Anniversary Service
BY REV LINDA HART
The headlines were hard to resist for someone like me: ‘Religion may become extinct in 9 nations!’ The BBC proclaimed it so it must be true, right? The study, if you missed this piece of news, says that in nine countries the rise of people who claim to be ‘unaffiliated’ with any religion is rising at such a rate that within a very short time, there will be no real religious presence there. Most of the countries listed are not especially surprising. In general they are secular countries not historically identified with religious belief. The list includes the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Finland, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand. Surprising – to me at least – are Canada and Ireland as countries where this particular predictive tool suggests that religion is in steep decline.
Religion, say the BBC in their provocative way, will become extinct in these places. It will cease to be, so they say.
The data from the United Kingdom seem to be equally compelling in suggesting that religion is in steep decline here, too. The British Social Attitude Survey has found that those who claim no religious affiliation has risen to 51% in 2009. Only 43% of the people surveyed identified as Christian. Just for comparison, 86% of people in the US and 92% of Italians report that they have a religious affiliation.
When you split this out for age, it becomes even a bit more stark. Around 25% of pensioners claim that they have no religious affiliation. When you look at 18 to 24 year olds, nearly 2/3 make the same claim.
Some of the information about the Church of England is startling if not entirely surprising. In 2009, only 20% of the population as a whole identified themselves as members of the C of E, and only 49% of those people never attend a service. One wonders what it means to be a member. Only 8% attend weekly services. The numbers are startling to me, even though I know that the state church is in the same sort of decline that any other church in this country experiences.
More generally, 62% of people in Britain never attend a religious service. Seventeen percent report that they attend monthly. There are some who estimate that the number of people who attend services at all will decline to 5% of the British population by the year 2015.
If you take the word of the British Humanist Association, the half life of religion here is one generation. It may be that in 20 years time religion may be an interesting artifact in much of Europe and certainly within the United Kingdom.
This is perhaps not the happy news you expected to hear coming to the Anniversary service this morning.
There are a few bright bits to lift up out of this news, however. The first bit is to note that just by being in this room this morning, you’re special. You’re one of an elite group. Only 17% attend services monthly. And if you come weekly, well, you’re in an even more select bunch. For all its dismal feel, this information should remind you of just exactly how special you are. That’s very special.
The second bright spot to lift up for you to consider is that while they say religion is dying, what they mean is that organised religion is in decline. Fortunately for we Unitarians, being organised hasn’t ever been our strongest suit. Don’t care for organised religion? We’re the place for you!
But perhaps you already know that. Perhaps it is just that sort of disorganisation that draws you here.
I say this in a bit of jest, of course. We find ourselves very much in the context of the survey data and the predictive models. Unitarians are very much affected by these trends, by the steep decline that I’ve been talking about.
For the first time that I can remember, the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, our central organisation, published the number of members each of our 160 congregations claimed. The high proportion of churches that claim fewer than 10 members is stunning, and there are few churches that have the look of health and growth. Without comparison numbers (how many did they certify last year? 5 years ago? 20 years ago?) it is impossible to offer any well grounded analysis, but I suspect we could all agree that a high number of churches that have 7 or 8 members does not signify a strong and vigorous religious movement.
Here’s what I think, though. I think that if religion had a voice that it could use to speak up for itself, it might well repeat the words offered by Mark Twain upon hearing that his obituary had already been published in a prominent New York newspaper. ‘Reports of my death,’ he said, ‘are greatly exaggerated.’
And religion’s end may well have been greatly exaggerated, too.
Some of this comes down to the way we use words, too. Religion as it is generally used often refers to a specific set of beliefs ascribed to by an identifiable group of believers. So when researchers say that religion will become extinct, they are referring to the organised manifestation of religion. Churches, they might say, will cease to exist. Places of worship will be more and more transformed into office buildings or high priced flats, and old hierarchies will need to figure out how to make use of their facilities making them more and more into community centres that host dance classes and lectures.
But religion as it is best understood isn’t about the list of beliefs you must ascribe to, it isn’t about attending church on Sundays, and it isn’t about identifiable believers. Religion as it is best understood is the collection of ideas and understandings that help us to find meaning in our lives. Religion is the ever changing assumptions that we make that help to make sense of the world, and help us to live in it with integrity and depth. It won’t die because it is a part of how human beings operate in the world. ‘A person will worship something,’ said Emerson as he cautioned us to attend to those things to which we give our ultimate trust.
Like the trees in our reading this morning, there will still be religion when the institutions that we think of as religion have faded away. People will still try to make sense of their world, people will always be seeking for meaning in their lives. The question for the future isn’t if there will be religion, but how there will be religion.
For millennia, religion has been manifest in gatherings of people who shared particular ideas and beliefs, and who had ways of acknowledging and celebrating those ideas and beliefs. Whether it was dancing the sun back to northern latitudes, or sharing the bread and wine of communion, or saying particular words and singing particular songs, or visiting shrines and offering prayers, religion – particularly in the west, I think, has been a matter of communities getting together and affirming their identity, confirming their particular religious way in the world.
And as what we do today is different than those from whom we have inherited this faith, this building, this way of being religious in the world, what will come in the future will be different from what we do. The question isn’t ‘will there be religion?’ but ‘what will it be?’, and most important for us, ‘what can we do to shape it for the future?’
It may be that our religious ancestors in this place didn’t ask the question ‘what shall we leave for the future?’ in this same way. The small group that gathered for discussion in 1888 sought for themselves this way in religion, a way that asks that we use all our faculties, our hearts and minds and senses and intuition to come to understand what we believe. Their trust that this way in religion needed an institutional home caused them to build this building, to make a proper place for gathering and exploring together in worship and lectures and poetry reading and social events.
Our ancestors were confronted with some of the same troubles that churches across the country face now: dwindling resources, not enough money, a flagging congregation. They found the strength to persevere, to keep this place alive, to enable us to find it, find this faith, find this community.
And the question that is in front of us as a religious community is how shall we keep faith with the future, how shall we marshal what opportunities we have for the world that is coming – a world we can no more imagine than did our predecessors.
The way of religion that is found in churches and communities such as ours may well be fading from the world, though I wouldn’t count on it. The death of God, the death of religion has been predicted for centuries if not longer, and still it persists. Yet in each generation, the institution must be created anew to serve the present needs, to adapt to present circumstances. What shall be our way into that future?
It is ours to shape.
Amen.
Prayer
Spirit of love and life,
who is ever with us,
present especially this day,
We gather with these beloved companions,
we gather in the warmth of love,
in the spirit of truth,
in the hope of peace.
We gaze to our past,
and give thanks for those whose vision
makes our gathering possible.
We give thanks for the hours of time they gave,
the resources they spent,
and give thanks for the
comfort and assurance,
the wisdom and inspiration
that came from their time here.
Even in our years, there are many who have given
of themselves that we might be here.
Especially on this day of celebration, though
we gaze to our future,
may we find our way,
to offer to the coming world,
what we most cherish:
the importance of the search, of the journey,
the blessing of community that supports and challenges,
the goodness of gathering,
and the gift of faith.
May we find together,
the way forward,
welcoming those who are in need of our vision,
sharing hope and love,
walking together this path of life,
transforming and being transformed
each step of the way.
AMEN