The Myth of the Empty Church – Robin Gill

Description

When – and why did people stop going to Church on Sunday?

Robin Gill rejects the usual answer – ‘after the First World War’ and ‘largely as a result of secularisation’ as a myth that has misled a generation of scholars and church leaders. The prominence of religious allegience in International conflicts and the persistance of religious beliefs even in supposedly ‘secular’ western societies show how simplistic the notion of secularisation sweeping all things religious before it. Gill also shows the decline in Churchgoing began much earlier than had previously been thought, and pre-dated any widespread decline in conventional Christian belief. He suggests that it is not belief that fosters churchgoing, or disdelief that causes the decline in churchgoing, but churchgoing nthat fosters belief, and that there is nothing inevitable or predestined about the continuing decline in Church attendance.

Robiun Gill  is the Michael Ramsay Professor of Modern Theology at the Uuniversity of Kent in Canterbury.