for thinking Christianity is declining in the UK because the churches lost credibility and community while other faiths didn’t?

[LoveWFH]

This is not about belief in God versus no God. It is about institutions and what people experience on the ground. The Church of England in particular feels like a faded bureaucracy. Empty buildings. Clergy stretched thin. Services that feel performative or stuck in a time capsule. A lot of talk about tradition but very little that speaks to how people actually live now.

There is also the trust issue. Abuse scandals. Cover ups. Financial mismanagement. A sense that when the church fails it protects itself first and the vulnerable last. You can only ask people to suspend disbelief for so long when the institution itself looks morally compromised. Younger people especially are ruthless about hypocrisy and the church gives them plenty to work with.

Then there is the class and culture gap. Christianity in the UK often feels tied to establishment power and respectability. It does not feel like it belongs to ordinary people anymore. It feels like something you inherit rather than choose. Something you tick at a wedding or funeral rather than something that shapes your life. When belief becomes purely ceremonial it is already on life support.

By contrast other faiths seem to be growing because they are lived not just referenced. They have visible daily practices. Clear moral frameworks. Strong community networks. You see them meeting regularly supporting each other showing up for births deaths crises celebrations. There is structure and discipline but also belonging. For migrants especially faith communities replace the support systems the state no longer provides.

There is also confidence. Other faiths are not embarrassed by themselves. They do not constantly apologise for existing or dilute their beliefs in the hope of being liked. People are drawn to certainty in an uncertain world. Not cruelty or dogma but clarity. Christianity in the UK often sounds unsure of what it even stands for anymore beyond being inoffensive.

So AIBU for thinking this is not some mystery about secularism but a very predictable outcome of an institution that lost its moral authority community roots and sense of purpose while others doubled down on theirs?

Christianity is currently growing, especially in the young men in their 20s.

Abuse scandals I think are the main factor.

I think there's more than one reason for the decline of Christianity over the years. (I do note that there have been reports of it seeing a bit of an upsurge recently, but, I would say there's been a general decline in the amount of people who considers themselves Christians since at least the 1960s or so.)

So the reasons you list are probably part of it, but I do think there has generally been a decline in theistic belief overall (and spiritual beliefs generally). I'm a millennial and have been interested in alternative spirituality and alternative religions since the age of 16 or so (I'm now 37 and am a polytheist pagan and occultist.) It's my experience that not only were a lot of my peers not Christian, but they found the whole idea of any kind of mystical or spiritual beliefs incomprehensible. (This isn't a criticism, by the way, that's their viewpoint - I'm just making the point that it seemed to me that having spiritual views at all put me in a distinct minority amongst my generation.)

Christianity is growing in denominations apart from the CoE because they are Biblical and firm on what the Bible teaches.
The Anglican Mission in England churches that are part of GAFCON have a lot of ministers who walked away from the decaying CoE that's become apostate. There's an interest among the younger folk who are searching for real meaning in life, which is wonderful to see.

You’re broadly right as to the factors involved, but I think you’re underestimating what actually has been a sustained attack on Christianity over the past sixty years. It’s been absolutely hammered by opinion-formers of all kinds. We are herd animals more than we like to think, and this will have had a significant effect in putting people off. Though this might have run its course by now – while nobody had ever been shy for as long as I can remember about yaying atheism and naying Christianity, it’s interesting to me that this now seems to have reversed somewhat.

From an institutional point of view, one really significant underminer might be the rise of the welfare state. The charitable functions that aiui the church always fulfilled have been absorbed into state functions, which must have hollowed out a lot of what the church-as-institution actually did.

For me it was having it shoved down my throat every morning at school for 14 years.

Yep I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. I’m paid up communicant CofE but feel very dispirited. Especially on the class issue. Many vicars and lay people are snob ridden middle class introverts who don’t live the faith at all. Look at Welby. Bishops and the institutional hierarchy just recruit in their own image.

That snivelling woman who was front and centre of the post office scandal was ordained and yet was still happy to see the worst in people and make them suffer…

The gospel message is perfection and beautiful. The people delivering it in the CofE? Well many are just not fit for purpose.

