Church Growth in Britain: 1980 to the Present

by David Goodhew (Editor)

There has been substantial church growth in Britain between 1980 and 2010. This is the controversial conclusion from the international team of scholars, who have drawn on interdisciplinary studies and the latest research from across the UK. Such church growth is seen to be on a large scale, is multi-ethnic and can be found across a wide range of social and geographical contexts. It is happening inside mainline denominations but especially in specific regions such as London, in newer churches and amongst ethnic minorities. Church Growth in Britain provides a forceful critique of the notion of secularisation which dominates much of academia and the media - and which conditions the thinking of many churches and church leaders. This book demonstrates that, whilst decline is happening in some parts of the church, this needs to be balanced by recognition of the vitality of large swathes of the Christian church in Britain. Rebalancing the debate in this way requires wholesale change in our understanding of contemporary British Christianity.

280 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2012

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a deliberately revisionist intervention in the secularisation debate, marshalling an impressive range of empirical case studies to contest the narrative of linear religious decline. As with so much in the field, it takes Callum Brown's thesis seriously, but also gives serious attention to the sociologists of British Christianity and secularisation. It does not discard them, but argues solidly that the older theories of secularisation have been demolished, but that a more nuanced understanding can be somewhat sustained (despit ethe paradox of a church that is actually neither growing nor contracting, but changing).

Contributions work carefully with diocesan statistics, congregational data and regional surveys to show that, between 1980 and 2010, stories of contraction in some long‑established denominations coexist with equally real instances of growth, particularly in newer congregations, migrant churches and urban contexts often written off as “post‑Christian”. Helpfully, the volume’s remit is genuinely British rather than merely English, with chapters on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland complicating any tidy national narrative.

As contemporary ecclesiology, the collection is at its strongest when it stays close to this kind of granular, location‑specific material and allows the complexity of the evidence to trouble both triumphalist “revival” rhetoric and fatalistic declensionism alike. The explicitly theological framing and the polemical edge of the anti‑secularisation stance will not convince every reader, and at times the argument against “the” secularisation thesis risks becoming as complicated and arguable as the positions it seeks to dislodge. Nevertheless, the essays are uniformly readable and methodologically serious. Once again an excellent work I will refer to again.