A Deeper Look At The Recent Census On Religious Belief

According to the headline-grabbing census, there has been a 5.5 million drop in the number of Christians in the UK, equating to a 17% fall in the number of people who identify as Christian. Apparently, it is the first time in a census of England and Wales that fewer than half of the population have described themselves as Christian. Humanists and secularists have been buoyed by this census, celebrating the news that, on the surface, we seem to live in a post-Christian society. But surface-level thinking is often deceptive, because it doesn't delve down into the real depths of the water.

Once we dive in, we'll find several key points being missed. In the first place, census results are only as good as the questions being asked. Belief and faith are complex propositions attached not just superficially to what people say, but to how people act, the values they adhere to, and the obvious deeper spiritual longings that play out alongside those actions. In the second place, for the past 100 years there has been a clearer distinction emerging between the identity of a British person as a cultural Christian and as a practising Christian who accepts Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. This distinction has been more carefully eroded away in recent decades, I'd suggest, where the number of people who call themselves Christian may have decreased as a proportion of the population, but the ones that do call themselves Christian continue to profess an active faith in the Lord Jesus, where the real decline is probably more in the demise of 'cultural Christianity'.

In the third place, despite what people claim to believe in a census, we cannot live in a post-Christian country, because Christ IS the Truth. All claims of post-truth of any kind, Christian or otherwise, are false by matters of degree. That is, people always have and always will act as though Christianity is true - in their underlying values, in their regard for truth over falsehood, for good over evil, for love over hate, for right over wrong, for marriage over divorce, for kindness over meanness, for grace and forgiveness over hostile resentment, for peace over war, the list goes on. Even if they don't consciously ascribe those qualities to a Christian underpinning, the fact is, Christ is the origin and the source of all goodness in the world. 

In one sense, of course, we've never had a Christian country in the world, because no nation has ever faithfully reflected scripture to the level that it could justifiably call itself Christian. But despite that acknowledgement, when it comes to human morals, behaviour, values and decisions, we are always acting out the Christian truths or departing from them, whether we like it and know it, or not. The cause of everything that's wrong in human society finds its origin, somewhere down the line, in not adhering to the values Christ espouses; and the cause of everything that's right in human society finds its origin, somewhere down the line, in adhering to the values Christ espouses. It is profound, but it is true - Christ's truth, love, grace, wisdom, goodness and sovereignty are the metric we use for all our value systems, because their origin is in the Creator of the universe. Irrespective of what the census reveals, we can be a post-Christian country only in what we claim to believe, not in how we structure our life and our acted-out values, because they are Christian. A swimming fish can claim to be dry, but it cannot convince those fish who swim alongside it who know full well they live in the ocean.

Finally, to make the point even clearer, let's return to the nature of asking questions, and see what the census would look like with questions fit for the depth and gravitas of a Christian faith. Consider if everyone in the UK answered the following questions:

1) Do you value truth more than falsehood?

2) Can you imagine a standard of values higher than values you could attain?

3) Do you fail every day to live up to the standards of Jesus?

4) Are you imperfect, and in need of forgiveness for the wrongs you've committed in your life?

5) Is a society that values good over evil, love over hate, right over wrong, marriage over divorce, kindness over meanness, grace and forgiveness over hostile resentment, and peace over war better than one that does not?

6) Would a God who lived as a man on earth, suffered and died for our sins in an act of supreme love and grace, and rose from the dead to give us eternal salvation, be a God with whom it would be good and beneficial to have a relationship?

These are all questions to which the vast majority of the population, thinking clearly, would answer a resounding YES!

Christianity and its concomitant truths and values are always alive and well in the world, because we are all created to know Christ, and we impute onto our lives a framework narrative in which we act as though Christianity is true. We act as though Christianity is true when we do good and bad, because both times we are showing the truth of the gospel - its truths shine a Divine light when we do good, and its truth pervades and nudges with the absence of light when we plunge ourselves into darkness. 

It is a shame that so many people in the UK now claim to have no Christian belief. But the good news is, every unbeliever in the UK is only one visit to church away from discovering Christ in action, or one profound book away from uncovering the gospel, or one influential Christian friend away from having their perspective changed, or one honest prayer away from having their life transformed by Christ.