The Church, the Pub, and the Coming Backlash

One of the things on my to-do list over the next little while is to get cracking on editing/rewriting the history of our church. This year marks our forty-fifth year in existence, and it’s been a few decades since the “official” story was modified in any way. So, a few of us have been tasked with a refresh of sorts. Yesterday, in an email exchange with one of my co-labourers on this project, the topic turned to what we might highlight from the last twenty years or so. Suggestions included some usual suspects: programs, initiatives, projects supported, pastoral transitions, etc. And then one line in a list of bullet point suggestions whose theme always makes my heart sink a little: “Change in demographics of our church (decrease in membership, fewer children and young families).” Ah, yes. Decline.

My heart always sinks because it’s difficult for any pastor not to interpret decline as, at least on some level, evidence of failure. I doubt this is revelatory news. Yes, there are broad cultural trends and factors at play, no, decline is not unique to our congregation. I get all of this. Christianity, and organized religion more generally, is a tough sell in the West these days. But still. It doesn’t always feel good to preside over a declining institution. Surely, if the messenger were doing a better job, the message would be landing, right? If a team hasn’t won a game in a while the fingers tend to start to point at the coach. Sometimes, the coach’s finger points at himself.

Well, speaking of those broader trends, I opened my browser this morning and discovered that the decline of Christianity was on the agenda. Again. At least on the sites that I check in in on. First up was Nicholas Kristof’s piece in The New York Times called “America Is Losing Religious Faith.” Kristof begins by talking about the decline of religious faith more generally (he mentions synagogues and mosques) but as the article goes on, it’s clear that he’s mostly talking about Christianity. The great “dechurching” has some predictable explanations, according to Kristof, the main one being that the church has been very bad indeed (sex scandals, mistreatment of minorities, supporting Trump, etc.). He does find room to (parenthetically) acknowledge that conservative Christians occasionally do some good, as well, which is refreshing. But it would be hard to walk away from an article like this without the impression that it is the church’s and the church’s leaders’ fault that the church is declining.

Next up was a piece by Carl Trueman in First Things called “The Death of Church and Pub.” Trueman talks about going back to his home village in England. It’s a place where, for a long time, not much changed, Trueman says. But on his most recent visit, he noticed a few ominous signs. A proliferation of vehicles, for starters, which has turned “narrow country lanes into parking lots.” Most striking, though, was the “For Sale” sign on parish church. No real surprise, according to Trueman. England is probably even farther along the decline story than Canada, and certainly farther than the USA. Churches being repurposed into pubs and apartments is certainly nothing new.

About those pubs… Trueman noticed a connection:

There is a parallel in the fate of the English village pub. Once central to community life—the English pub is not the equivalent of the American bar—it is now plausibly claimed that fifty public houses are closing every month. There are no doubt numerous reasons… But whatever the causes, the death of the local pub, like the death of the parish church, contributes to the death of the local community. The pub was the place where friendship was fostered over a shared drink and the shared cost of an evening conversation. No man was less an island than when engaging in the English tradition of “buying a round.” And the sad fact is that pubs and churches are not being replaced by something that fulfills the same function of shaping community… When communal space disappears, communal bonds disappear too.

Kristof notices this, too, although he speaks in the barren and impersonal language of a “loss of social capital.” Churches feed the poor and offer solace to the lonely and are even (weirdly) associated with “increased happiness and better physical and mental health.” Given all the concern about mental health these days, one might ponder that association a bit longer. But, no, it’s mostly back to Trump, corrupt moral leadership, and the bleak prognostications.

Where Kristof sees only the possibility of further decline, Trueman sees potential:

This is where the church actually has a tremendous opportunity. The West is currently engaged in an experiment doomed to fail. Human beings crave real relationships, and there will come a backlash to the isolated wasteland of modern life, marked by the frictionless “friendships” of the online “community.” After all, nobody on his deathbed wants his loved ones appearing before him by Zoom. He wants them in the room, holding his hand, speaking to him, interacting with him in real, embodied space and time. And when that backlash comes, the real communities that exist will appear vital and attractive.

Unsurprisingly, I find Trueman’s analysis of the situation far more compelling than Kristof’s. Maybe it’s an occupational and psychological survival strategy, who knows. Maybe it’s the kind of thing that a pastor of a small church trending in the wrong directions is highly and self-interestedly motivated to believe. But I found myself resonating deeply with his last paragraph:

The nature of community is changing. The old village has gone. One can lament the passing of parish churches and village pubs, but the type of community that birthed them has gone forever. But the human need for community—rich, real, personal community—will exist as long as our individual identities are tied up with looking into the faces of those who are “bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.” In other words, that need will exist as long as we are human beings made in God’s image. And the answer is hospitality. Churches and Christians need to think about what this looks like in our modern world as much as they think about other aspects of the faith. And the good news is that the very things Christian decry in our current culture, from its superficiality to its instability to its hopelessness—make this a time of unparalleled opportunity.

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I have no idea where the building in the image above is located. It looks like a pub that was once a church. And it looks like a place where I might like to have a pint and look into the face of another human being made in God’s image.