Christianity in the UK often feels tied to establishment power and respectability. It does not feel like it belongs to ordinary people anymore

I don’t think it has ever felt like that? It has always been the state religion, with bishops sitting in the House of Lords, and even quite junior clerics were often the only person locally to have gone to university when a majority of people were illiterate agricultural and factory workers.

Absolutely and also used to essentially keep 'the rabble' in line. Literally put 'the fear of god' into them to make sure they kept in their place.

CofE felt really odd to me at school. I was alienated from any potential Christianity every Easter, when we'd sing the saddest songs about a man being tortured to death. I was 8 and I didnt really understand what was meant by the idea Jesus died for our sins, all I knew was that it was somehow my fault but at the same time there was nothing I could do to stop or change it. The churches local to me seemed to be social clubs for older people, and the people who went didn't seem to be living as Jesus taught. Muslims pray multiple times a day, give a percentage of their earnings to charity, make pilgrimage, adhere to rules. Buddhists make great effort to ensure their actions and words meet the highest standards and make compassion their guiding star, and it shows when you meet them. But CofE Christianity didnt appear to me to be a faith that is lived everyday, or thats the impression I got at my CofE school and surrounding churches.

I dunno, as someone brought up catholic the cofe has always seemed a bit lightweight and something most British people are not interested in.

the decline in the catholic church is absolutely related to the abuse and control scandals

George Orwell in 'England, Your England' noted that English culture retained strong Christian roots, but at the same time, that the average person had "almost forgotten the name of Christ'.

This was in 1937. Britain has been secularising quietly for ages.

Why do you think the C of E is apostate?

As I said in pp, Orwell noted that many working class people back in 1937 were quietly non religious.

The Church had taken a hit pre that in WW1 when they encouraged young men to go and fight. Which probably contributed.

Apparently catholicism is growing with young people as CofE has lost itself and is being deemed as too "woke", super pro refugee/immigrants/trans issues
Especially in c of e schools
At least that's what I've seen online

Yep Christianity is growing at the moment. It is called the silent revival. Random people are just turning up at church and asking about how to became Christians.

One thing that’s impossible to measure, but which I think might be a really important factor, is a change in what we have come to understand belief to actually be. I think we’ve become far more literal My suspicion is that, without realising it, we have come to understand that something is true only if it can be empirically proved – whereas in the past people had far less difficulty with the idea of there being things which are true but cannot be proved.

it’s certainly something that I still struggle with – what am I to make of claims which I couldn’t reconstruct from any first principle which I have observed?

Map that dilemma across a whole society of literalists, who (because of the removal of other societal functions from the church) don’t really think of religion in anything other than a claim about metaphysics, and it’s perhaps to be expected that large numbers end up ticking ‘no religion’ when the census comes around.

I live in London and Churches are packed around me, huge resurgence in recent years. Also big proportion of young people becoming Christian.

Christianity is growing! So I’m not sure where you got that from.
Bible sales have also massively increased particularly amongst the gen zs

Agreed but in my area (London) our catholic church is growing. Helped alot by catholic immigrants.

I’m an atheist but DD goes to a Catholic school because (a) it’s a good school, probably the best in the area and (b) I like their emphasis on traditional values, like respect for one another and community.

'My suspicion is that, without realising it, we have come to understand that something is true only if it can be empirically proved – whereas in the past people had far less difficulty with the idea of there being things which are true but cannot be proved.'

• I see your point. But otoh people in the past often ascribed things without hard proof to supernatural/religious means which are now shown to have different (scientific) causes). Demonic possession would be one : most Catholic priests agree that nearly all 'possession' cases can be explained by mental illness etc So while I think your point has weight, it's understandable why some people have less confidence in accepting things without proof.

It's not only about philosophical proof. I know quite a few people who lost faith when they investigated historical scholarship on Jesus & the origins of the New Testament.

The CoE that doesn't perform same sex marriages and which gives 'priest discretion' in terms of allowing divorced people to be permitted a church wedding or not (as opposed to a blanket policy saying: well obviously they can if they are congregants). Neither of those are woke are they?

Yes, imo unrealistic stances also on birth control for one which most Catholics in practice don't follow.

I agree. Otoh I think the C of E have ended up pleasing nobody. They're too woke for conservative Christians, too set in their ways for progressive Christians, and no one likes Oily Welby.