The Christmas cathedral statistics: High Church populism in a secular age

What are we to make of yesterday's report - 'Cathedral Statistics 2017' - that CofE cathedrals witnessed a 3% increase in worshippers during Christmas 2017, with the highest overall figure since 2000?

Amidst other statistics amongst Anglican and Episcopal churches in North Atlantic societies apparently indicating inevitable decline, the report is a significant reminder that decline is not inevitable.  To put it slightly differently, the secular society is nowhere near as robust as it seems - as it seems both to secular opinion and some Anglican/Episcopal opinion.

Charles Taylor's description of the 'buffered self' of the secular age - contrasted with the 'porous' nature of pre-modern society - can be its very weakness.  Why? Because the 'buffered self' is a cold, uninspiring, brittle myth, incapable of satisfying heart and soul.  As Taylor puts it, there is "a wide sense of malaise at the disenchanted world, a sense of it as flat, empty, a multiform search for something within, or beyond it".

And so, in a society commonly regarded to be one of the most secular in Europe, last year attendance at worship in cathedrals increased at Christmas - amidst talk of virgin birth, angels, and a strange star.

Which brings us to another point: the popularity of popular religion.  Popular religion is (thankfully) very difficult to avoid at Christmas - nativity services and crib scenes; well-known carols; familiar phrases from the Scriptures (the people walking in darkness/in the sixth month the angel Gabriel/the Word was made flesh).  A sniffy, condescending approach to popular religion is not unknown within contemporary Anglicanism, whether from those still convinced by Myth of God Incarnate, or those who believe that a carol service without a 30 minute expository sermon really is a waste of time, or those who dislike the crowds as a throw-back Christendom, desiring instead the supposed purity of the catacombs.

John Milbank has referred to the "High Church, populist, festive" character of many English cathedrals.  The Christmas statistics for cathedrals suggests something of the need for a renewed confidence in a High Church populism, native to Anglicanism.  It retains a cultural resonance, as seen in its ability to respond to the culture's desire for festive meaning grounded in the Christmas story.

Part of that High Church populism, native to Anglicanism, is the recogition that alongside the Eucharist (and, indeed, the sermon), the Church must offer other expressions of festivity and celebration.  Whether the seasonal greenery in Georgian parish churches, or the carols rediscovered by Victorian parishes, or the emergence of the Nine Lessons and Carols, the native High Church traditions within Anglicanism have recognised the significance of populist expressions of Christmas festivity, alongside the sacramental.

Yesterday's report indicates that 27% of worshippers attending CofE cathedrals during Christmas 2017 received Holy Communion.  If you wanted a statistic which suggested why the Parish Communion movement was a wrong turn for Anglicanism, it's possible that this is such a statistic.  Meaningful expressions of non-eucharistic spirituality are necessary if contemporary Anglicanism is to resonate with the culture, whether at Christmas or any other time in the Christian year.

Perhaps one of the most thought-provoking statements I have heard in recent months has been that phrase from Alison Milbank, "secularism in our country is a loss of habits".  The failure to sustain and renew opportunities for popular religiosity to connect with the Church must surely be a part of such a loss of habits.  When opportunity is given for the expression of popular religiosity - for example, Christmas in cathedrals - the habits are renewed.

High Church populism - a Trad Expression™ for a secular age.