Church attendance in London rising, British theologian says

Cambridge, UK—“What’s good in the UK is that Christians have now got used to being in a minority and aren’t angry about it,” said Peter Williams, warden of Tyndale House, Britain’s premier theological library. 

Despite pervasive secularism throughout the United Kingdom, Williams told the TEXAN that modern British evangelicals are “quite determined” and “have a substantial understanding of what they are up against.”

“Those who are evangelical in the UK have been subject to secular propaganda for a long time. This has allowed some of them to build up substantial immunity. We have also seen the tragic effects of secularism within our culture.”

“I have had secular education down my throat the whole time, and most of the other Christians in the UK that I know have,” Williams added, laughing. “I think most of us have got an immunity to it.” 

Williams acknowledged hostility to the church is the product of both genuine and intentional misunderstanding.

“There is plenty of hostility to Christian exclusivity—the claims of salvation through Christ alone, the claims of human sinfulness, and the claim above all that we are not free to do anything simply because we want to,” Williams said. 

“Historically, the Christians were thought of as the good guys,” Williams mused. “And now you have the reversal, where the Christians are [seen as] the people who wreck the environment, are less likely to be vegetarian, judge people.

“Genuinely, people believe [today] that Christianity is not good for society. This is all tied up in the narrative of the way you tell the past, the [so-called] terrible things Christianity did. The idea that Christians were anti-science, conducted the witch hunts, etc.”

There is a need to reframe the narrative with truth, Williams added, noting that only two witches in Europe were convicted in church courts and that many Christians contributed notably to scientific advances.

Tyndale House, adjacent to Cambridge University, is home to 20 scholars in residence and their families; 30 others engaged in research at the library live off site. The students, representing six continents, are mostly pursuing doctoral or post-doctoral work at Cambridge and other universities. 

“Tyndale House has played a central role in reviving the intellectual leadership of British evangelicalism,” Williams said.

The library was founded in 1944 by British evangelicals realizing the need to “engage with the mind” in light of what Williams called the “writhing skepticism” that characterized English church and society in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

Still, the greatest threat to Christianity may come from the church itself, Williams proposed. 

“There is a real danger that people in the church, people who are followers of Jesus, expect people outside the church, people who have not been transformed by the Holy Spirit, to live by the Christian ethics. That is a fundamental mistake because we know that without the power of the Holy Spirit, we couldn’t do it. So why would we expect people who haven’t been transformed to do that?”

What the church must emphasize instead is the changing work of God’s grace, he said: “We’ve got to be really clear that we are not expecting people to improve their lives prior to coming into contact with the Christian message. 

Williams rejects the notion that the church is persecuted in the West. 

“I am more happy with the word opposition, which again, we’ve got to realize, is selective,” Williams said. “There are parts where there isn’t opposition, where there is acceptance, where there are open doors.”

Recognizing similar trends in the United States, Williams called for American Christians to guard against anger, noting that in a climate of secularism, the church should expect “opposition.” He also said that American and English Christians need each other.

“Paul and Silas were singing hymns of praise that they had opposition. It is an incredible privilege for the church in America to suffer some opposition. It doesn’t mean that we welcome opposition or persecution. We are told to pray against it. We can be grieved by it, but I think there is an element of anger in the way that Christians in America perceive that they are being treated.

“To some extent, [anger] is justifiable because [American Christians] look at America as a thing that was founded in a very beautiful way—set up with a good Constitution—and [now] they see that beautiful thing that they loved being spoiled. That produces the reaction of anger, understandable grief and so on, but I think that if we were counseling an Iranian Christian or someone in a situation where they are really, really being persecuted, we would not counsel them to get angry with those who are persecuting them.”

Meanwhile, about Christianity across the pond, Williams said, “It’s hard to say whether the evangelical church is gaining or losing ground in the UK. The promising statistic is that church attendance in London is at 8 percent whereas it is at 5 percent in the rest of England.” 

This growth is not just the result of immigration, he added. “There are also strong witnesses within our financial districts. London has a habit of attracting talent from round the entire country, and this means that there is often good strategic leadership in the churches here.”

Williams attends an independent Baptist church and sees cooperation among conservative, evangelical UK believers, regardless of denomination. 

“The Church of England is a single denomination but contains many different strands,” he said. “The affinity between an evangelical Baptist church and an evangelical Anglican church is far bigger than between a liberal Anglican church and an evangelical Anglican one. Often evangelicals of different denominations have good relationships. Our church sometimes collaborates with a nearby evangelical Anglican church, and the leaders have great mutual respect.”

If London is the harbinger of the spiritual direction of the UK, 8 percent looks good. Meanwhile, British Christians remain a determined minority.