As it’s Easter Sunday, it feels appropriate to start this discussion with the COE’s prayer of the day:
God of glory,
by the raising of your Son
you have broken the chains of death and hell:
fill your Church with faith and hope;
for a new day has dawned
and the way to life stands open
in our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Turns out young people are turning out to go to church.
A recent survey, commissioned by the Bible Society and conducted by YouGov, showed 16 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 in England and Wales said they attended church at least monthly, significantly up from 4 per cent in 2018.
I can definitely understand it, even if I’m not particularly religious myself, given how much of the current nightmare we’re living in is perpetuated by the cold depthless rationalism of free markets or what have you. I think I was once very against organised religion but it’s a thing that contains multitudes and definitely offers a sense of collectivism and something beyond the material reality in a world hellbent on the perpetual present and individualism or whatever
On the other hand (and this is largely Americans who have always been fucking weird with their Christianity), it’s very weird seeing how seemingly normalised (again, caveat, online, where people have always been fucking weird) it is to talk about demons and to be like anti-masturbation or whatever
Definitely noticed young church types around more. Couple of months ago I was walking down a busy main road and a young lad started shouting me and running towards me manic, thought he must be in some sort of sticky situation so I stopped, and he said “do you want to come to church with me tomorrow?”, genuinely, didn’t know what to say, took my completely unaware.
If there wasn’t such an obvious ethno-christian element to a lot of the online discourse that’s feeding it, I think I’d be more live and let live, but idk, my gut feeling is unease.
For some reason the article isn’t opening. I’m guessing this also mentions that most of the increase is coming from the Catholic Church which I thought was the most interesting aspect, unless I’ve got my articles crossed.
Wonder how much of it is just that all of the spaces to meet people irl have been shut or are pay to enter. Church and parkrun are the only things left, and one of them is a bit too smug & preachy
The thing that surprises me is that the survey seems to suggest the rise is since 2018. If it was from earlier, I might have said that a lot of it was down to the accession of the A8 countries into the EU (especially for the rise in people attending catholic church).
Doesn’t surprise me tbh. World sucks. Community spaces decimated. Horrid tradcath influencers online.
Also things go in cycles. Hopefully they’ll be able to reform the church into something less awful but I think many people lack the critical thinking skills to not get suckered into a literal, fundamentalist reading of a deeply confusing and scary text.
Its quite reassuring. Tbf I do like to do my bit for once prominent institutions in the country which are still hanging around and getting by to a small but dedicated following.
And when I’ve finished posting on drowned in sound, I might go to church!
