What about the Christians who don't go to church?

|PIC1|The BBC has done it again.

From the producer who brought us The Miracles of Jesus and Around the World in 80 Faiths, we have A History of Christianity. Who says religion is dead? I heard that the programmes triple the regular BBC 4 audience when shown.

Jean Claude Bragard, the producer for BBC Religion and Ethics, has brought to life the events and issues of yesteryear with fresh insights for today. However, it is not so much the history and programme which I would like to comment on, so much as the online survey which accompanies it.

If you go to the Open University website www.open2.net/christianity/survey.html you will see that viewers are invited to say what Christianity means to them. The results are instantly available and revealing.

The introduction to the survey reminds us that 71.6% of the UK population described themselves as Christian in the 2001 Census, although only 15% of that number belong to, or go to church. Interestingly, the questionnaire is designed to ask people who call themselves Christian why they do not attend.

Visit the web link above and see how it is worded. The questions make it is difficult to fill in if you do go to church. The results probably produce a bias which is less representative of the church going population as a whole, which presumably makes the various conclusions all the more encouraging to people like me.

So far, 3239 people of all ages and backgrounds have completed the online survey This is a great response, not least as many surveys which shape industry or get quoted on the national news are often only based on a sample of 1000 respondents. Of those who have taken part so far, 77% say they call themselves Christians to other people, and a further 18% would sometimes say so to their friends. These figures are very high which is not surprising as prompted by a programme about the Christian faith.

More striking though, if I have read the results right, is that nearly twice as many men as women have completed the questionnaire: 2114 compared to 1125. I am not sure what that says: do more men watch the programme or take part in online surveys? Virtually all are from the UK as only 207 say they are not.

In passing, I was also interested to see the distribution across the age groups. Apart from the under 20’s where 216 questionnaires were completed, and the over 70’s where 126 replied online, the twenties (533), thirties (575), forties (644), fifties (637) and sixties (508) provide a fairly evenly spread.

The first thing to note is that more than half of the respondents go to church every week and pray every day. No doubt they are the most motivated to complete the questionnaire but remember they have been discouraged in the introduction. More than three-quarters pray more than once a month. Of the survey target audience nearly half do not attend church regularly so what have they to say to us all?

When asked why the people don’t go to church, the least significant reason is lack of time and peer pressure, while many more say that they ‘don’t feel comfortable’ or ‘not found church that suits me’, or simply ‘don’t need to go to church to be a Christian’.

Having said that, significantly for such initiatives as ‘Back to Church Sunday’, 57% of respondents then said they would go more often if they could. Chiefly, for these people, what stops them is work, family and other commitments, rather than the church itself.

I find all this very encouraging when the invitation is for people who don’t go to church to respond and more men than women have done so, and more than half would go more often if they could.

Christianity is not just about history and the past, but very much about the present, and with a future to look forward to. Thank you ‘Aunty’, for producing A History of Christianity and the stimulating survey which helps us reflect on this.

To see A History of Christianity visit: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ntrqh


Jim Currin is Executive Secretary of the Group for Evangelisation and Church Army evangelist.