The Census

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.

So the Christmas story was enabled by an Imperial Roman census.

The UK Government takes censuses too.  The one taken in 2011 disgorged some of its results just in time for Christmas.  Christian leaders have been hurrying to reassure the world that the results pertaining to the Christian Religion are really not bad at all despite appearances.

 

On TV a Venerable Lady from Norwich decried the statistic that it was the most godless place in Britain by beamingly reporting hundreds of people coming through the cathedral every week.  (In a misplaced cliché she added, "If this is the most godless city I dread to think what is happening in the others".  A sound bite that went a bit wrong I think).

 

A fellow Baptist or two have rejoiced that this indicates 'the end of Christendom'.  This is a little unfortunate as Christendom means something like 'where Christianity prevails' but I think they mean it is good that the country does not think itself Christian when it isn't.

 

You may want to look away now because what follows is going to be long and not pretty.

 

Detail from The Census in Bethlehem - Pieter Bruegel

My view is that these census results are appalling and nationally frightening. I want to love my country but this makes me very, very sad and ashamed to be British.  Yet it makes me even gladder that the grace of God reached me in this increasingly godless mess and has given me hope and a future.  It makes me ever more despairing of the prevalent evangelical idea that if we just change the morning service Tescos will empty and heaven will be filled with Britons.  We wouldn't have to pray, or weep, or do anything too heavy.

 

Rejoice at the end of Christendom? It is hard for me to understand how people that are consciously distancing themselves from the word 'Christian' are more fertile Gospel soil than those who do own the name.  I am not tee-total so I am a nominal drinker of alcohol.  In practice I go through many a year without drinking any alcohol at all.  If I now announce I am tee-total would that make me more likely to become a genuine drinker? 

 

Baptists should be careful of scorning these stats for another reason.  In the same ten years as covered by the census the Baptist Union reported that its total members, young people and children fell by - you've guessed it - 10-11%.  The census is telling our non-Christendom story too.

 

Hundreds visiting the Cathedral in Norwich? This hopeful anecdote seems to me to be a failure to grasp the significance of a fall of four million self-named Christians (11 percentage points) in just one decade.   Four million is half the population of London (or nearly all the population of Scotland).  Four million is way more than a normal national Sunday morning's Church attendance.  Numbers shuffling round a cathedral or dancing at a clappy conference are neither here nor there in comparison to this. 

 

Perhaps, like the Jerusalem temple in Jesus' day, the grand stones of the cathedral gave the Venerable woman a sense of unchanging confidence.  In which case (and before she becomes a bishop) she had better wake up.  59% is a truly amazing statistic.  When was the last time that less than 60% of Britons would have identified themselves as Christians?  We don't know.  But it was certainly well before Norwich Cathedral was built.  Maybe when Augustine began his Gregorian mission in the late 500s Celtic Christianity had not permeated to 60% though it certainly would have done in many localities.  And ever since those mid- to early first millennium days most people on these islands have, rightly or wrongly, said of themselves that they are Christians.   It is hardly an appropriate response to the turning back of a 1500 year identity in just ten years to celebrate hundreds of Cathedral visitors.

 

Thank God that these statistics came out in Advent.

 

I am part of a nation whose numbers shame us and our Redeemer.  I am also, by grace I believe, part of a number that cannot be subjected to a census.  Abraham couldn't do it when he looked up at the stars (Genesis 15:5), John couldn't do it in his heavenly vision (Revelation 7:9).  Even if not one single Briton followed Christ (as was once the case) the Church continues to be built until the Day.  I must not let my nation shape me.  I must pray and work for the glory of Another Country and a greater King.

 

Think of it like this.  Today the traffic in Wycombe was awful.  Roads that I familiarly purr along were clogged with the busyness of Christmastime and heavy rain.  Sometimes progress was OK, often it was very slow, occasionally no progress at all for a minute or two.  But I never went backwards.  And home was in no way diminished by the slowness of the journey.

 

Day by day, the Lord is building his Church to its completion, its homecoming.  It would be wonderful to progress quickly.  It is frustrating, almost despairing, to see progress stall to a halt in my particular district.  But day by day, year on year God fills more places and the Great Homecoming nears.

 

As I often think on my holiday journey to Cornwall in the summer - I'm fed up of this road  - but I'm not going to give up until I get there, because slow progress to vacation in Cornwall is a whole lot better than fast progress round the M25 to nowhere in particular.