Could this be the beginning of the end of Christianity?

Christianity is the world’s most successful religion, with an estimated 2.38 billion believers in 2020. Islam is next largest with 1.91 billion, Hinduism third with 1.16 billion.

Yet within many developed countries where it is still the largest religion, it seems to be in retreat. In England and Wales, according to the new census, fewer than half the population, 46.2 per cent, described themselves as Christian. That is down from 59.3 per cent in the previous census in 2011. By contrast 6.5 per cent said they were Muslim, up from 4.9 per cent in 2011, and 1.7 per cent Hindu, up from 1.1 per cent.

That is a sharp fall in only 10 years, but it fits into a pattern across the developed world. Even in the United States, Christianity is in decline. According to a new report by Pew Research, in 2020 an estimated 64 per cent of the population, including children, were Christian. It makes some projections about the future and estimates that by 2070 the probability is that fewer than half the population there will be Christian. Some 30 per cent of adults describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular”.

Why? Well, Pew doesn’t go into this. What it is trying to do is to analyse what is happening, and the particular theme it identifies is people switching from religion more generally, rather than switching from Christianity to other religions.

This is evident in Europe. For example, in France, a survey a year ago showed that fewer than half of the people said they believed in God. In Germany, less than half of both Protestants and Catholics believe in the resurrection. Even in Italy, home of the Catholic Church, attendance at weekly services is in decline.

So what is happening in the UK is normal for the developed world. There have been efforts to rebuild people’s relationship with the Christian faith, such as the Alpha Course in the UK, which have met some success. But it has been going since 1990 and there is no evidence that the tide has turned. Indeed, these census figures suggest that the decline in belief in Christianity has speeded up. For people to believe in “nothing in particular” is the winning trend.

It is such a huge global issue that it isn’t helpful for journalists to opine on what should, if anything, be done. But there are three things that should be said. One is that history gives some guide. There have been long periods in the past of decline in religious beliefs, followed by bursts of revival. John and Charles Wesley developed Methodism as the religion of the new working class of the Industrial Revolution.

The Quakers were enormously important on both sides of the Atlantic, in particular by applying ethical values to the way people should be treated in the workplace, and other social ideas. In addition, they were the first religious organisation in Britain to recognise same-sex marriage. So history tells us that Christianity can not only be revived but also be a powerful driver of social change.

The second point is that the young are driving social change, and while their ideas may not be directly rooted in the organised religions, they certainly have a strong moral dimension. Whatever view you take of Extinction Rebellion, it is unquestionably a moral movement.

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What seems to have happened is that there is a disconnection between the moral ideals of Christianity and the way many people see it. Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish politician and philosopher, would have understood current concerns among young people about the environment, in that he wrote that society was “a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born”.

The third point is that we should not see Christianity entirely through the lens of Western societies. True, there are more Christians in the US than in any other country, but according to Pew Research there are nearly 180 million Christians in Brazil and nearly 114 million in Mexico. The fastest-growing region for Christianity is sub-Saharan Africa. Christianity is not only for the developed world, quite the reverse.

None of us knows what will happen. Intuitively, there will be another Christian revival, just as there have been in the past. But while we can have no idea of when that will be, we can be confident that the world’s biggest religion will find ways of adapting to social needs in the years ahead.