s “believing without belonging” (1994) and this decline in youth attendance (Collin-Mayo et al. 2010: Hervieu-Leger, 2000). As Davie (1994) discusses how individuals may reject the church but however still maintain the core beliefs of Christianity. The younger generations face these repercussions and instead take action in the form of “vicarious religion” and view that the church is believing and practising on their behalf. It was evident that vicarious religion was in fact taking place, as individuals would use the churches services “on the rare occasions when a religious perspective was required” (Collins-Mayo et al. 2010: 10) for instance; in times of bereavement and illnesses. The younger generation in this case would not have to come in contact with these arrangement until they become “adults” so after marriage or when they have children (Stanton, in Arweck and Jackson (2014: 135)
Collins-Mayo et al. (2010) had researched 300 young people between the ages of 18 and 23 and what their relations and beliefs were in regards to the church and Christianity. They concluded that many young people had affiliated their beliefs with their “immanent faith” (Collins-Mayo et al. 2010: 33). Immanent faith plays a huge role in the lives of the youth, as they turn to their ‘family, friends and self” (Moynagh, 2012: 85) in order determine and validate their own beliefs as they consider them to anchors for “meaning, hope and purpose” (Moynagh, 2012: 85).
Collins-Mayo et al. (2010) found that youth programmes had “fostered only a passing interest” (Stanton, in Arweck and Jackson, 2014: 135) for Christianity as the younger generation were already content without religion in their day-to-day lifestyle. Evidently there is this ongoing theme of “present time-orientation” with the younger generation, as they would only look to achieve “happiness and fulfilment for the present time and near future” (Savage et al. 2006; ). They would become involved with the church to the extent where they are morally content with themselves, but they don’t feel obligated or see attended the church as a form of commitment just another layer of their lifestyle. This links back and is reinforced by Davie’s work (1994) as she discusses that one of the effect of secularisation is how society undergoes an observable, lifestyle change. She states how it has transformed “ from a culture of obligation or duty to a culture of consumption or choice” (Davie, 1994: ). Many Christians would attend church for a “short period…to fulfil a particular rather than a general need in life..(and) will continue as it provides what (they) want”
So the question you maybe asking is: why is there such a high percentage of Christians (72%, 2011 Cesus) and such a low level of church participation in the UK? How is there not a relationship between church participation and the number of Christians in the UK? The answer is that Christianity comes in many forms of beliefs and identities; ‘nominalist Christians’ (Day, 2011), Christians who ‘believe in belonging’ (Day, 2011) and Christians who believe ‘vicariously’ (Davie, 2007). I shall explore these concepts deeper and relate them to the younger generation in our society.
First of all the notion of “nominalism”, Day defines the concept of nominalism as someone who “…claims the name of Christian but has no authentic, personal, sin-forgiving and life changing relationship with Jesus Christ” (Day, 2011: 176). Christianity has once function in their life and that is “reinforcing familial, ethnic and social connections” (Vincett, 2013: 68). Nominalist Christians would only associate themselves as Christians in order use religion just to keep societal appearances, this ensures that they “fit in” when the occasion arises where they will be asked about their religious patterns, i.e. censuses and surveys. It is evidently clear that there is some tension amongst ‘practising’ Christians and nominalist Christians as to who and what is the “true sort” (Day, 2011: 177). It is contested argument as again it links back to what is a Christian believer, is the truer form measured by Sunday church attendance and how much significance one puts to their Christian belief.
Contrastingly, Winter and Smart (1993) study has shunned the concept of nominalism by stating that it provides nominalist Christians “merely a sense of cultural belonging to Western Christendom” (Winter and Smart, 1993: 641). Here it could be interpreted as that they are categorising them as a ‘mere’ breed of insignificance in western society as they place more significance to other forms of belonging such as; history, nationality, morality etc. (Day, 2011: 177)
The next part of the essay, I shall explore the term ‘believing in belonging’ coined by Abby Day (2011), which opposes Grace Davie’s ‘believing without belonging’ previously which was mentioned. Her study involved interviewing young individuals about their ‘belief(s)’ and where they would place significance in their lives on power, meaning and authority. Her findings had shown that individuals would choose religious identifications in terms of complementing their experiences as long as they had the “freedom to choose (the other) aspects of their lives” (Day, 2011: 48). She uses the concept of “cultural performativity” (Day, 2011: 48) to explain how individuals consider the culture of religion to be “acquired at birth and that what they believe is about facts, not symbols” (Day, 2011: 48). This imitates the core beliefs of the younger generation as they collectively believe that they who they are due to their experiences and what they know and have been brought up into.
Day’s research discusses in a greater context the results from the 2011 Census, as we mentioned earlier the “72% of the population identified themselves as Christian” (BBC, Census 2011). She uses these figures as a means of refuting the theory of secularisation and states how religion is still significant in society, however this figure can be interpreted as a false representation of contemporary Christianity in the UK. Even though the survey does show a high proportion of individuals still willing to call themselves Christian there are markers of religion such as; church participation which shows a considerable and continuous decline.
Last of all, Grace Davie’s ‘vicarious religion’ which is a rather useful concept for investigating religion contemporarily. It is viewed as complimenting her another piece of her work “believing without belonging”, trying to fill the void of the ‘complicated’ relationship between belief one has of a particular religion and their attachment to the organised religion. The definition of the concept is as follows, “the notion of religion performed by an active minority but on behalf of a much larger number, who not only understand but approve of what the minority is doing” (Davie: 2007: 22). Davie claims in her study that due to the substantial figures which shows the declining of church participation, majority of believers still view the church as acting on their behalf for in terms of belief and practice. She looks at how “churches and church leaders perform rituals on behalf of a wide variety of individuals and communities at critical points in their lives” (Reference). The critical points being times of birth where families share the ritual of baptism, during the exchanging of marriage vows and interestingly more and more individuals are contacting churches for funeral arrangements.
On this interpretation, the high rates of religious identification in surveys such as the census tell us little or nothing about the decline of belief in religion. The other explanation, most influentially advanced by Grace Davie, is that the phenomenon is just another aspect of the individualization of western societies, in which traditional communal institutions have lost their authority and people engage with culture on their own terms. On this view, the fall in church attendance cannot be taken as evidence of a corresponding loss of belief, rather, people continue ‘believing without belonging’.
To end on this secularisation has evidently been taking place throughout history but it has only been brought to alight, contemporarily, due to the effects of modernisation. For instance; the introduction of censuses has allowed us to make trends and correlation from the past 50 years and beyond. Even though the notion of secularisation has been contested, sociologists and historians return to the idea that society has been experiencing some form of a social process. Whether or not it has been short term or long term, religious beliefs and thinking has been declining. With the younger generation it has been evident that there is a separate occurrence along side secularisation, “individualisation”. ‘Vicarious religion’, ‘believing in belonging’ and ‘nominalism’ all point to the rise of the culture of consumption, with traditional, religious institutions losing their authority as individuals engage the world in search of an “experience.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/03/census_2001/html/religion.stm
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