A view from the High Street

by Gethin Russell-Jones

It’s snowing outside and I’m perched on the fourth floor of Cardiff’s splendid new library, overlooking a wintry city centre. Sitting next to a massive vertical window, I feel I’m hanging over the busy shoppers beneath.

On my way here I passed a large Victorian chapel. Obscured by scaffolding, I noticed an enormous sign over the main entrance. In huge letters it informed me that 2000 was the anniversary of Christ’s birth and I should worship him there now. My heart sank. Rather like noticing a birthday card that has remained on the mantelpiece long after the great event has passed. I also had a memory of Dickens’ brilliant Gothic femme fatale, Miss Havisham. Dressed permanently in dusty lace and surrounded by a room full of decayed memorabilia, reminding the world that her wedding day long ago was blighted by cruel injustice.

I mean, there’s nothing wrong in telling people they should worship Christ but why does the church always dress in Miss Havisham’s faded rags? If he’s worth worshipping, then it needs to be done in this time, not on the basis of a spurious marketing campaign ten years ago. What supermarket would sell you a piece of meat that was first presented a decade earlier? Is that enough of a rant? Shall I move on to another subject? I think not.

I’m here to ponder a book that appeared in 2009. God is Back¹ is co-written by two American journalists: John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. Micklethwait is editor in chief of The Economist and Wooldridge the magazine’s Washington bureau chief. And, this is important; one of these high flying journalists is a nominal Catholic, whilst the other is an atheist. They are not what you might term ‘people of faith’, but their thesis is as simple as it is alarming to the secular West: more and more people are turning to God across the world.

The book starts with a description of a home prayer meeting in China. Populated by doctors, scientists and other professionals, this group illustrates the rapid growth of Christianity in China. There are hundreds of thousands of such groups, owing no allegiance to the established church but intensely patriotic and evangelical in their faith. For all of communism’s swagger, the house church in China numbers more than 100 million adherents and is still growing. With a hint of irony, the authors suggest that China’s sprawling underground church is the nation’s largest NGO. I am hugely entertained by the thought that secular communism has made matters worse for itself. Instead of killing Christ and his message, it has succeeded in fuelling the greatest episode in church growth ever witnessed. ‘LOL’ ² as my children would probably say.

But this isn’t the main thrust of these provocative writers. History is their real starting point and the tale of two revolutions as experienced in France and America. The former saw a vicious backlash against the church, creating a constitutional divide between church and state. This became the European model, allowing churches to practise their faith and creating established churches given patronage and special favours by the political masters. This, argue the authors, has failed. European churches have been in decline and their ministers have been too willing to dance to the tune of their secular pay masters. The American Revolution offered no religious favours, allowing citizens to believe whatever they liked. This has resulted in churches that are permanently on the lookout for new customers, and see evangelism as an essential feature, not an occasional diversion. The churches owe nothing to the state and in return the political elite have no expectations of ecclesiastical endorsement.

According to these two men, this model of Christianity is exploding globally. In particular, Pentecostalism is challenging the historical dominance of the Roman Catholic Church. ‘Pentecostalism is the great religious success story of the twentieth century. Today there are more than five million “renewalists” in the world (i.e. members of Pentecostal denominations plus “charismatics” in traditional denominations). It is not just spreading in Asia and Latin America: in large swaths of Africa Pentecostalism is expanding faster than Islam, which is provoking no end of Islamic resentment. It is also expanding twice as fast as Roman Catholicism, and three times as fast as other forms of Protestantism in Africa. Renewalists make up 30 percent of the population of Nigeria and about 50 percent of the populations of Zimbabwe and Kenya. In South Africa, there are nine hundred congregations alone.’

Far from extinction, the global church is in rude health. In Old Testament language, the people of God are ‘terrifying as an army with banners’. Let’s just hope they’re not using the one I saw earlier on my way here.

1. God is back: How the global rise of faith is changing the world, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. Published in the UK 2009, Allen Lane, ISBN 978 0 713 00002 0. First published in US by Penguin (US), ISBN 978 1 59420 213 1.
2. Laugh out loud.

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