'It is to the church that we turn to give meaning to these moments of intense human experience', said the British Queen and head of the Church of England in her Christmas message on 25 December, flagging up the importance of 'whatever your faith' at the end of a worldwide annus horribilis. In the wake of tragedies like 11 September, said the Queen, 'we look to the church to bring us together' (1).
| Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, reckons Catholic church attendance in the UK has risen by 10 percent since 11 September - and while he would 'never predict a revival', he 'wouldn't be surprised' by one (2). Not bad for a cardinal who last made big headlines on 6 September 2001, just days before the terrorist attacks, when he said that Christianity had been 'all but eliminated' from British society (3).
| According to one British journalist, writing at the end of October 2001, 'After years of declining congregations, churches in England are reporting a strange phenomenon: pews have been filling up in the wake of 11 September' (4) - while an American Catholic priest says the 'silver lining' to 11 September is that 'God is back!' (5). Evangelist Pat Robertson went one better in November, hailing the terrorist attacks for 'bringing about one of the greatest spiritual revivals in the history of America' (6).
| So has there been a transatlantic spiritual upsurge over the past three months? Not quite. A few more people than usual might have gone to church in the days and weeks after 11 September, but reports of a religious rebirth have been greatly exaggerated.
| According to the New York Times, there was a 'noticeable rise' in church attendance in the USA in the immediate aftermath of the attacks - with a Gallup poll finding that the number of people claiming to have attended church in the previous week rose from an average of between 39 percent and 43 percent to 47 percent (7). Another post-attacks poll found that 64 percent of Americans considered religion to be 'very important' - a measly two percent hike on the pre-11 September national average (8).
| In the UK, as late as six weeks after the attacks, the Church of England claimed that attendance was up 50 percent in York Minster and 60 percent in Winchester - but most of the evidence was anecdotal. 'Vicars have said to me they've arranged a service even though only half a dozen people are likely to attend, and when we turn up the place is packed with several hundred!' claimed an overexcited Bishop of London (9).
| In New Zealand, the Presbyterian Church has reported a 'return of the flock' - claiming to be 'attracting larger than usual congregations following the recent terrorism', with some of its churches reporting a 'dramatic growth in numbers' and 'increases of up to 25 percent'. Though considering that in most cases this meant a rise from about 90 Sunday worshippers to between 120 and 130, we are hardly talking the feeding of the five thousand (10).
| In reality, the post-11 September 'return to church' was a temporary phenomenon that hardly registered on the church-going Richter scale. No sooner had the Pat Robertsons of the world declared a religious revolution than church attendance dropped back to pre-11 September levels. In mid-October 2001, one US journalist pointed out that 'hopeful predictions of a great faith-based awakening seem to have overstated the case…. Worship attendance in many places has dropped back to levels before the attacks' (11).
| The shortlived upward blip in church attendance was no religious resurgence, but another expression of confusion-and-grief-in-general in the wake of 11 September. Despite priests', vicars', cardinals' and the Queen's wishful thinking, the talked-up upsurge in church attendance had more in common with the public outpourings of grief that followed the terrorist attacks than it did with a rise in traditional religious belief.
| 'There is a new sense of vulnerability', said the Bishop of London, explaining why more Londoners than usual were attending church post-11 September - while a reader at St James' Church in Tunbridge Wells in Kent summed up how born-again church-goers felt in the aftermath of 11 September: 'We don't understand the madness of this.... We are confused.' (12) According to Reverend Martin Baker of St Helier's Church in New Zealand, returning to the church post-11 September was a 'human expression of outreach and a response to helplessness'. 'It has provided people with a real sense of doing something', said Baker (13). One Boston preacher claimed that many of the post-11 September church-goers 'have never been in church before - what drew them here was our community's commitment to finding meaning in the midst of insanity' (14).
| Vulnerability, confusion, helplessness - these are hardly the values you would associate with a new God squad of confident religious believers. But they do fit the pattern of public mourning that followed 11 September: the gatherings outside Buckingham Palace in London and US embassies across the world, the laying of flowers, the setting up of condolences books everywhere from government buildings to newspaper offices to schools and colleges, the internet message boards clogged with emotional outbursts. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, the USA, the UK and countries around the world were in the grip of a bout of post-Diana style mourning, a public wallowing in feelings of insecurity, confusion and grief - illustrating how our societies often only feel united around tragedy and loss. And the 'return to the church' was an expression of the same thing.
| As Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the October Gallup poll on America's post-11 September church-going habits, told the New York Times: 'It looks like people were treating this like a bereavement, a shorter-term funeral kind of thing where they went to church or a synagogue to grieve, but once that passes, everything went back to the way it was.' (15)
| Far from offering the way, the truth, the light and a few answers to the confused congregations that turned up in their pews, Christian churches seemed to relish in their post-11 September role as community centres where people could reach out for help and comfort. In our post-traditional, post-religious age, Christian churches have developed a skill for playing down their one-time claim to absolute moral authority, instead latching on to people's broader concerns and feelings of insecurity in a desperate attempt to boost their standing. If the post-11 September debates about church attendance tell us anything, it is that today's Christian leaders lack the courage of their convictions, and hold back from uttering moral certainties about good, evil, right, wrong, God or anything.
| The most the head of the Church of England could muster in her post-11 September Christmas message was praise for how 'acts of worship' ('of all the major faiths', mind, not just Christianity) can bring 'us together as a community - of relations, friends and neighbours - to draw strength in troubled times from those around us' (16). Even Pope John Paul II, head of the Roman Catholic Church and accused by many of being a stuck-in-the-mud traditionalist, used his Christmas message to condemn the sins of 'intolerance' and to call for a respect for all people of 'all faiths'.
