The Good Christian, Sunday 11 April 2021, Easter 2

Have you been a good citizen and already fill in your census form? The little help to encourage you is a £1000, so please don’t forget.

I might be wrong, but I assume that because you’re here today that you might have ticked ‘Christian’ in the question about religion.

When the question about religion was first included in 2001, 72 percent described themselves as Christian. It dropped to 59 percent by 2011. This census will be interesting because there’s a possibility that the number of Brits ticking the Christian box will fall below 50 percent.

Part of the reason for this is that for the younger generation, there’s no sense of obligation to attend church or to identify as Christian. It’s not thought of as the proper thing to do, to go to church even if you don’t know what you believe and you can’t stand attending; today, there’s no sense of guilt about not going to church (thank God), and no sense of fear that you’ll be punished if you don’t (thank God).  

Meanwhile the proportion of those who ticked ‘no religion’, or ‘nones’, rose to 25 percent in 2011. I’m particularly interested in this group.

Prof Linda Woodhead has spent time analysing this group. She says that while those who ticked no religion were more socially liberal, very few were militantly secular and less than half considered themselves atheists. The largest bloc was made up of “maybes, doubters, and don’t knows”. It also included a significant group who did believe in God, a higher power or in “something there”. And get this: the younger the cohort, the smaller the proportion of atheists.

Philip Larkin wrote 70 years ago when communal Christian worship still flourished. In his poem Church Going, he wrote that such places have an aura because they satisfy in us “A hunger … to be more serious”. Congregations may be thinning out across the country, but spiritual hunger is part of the human condition.

The journalist John Harris expressed this sort of yearning for many who don’t hold religious faith.

He says that, ‘in the midst of the most disorientating, debilitating crisis most of us have ever known… For many of us, life without God has turned out to be life without fellowship and shared meaning’. He goes on: ‘I have not even the flimsiest of narratives to project on to what has happened, nor any real vocabulary with which to talk about the profundities of life and death.’

What an extraordinary glimpse into the human condition and of a hunger for meaning, purpose, community, a vocabulary to talk about the biggest questions of life.

This spiritual hunger among those who tick ‘no religion’, will no doubt find other outlets and means of expression in the years to come. While some people will be happy with a completely non-institutional expression of their spirituality, others will search for community. Some might even rethink about faith and will look to the church. And so it’s worth reflecting upon who we are as a church.

Fr Peter, who knows a thing or two about business, was telling me about the importance of culture in a working environment. And it made me thing about what sort of culture we might inhabit as a church. I hope one that is welcoming, thoughtful, open to questions, prayerful, supportive, loving.

For those who desire to re-engage with religious faith, some will look to churches that offer concrete, black and white answers. They crave the security of clear answers to life’s questions.

For others, that’s this is the very thing that is off-putting. They are more comfortable with paradox, mystery, of not having the answers, of being comfortable with doubt. This first Sunday after Easter is very much suited to this group. It’s known as ‘doubters Sunday’. Many priests love this Sunday – I certainly do – because it gives us permission to be honest and say that we wrestle with doubt. I certainly have for the last 25 years.

In today’s gospel, we heard the account of Thomas, the great sceptic and doubter. He’s certainly a man for our time. We learn is that from the beginning of the church, doubt has been a very real part of the Christian faith.

Yet despite doubt being honoured today, the church also has had difficulty with it. Mark’s Gospel being a case in point. The gospel ends very abruptly, with no glimpses of the risen Jesus. We witness no Easter proclamation, no narrative arc from hopelessness to certitude.  Instead, we witness fear, flight, and silence. I love Mark’s original gospel ending.

However, in the following decades the church tidies up the account, adding a tidier ending. So I’m glad that Clare preached on this last week.

And I think that the honouring of Thomas’ doubt is something that all churches need to feel comfortable with. And this means going through the discomfort of losing our childhood faith – the faith where we know all of the answers. It’s a journey that can be disorientating and often painful. That’s why we do these Exploring Faith courses throughout the year in the UB. We question, probe, doubt, challenge, all within a loving community.

Prince Philip exhibited many of these elements – baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church, he made many trips to the monasteries of Mount Athos. He was later received into the Church of England before his wedding. A keen questioner of preachers, he was also an inspiration to those who work for reconciliation and cooperation between people of different faiths. He was passionate about bringing people together from totally different walks of life in generating a common vision in serving society. Many believe that this vision of a common destiny and future for humanity and the planet were rooted in his baptism in the Greek Orthodox Church.

There are many helpful things here as we think about the sort of culture we as a church might cultivate. A faith that is open to other traditions; not defensive or tribal; not excessively dogmatic; unafraid to ask difficult questions; looking for the good in other religions. I shall finish by praying again today’s Collect:

Risen Christ, for whom no door is locked, no entrance barred: open the doors of our hearts, that we may seek the good of others and walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace, to the praise of God the Father.