When churches go woke, they die

Empty pews: wokery won’t help – Leon Neal/Getty

Earlier this year Right Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Bishop of Dover, told the General Synod of the Church of England that the term “woke” shouldn’t be used negatively, as it is so often by various government ministers who are “threatened” by the social justice movement. She’s far from alone, with some leaders in the church advocating courses in “unconscious bias” training.

Fair enough, and the devaluation of language within political discourse has indeed become a scandal. Just as some on the Right routinely accuse opponents of being woke or Marxist, those on the hard Left throw the term “fascist” around with a horribly offensive disregard for truth, let alone how they’ve distorted “Zionist” and perverted it into a term of abuse.

But there’s another issue here involving organised Christianity, and one that goes beyond semantics. Throughout the Western world it’s the liberal, perhaps woke, churches that are in worrying and sometimes terminal decline.

There are exceptions of course, but generally speaking the growth that we see is within Latin Mass Catholicism, Book of Common Prayer or conservative Anglicanism, and intelligent megachurch evangelicalism. I say this, by the way, as a social democrat, a liberal, an old-style radical.

Individual leaders with a particular charisma or appeal might make a difference and break the trend but otherwise the pattern is fairly clear. The more traditional the beliefs and worship, the greater the appeal. Nor is this nostalgia, with older people clinging on to what they’ve known. It’s the under 40s, often under 30s and teens, who are searching for something that isn’t merely a thin replica of what they see, hear, and learn in secular society.

Sometimes, as with several of the larger and wealthier evangelical churches within the Church of England, these churches are quite socially conservative too, especially around same-sex blessing and marriage. But that’s not always the case, especially in North America.

A fascinating scenario has developed where young Christians or seekers who have long held progressive views on gender, marriage, and even party politics, feel the need for a more permanent and timeless theology and spirituality.

Part of the irony of it all is that older Christian leaders have convinced themselves that younger people want “relevance” when what they actually mean is that the next generation should be just like them. There’s seldom any malice involved, usually plenty of goodwill, but a painful lack of self-awareness.

With the triumph of social media and 24-hour news it’s virtually impossible to be contemporary, and teenagers and young parents know this all too well. They want an alternative to their daily lives, not a pale imitation of the commonplace, even the banal.

Musically, give them Byrd or Bach rather than embarrassing versions of what the middle-aged think is popular, and hermeneutically give them educated homilies centred on Biblical truth instead of cringing apologies for beliefs shaped and held by some of the finest minds in history.

There’s a great deal of pain and shame in the history of the church that we need to acknowledge and that involves contrition and repair – I speak as someone whose family fled pogroms, often inspired by local priests.

But that doesn’t change the meaning and truth of authentic Christianity. Doesn’t change the undeniable attraction of an orthodox faith delivered with sensitivity, empathy, and an informed understanding of the realities of this unforgiving and sometimes cruel age.

A decade ago, I experienced a major transformation, an epiphany if you like, in my thinking around same-sex marriage, and became a vocal advocate for Christian affirmation of LGBTQ people. I was asked, sometimes accusingly, if this was because I’d lost or had diluted my faith?

The opposite. I changed not in spite of but because of it. As my faith deepened, became more conservative if you like, it led me to a different position on various topics. The reform was due to a commitment to Christian teaching rather than to political fashion or trendiness.

CS Lewis wrote, “Liberal Christianity can only supply an ineffectual echo to the massive chorus of agreed and admitted unbelief …. Did you ever meet, or hear of, anyone who was converted from scepticism to a liberal or demythologised Christianity?”

Mind you, the great Jack Lewis may well come with a trigger warning in some of our churches. Yet Lewis remains, and they won’t. But perhaps that just unconscious bias.

Rev Michael Coren is a priest, columnist, and author. His most recent book is The Rebel Christ (Canterbury Press)

Sign up to the Front Page newsletter for free: Your essential guide to the day’s agenda from The Telegraph – direct to your inbox seven days a week.