Our second installment on 'Changing Britain' looks at how the Gospel message is being passed on to future generations. Following the statistical analysis is a biblical comment from Monica Hill.

Transmission of Faith

Re-printed from Brierley Consultancy's FutureFirst, June 2014 issue, with kind permission.

The transmission of faith from one generation to another is critically important. One person who has studied this in some depth is Prof David Voas, now of Essex University but previously Professor of Population Studies at Manchester University. In one piece of research published in 2012 he and a colleague evaluated the impact of family life on church attendance through three generations using data from the 2001 International Congregational Life Survey, a significant study with over 9,000 respondents.

In general they found the older a person the more likely they were to have or have had churchgoing parents. The graph shows the percentage of churchgoers in England in 2001 who did NOT have regularly attending churchgoing parents.

Percentage of current churchgoers whose parents rarely or never went to church, England, 2001.

• Older people now attending church are more likely to have continued the family tradition of churchgoing. The research compared results with the Australian data which was based on similar questions, and the overall results found:
• Men were about 5% more likely than women to have or had parents who were not churchgoers, except for those aged 85 or over (2% difference).
• Australian churchgoers were less likely than those in England to have or had parents who were not churchgoers, also by about 5%, 18% to 23%.
• The impact of two churchgoing parents is considerably greater than one.
• Grandparental religious activity also has a significant effect.

Approximately a quarter, 23%, of English churchgoers therefore have started going to church when their parents did not, and this might be taken as an estimate of the percentage of "conversion" growth of current congregations. Church congregations grow, of course, because new people join the congregation (having started going to church elsewhere) or newly start coming to that particular church. Other studies have found that new people in a church are relatively few (a 2012 English study found just 24% of those in evangelical churches had been attending less than 20 years), meaning "church growth" is mostly "church transfer". David Voas's research thus underlines the huge importance of transmission in family life.

Some factors in present-day family life make that transmission more difficult. Almost half, 46%, of children today will see their parents divorce before they are 16, and a family split inhibits transmission of faith very severely. Churchgoing parents seem to be as likely to divorce as non-churchgoing ones.

Many church families are middle-class, and many have both parents working. Those aged 30 to 44 are especially likely not to attend as regularly as others simply because of the pressure in their home with a young family, but it is in this age-group where those practices are often most needed to establish the tradition of churchgoing, and encourage transmission.

The very large majority of churchgoers in both England and Australia are married, much more than the percentage of married people in the population. For the large majority of these, both partners attend church together, so they are making joint decisions on this activity and thus encouraging their children in churchgoing.

The finding about grandparental influence confirms other research of young people undertaken in England – one study found some 60% were likely to attend church if their grandparents did.

The importance of family life and the traditions embodied within that, especially of religious activity, is crucial, and this research confirms this. Encouraging family religious life should therefore be a priority in church teaching.

Sources: Article by David Voas and Ingrid Storm in Review of Religious Research, Vol 53, No 4, Jan 2012, Page 377; Living the Christian Life, Brierley Consultancy, April 2013; Newsletter, Marriage Foundation, Spring 2014; Reaching and Keeping Tweenagers, Christian Research, 2002.

Biblical Comment

Monica Hill

Handing on the baton is the responsibility of every believer. Failure to pass it on, to the very best of the ability of all believers, places the continuance of the faith in ANY nation at risk.

We can learn a great deal on the survival of the Jewish faith over the centuries by reading how they passed on their faith to their children. This mainly took place in the family home. Both boys and girls were taught the rudimentary elements of the faith by their mothers in the home up until the age of 11 or 12. It was only then that the boys (after their Bar Mitzvah) went into schools to go more deeply into the faith.

In the home the children learned to recite the Shema, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one" as an assertion of God's Kingship (Deut 6:4-9), which is followed by "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children."

Hearts and Minds

Deuteronomy 11:18 adds "Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds." There are practical ways in which this can be achieved: "talk about them [God's teachings] when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates" (Deut 11:18-20). The reason is one which we should all embrace: "so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth" (v21).

More than Head Knowledge

A 'Christian' country' or specific group claiming to be Christian is only one generation away from extinction unless a full understanding and a personal belief is embraced and passed on to others. In order for it to survive, faith needs to move beyond 'learning by rote' to having personal meaning so that those who try to communicate to others are helping them catch more than just 'head knowledge'.

A 'Christian' country' is only one generation away from extinction unless a full understanding and a personal belief is embraced and passed on to others."

Unfortunately, parents first passed this responsibility on to the Church (who developed all kinds of groups such as Sunday Schools, youth clubs and uniformed organisations) and then to state schools, where all pupils received Christian instruction and each day started with a worship assembly. Parents relaxed and left it to others who they thought were more proficient than themselves.

The churches did a good job in teaching the young of both believers and those on the fringe, until social and family issues saw the demise of afternoon Sunday Schools and uniformed organisations went out of fashion, demanding new methods of outreach and attracting youngsters. In schools, the emphasis changed from knowledge, to education, to theoretical study of comparative religions; teachers no longer needed to be believers and legal changes then led to stagnation. A religious and spiritual understanding is no longer a priority.

Danger of Complacency

Many churches are now trying new methods of reaching out, like 'messy church' and holiday clubs, but the crucial home influence is still waning.

Any nation that settles back into thinking that it will always be a 'Christian nation' and that the next generation will automatically become Christians without any input, witness or prayer from them, is in for a shock. God can, and should, speak directly to each individual, but we are all called to be witnesses - even if we do not have the gift of an evangelist.

Any nation that settles back into thinking that the next generation will automatically become Christians without any input from them, is in for a shock."

Christianity is built upon relationships and although we can highlight moral codes and values, once the close personal link with the Creator is lost, it can become no more than a list of rules and regulations to keep. God has no grandchildren – only children who have a direct relationship with him.

Seize Every Opportunity

However, today there is an amazing challenge to those believers who have grandchildren (or even know other people's grandchildren). It is almost as though they are being given a second chance to reach another generation, even when they have not made a good job of passing their faith onto their own children. Grandparents can be 'cool' when parents can just be an 'embarrassment'. The opportunities are there in an age when older people are living longer and there are an increasing number of grandparents and great-grandparents who have 'known' the Father (1 John 3).

How can we encourage older people to take their responsibilities for our nation seriously? This should be a major objective in every congregation, family and community.

Series background

Over the next few weeks we will be using some recent surveys from the Brierley Consultancy to delve further into what God is saying to Britain. Each instalment will feature statistics on a different set of trends, followed by biblical analysis from Monica Hill.

Hard factual evidence drawn from different kinds of surveys can help Christians to ascertain exactly what, where and how our society is changing, and can equip them both to pray and to take action where necessary.

Christians should be alert to current trends and be prepared to act to bring things into alignment with the ordained will of God. While nothing can take place outside the sovereign will and knowledge of God, not all activities are God-ordained.

Previous weeks: The Rise of Secularism: YES, I have NO religion!