God is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith Will Change the World by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge
Allen Lane, £25
God is getting the cold shoulder in Britain, not because of doubt but indifference. We’re just not that into Him any more and John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, respectively editor and Washington bureau chief of The Economist, give us the figures to prove it.
Sunday attendance has fallen to 871,000 and half the nation’s Anglican churches have fewer than 50 regulars. By 2030 that will fall to 350,000 which means another 6,000 churches will be turned into flats or shops. As CEO of the CofE, Rowan Williams appears to be the boss of a brand reaching its sell-by date.
But such pessimism, according to this splendid book, is confined to Western Europe where we are old fashioned fuddy duddies when it comes to religion. In the 19th century Europeans embraced four secular faiths – science, culture, socialism and the nation-state – and we are still in that mindset. We worship the likes of Goethe and Beethoven with the reverence the religious reserve for their prophets.
But for nations which have made the spiritual leap into the 21st century, God is back. There are more Christians in China than members of the Communist Party and almost as many Muslims as in Saudi Arabia. By 2050 China will be the world’s biggest Muslim nation as well as its largest Christian one. Pentecostalism has shattered the Roman Catholic monopoly of religion in South America with 24 million followers in Brazil alone.
Think megachurch and the image which most usually comes to mind is of a Wal-Mart size happy clappy supermarket in an American suburb, but five of the world’s ten largest ones are in South Korea. The Yoido evangelical church in Seoul has 830,000 members and is growing at the rate of 3,000 a month.
American politicians can wear their religiosity on their sleeves and are more comfortable in their own skins for it. Atheist Alastair Campbell told Tony Blair we don’t “do God” so, when asked by a BBC interviewer if he had prayed with George Bush, Blair denied it. I wonder if the apostle Peter and cocks crowing went through his mind? He certainly looked embarrassed.
Treat religion as a business – as in America where priests are salesmen and worshippers are customers – and it will thrive. The problem with an established church like the Church of England with its ancient structures and parish freeholds and guaranteed stipends is that no one has to try too hard. If US clerics don’t get bums on pews they don’t get paid.
This has led to priests as “pastorpreneurs” who serve God with one eye on Mammon. American churches compete to provide “total service excellence” with megachurch complexes offering everything from basketball to banks, pharmacies, schools and counselling groups within their neat, manicured lawns. We may scoff, but can it be so wrong to offer such a comprehensive spiritual and social welfare package and save the taxpayer money?
If we grasp little of what makes faith tick in America we know even less about Islam, making the mistake of lumping all Muslims together and so upsetting the lot instead of just a radical few. A theological understanding of the difference between Shias and Sunnis is essential to any political understanding of the Middle East. “Divide and defuse is a more sensible policy than unite and inflame,” the authors suggest.
And the assumption that freeing up repressive religious societies will lead to the adoption of a less threatening secularism is not borne out by the evidence. When you give people the freedom not to worship they often use it to extend their choices of which religions to worship.
Good works of non-fiction tend to be described as well-researched and beautifully written. This is beautifully researched and well-written. The prose is clear and straightforward and the authors endeavour to give the facts an added extra. Take this example about the growth of American evangelicalism: “By 1850, the Evangelical churches, taken together, employed twice as many people as the post office, then the most important instrument of the federal government. They even delivered more letters.”
That’s one way of getting God by the front door.
Nigel Nelson
