Filling the Religious Vacuum

We met them while we were recording our worship songs in the church garden.  They had heard the sound and come over to investigate – largely I suspect because, during lockdown, there was little else going on. A young couple in their twenties, they explained their interest in spirituality, the laws of attraction and such like. They realise there was something missing in our pre-Covid society, with its hollowed-out materialism and consumerism. Instead, they hoped, the crisis, through disrupting patterns of shopping and working from home, would enable people to realise the true inner values. As we discussed where people might find these spiritual values, while they pinned their hopes on this amorphous non-specific spirituality, I was able to suggest it could only be through Christ.

A Covid Revival? (This should come with a health warning to whoever reads it!)

Apparently there is an upsurge in British people reporting that they’ve prayed during the epidemic. Others have joined online-services. The trend has even been noticed by secularist, left-wing, media, like New Statesman and The Guardian. Among Christians, there is consequently much rejoicing, as they/we seem to identify signs of an impending revival, a nation returning to God.

Proliferation in the Pandemic

Many have noted the increased uptake of small groups online in the Corona crisis. Might this be a glimpse of an opening, a rent, in the direction of the future? Is God breaking us out of our stultifying churchiness? Probably many will stop attending once they don’t need support during lockdown. Plus those who now have time, because they’re furloughed, may return to their previous busy lives.

The Imminence of God

Transcendence and immanence are two words often juxtaposed, to express paradoxical qualities of Divinity: his otherness, distance, and holiness - versus his closeness, love and indwelling. These doctrinal stances are reflected in different styles of spirituality and corporate worship – the majesty and awe of liturgy or grand hymnody, contrasted with the intimacy and fervour of charismatic gifts or revivalist ecstasy.

Another word, happily rhyming with Immanence, is ‘Imminence’: the Imminence of God. Fundamentalist doctrine often emphasises the ‘imminent’ second coming of Christ – however long it is in the waiting (2 Pe. 3.3-9), it is always ‘imminent’, just around the corner. And indeed, we must always be ready (the ‘Left Behind’ books notwithstanding). As the Rabbis said, every moment is equidistant from the Messiah: he could come any time. Many evangelistic sermons have played on the same plea, to be ready when he comes, like the ‘thief in the night’ (Matt. 24.43).

Preventing Revival

There seem to be many initiatives at the moment aimed at revival in the church: including evangelistic campaigns and prayer gatherings. This is nothing new. I remember similar calls, during my student days in the 1970s. And there have been regular cycles of revivalistic enthusiasm at internals during my ministry life: from the New Churches in the 1980s, to prophetic predictions in the 1990s.