I very nearly lopped off the middle finger of my left hand with an angle grinder a couple weeks ago. I was cutting through a heavy weld on a farm implement when the grinding disk caught and leaped out, stinging my supporting hand and leaving a deep groove just above the joint that revealed a tendon but somehow avoided major damage. The experience reinforced a couple things for me: 1) angle grinders are dangerous and powerful, and 2) life throws surprises at you sometimes.
Another major surprise in the last year was the phenomenon of what has been termed the “Quiet Revival” — what seems to be a return to Christian faith across all demographics but especially among young men. It’s a fascinating development, and not something that seemed at all likely until recently; evidence of the Church’s long slide to irrelevance has been pretty incontrovertible. There has been a great deal of excited chatter. Church leaders have been comparing numbers and wondering how to leverage the trend. Various thoughtful people have stepped in to explain why all of this is happening. And, of course, theologians have been discussing what all of this means.
There has been some pushback from data researchers about whether any such revival is taking place. At least some of the statistics seem to have been unreliable. Certainly, the trend has not been overwhelming in the same measure of movements at the turn of the 20th century, for example the Welsh Revival of 1904 that saw a hundred thousand people returning to the church. Something in our attitude to faith has shifted, though. There has been a trickle of high-profile people unexpectedly coming out as Christian: Paul Kingsnorth, Louise Perry, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Niall Ferguson. There is a greater openness across society that faith might somehow be relevant. Anecdotally, I’m having a lot more conversations with secular people who are genuinely interested in what I believe, and why, when they find out I’m Christian.
Most of the focus in what I’ve read and the events I’ve attended on this topic is centred around the external factors that might push someone to consider becoming Christian. There is nothing wrong with this. External factors influence us enormously. Life is not great for a lot of people at the moment; lack of opportunity, difficulties with housing, confusion about one’s place in the world, anxiety about everything from climate change to an AI apocalypse – all these things can, and should, drive people to consider whether there is more to life than some elusive pursuit of happiness.
What seems to be missing in the discussion, however, is what could be called the supernatural element. What if there is more to all this than a bunch of humans arguing about what they believe? What if this has something to do with the power of God, the reality of God at work in the world now? Even religious leaders seem a little embarrassed about acknowledging the possibility, but its reality would seem to be the whole point. The funny thing about religious faith of any sort is that it defies rational understanding; it does not need to make sense intellectually in order to be true. It’s likely to be deeply unfashionable.
I would argue that being a Christian is about a good deal more than holding a set of beliefs, although this is a contingent part. It’s a conviction that God has a particular plan for one’s life, a particular calling. It is all about doing stuff on a person-to-person level, a lot of which flies in the face of normal behaviour: loving your enemies, giving away your possessions, doing more than is expected of you. It is not really about going to church, or trying to be a nice person, or achieving religious highs. It does not sit well with any ideologies (it’s certainly not “Western”) nor is it concerned with running governments, winning arguments, any sort of human achievement or brilliance. As Tom Holland noted in his bestselling book Dominion it’s the kind of thing that would seem to appeal to suckers and slaves.
The first Christians, indeed, were the very definition of hoi polloi — fishermen, housewives, peasants, former prostitutes. The existence of this new religion was viewed as scandalous from Jerusalem to Athens to Rome. It was not merely who they were, and what they believed that caused outrage, it was also what they did. Sharing possessions, caring for the sick, taking in abandoned children, feeding the starving; these things flew in the face of accepted cultural practices.
As the church grew it became more established. Customs, forms, rites, and doctrine all needed to be hammered out. We needed theologians for this. We still do, especially as we face the tricky ethical situations of the present day. A solid understanding of Christian teaching is a necessary basis to combat the craziness that regularly affects human beings. The danger in theology, though, is that it becomes entirely academic, dry as dust, and incomprehensible to anyone without a doctorate.
Reading through the New Testament one catches something fresh, raw, almost alien; a glimpse of the power that countless people still respond to. Jesus began his ministry with a very straightforward message: change your life. The notion that your life can change, that God can change your life remains one of the most revolutionary ideas of all time.
The power of God is real, shocking, life changing, dangerous
When the religious leaders in Jerusalem were debating how to suppress what they considered a movement of swivel-eyed nutters a few months after the execution of Jesus, a respected scholar advised them to do nothing. If this was just another human activity, he said, it would collapse on its own. If, however, it was from God, there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
That argument still holds today. As a Christian I firmly believe that God is at work in the world and that one day he will intervene decisively to set everything right. Will a Quiet Revival be a part of this or just a strange anomaly from the mid ‘20s? No one actually knows. I do know that the power of God is real, shocking, life changing, dangerous. Watch out; it might leap out and catch you unexpectedly.