| Gone are the claims of Christianity's moral correctness and universalising potential, replaced by pleas to tolerate all other faiths and to avoid being too judgemental. Even the Catholic Church, which once arrogantly called itself the 'one, true, apostolic church', now seems to recognise that it is just another faith option in a world of many faith options.
| On the other side of the world, a leading New Zealand Presbyterian summed up what the church might offer people post-11 September: 'People were in a stunned state. They appreciated the opportunity to light candles and remember that there is more good than bad in the world. People are also coming to church during the week, sometimes just to sit quietly and reflect. The services have provided a way for the community to come together to affirm their values.'
| Forget God, religion or truth; the churches' main role now seems to be providing a 'space' where people can reflect, meet with friends and neighbours, and feel like they are 'doing something' in our out-of-control world. Far be it from Christian leaders to explain why the world is out of control or how it could be made a better place.
| Christian churches were in trouble long before 11 September. Across the Western world, church membership has hit an all-time low over the past 10 years. In the UK, the Christian churches' combined 'committed membership' fell from 7,550,000 in 1980 to 5,800,000 in the year 2000 - with one study claiming that the UK Anglican and Catholic Churches had 'lost more than a quarter of their memberships in just 20 years' (17).
| Meanwhile in the USA, the 2001 American Religious Identification Study found that the percentage of the population who 'consider themselves Christian' (whether practising or not) fell from 86 percent in 1990 to 77 percent in 2001, and that the number of Americans claiming to have 'no religion' rose from 8.2 percent in 1990 (14,330,000 people) to 14 percent in 2001 (29,481,000 people) (18).
| The old-time Christian religion has declined as part of a wider loss of faith in society's traditional values. Churches that relied on the idea that they alone were in possession of The Truth were never going to prosper in a post-traditional society where relativism holds sway and where there's no real consensus about what should be considered right or wrong. The old church hierarchies have tried to adapt to the changed world around them by playing down their claims to absolute moral authority. So in recent years, the Church of England has given up believing in hell as a real place of damnation, while the UK Catholic Church holds 'consultation meetings' with its members to find out what the 'Catholic in the street' really wants.
| The only 'spiritual upsurge' that has occurred in recent years is the rise of Eastern, more mystical faiths and cults among twenty- and thirtysomethings disillusioned with the modern world. And the traditional churches have even tried to jump on board this backward bandwagon, with the Church of England's Reverend Dr John Drane writing a book called Creating Churches for the Next Century, exploring how the Christian churches can tune in to today's 'burgeoning spirituality' at the same time as there is a 'rapid decline in church attendance'. Even UK prime minister Tony Blair and his traditionally Catholic wife Cherie have reportedly tuned in to the fashion for ever-more weird and individuated faiths, allegedly smearing each other in mud during a recent Mayan rebirthing in Mexico.
| Far from bringing about the 'greatest spiritual revival in history', the response to 11 September has heightened the already speedy decline of the traditional churches. After all, it doesn't say much for the churches if they can only hope to fill their pews as the result of terrible events in New York and Washington (and even then can't keep people gripped enough to want to return), and find it hard to utter words like good, evil, morality or God even in relation to something like 11 September.
| Post-11 September, there hasn't been a rise in universal values, a sense of purpose, and a return to traditional religious belief, as some had hoped for. Instead, recent events have acted as a catalyst for the crisis of confidence and belief infecting the West, throwing into relief Western elites' inability to stand up for basic values like universalism and democracy. In the wake of 11 September, there have been further probing and difficult questions about what we really believe in, not just spiritually but politically, not just in religious terms but in secular terms; and if the experience of the churches is anything to go by, the answer to what we believe in seems to be 'not very much' - certainly nothing too universal, determined, singular, or anything that might offend anybody anywhere on the planet.
| Like me, you might not miss the traditional Christian churches, which did more than their fair share to spread backward beliefs and hold humanity back. But it is a striking illustration of today's degraded view of life to see the old churches virtually giving up on the Christian project of saving humanity, and replacing their job of 'speaking The Truth' with organising collective group hugs during times of trouble. It's enough to make you long for fire and brimstone.
Brendan O'Neill is coordinating the spiked-conference Panic attack: Interrogating our obsession with risk, on Friday 9 May 2003, at the Royal Institution in London.
Read on:
Wishful thinking, by Josie Appleton
'New hedonism': flipside to fear, by Brendan O'Neill
Ireland after 11 September, by Brendan O'Neill
An Englishwoman in Washington, 18 January, by Helen Searls
spiked-issue: After 11 September
(1) Queen's Speech: text in full, BBC Online, 25 December 2001
(2) Dose of hope and joy would solve 'church worries', Daily Telegraph, 24 December 2001
(3) BBC Online, 6 September 2001
(4) Full pews and prayers for peace, Guardian, 22 October 2001
(5) The silver lining, by Father Ed Kaminski, Diocese of Monterey, Observer, October 2001
(6) See Church attendance dips after post-11 September gain, American Atheists, 3 September 2001
(7) See Queen's Speech: text in full, BBC Online, 25 December 2001
(8) See Church attendance dips after post-11 September gain, American Atheists, 3 September 2001
(9) Full pews and prayers for peace, Guardian, 22 October 2001
(10) Church attendance up following terrorist attacks in the USA, Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, 27 September 2001
(11) First the wake-up call, then back to snoozing?, Dallas Morning News, 27 October 2001
(12) Full pews and prayers for peace, Guardian, 22 October 2001
(13) Church attendance up following terrorist attacks in the USA, Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, 27 September 2001
(14) See Christianity Today's weblog, 29 October 2001
(15) New York Times, 26 November 2001
(16) See Queen's Speech: text in full, BBC Online, 25 December 2001
(17) UK Christian Handbook 2001
(18) See Queen's Speech: text in full, BBC Online, 25 December 2001
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