The publication of the data led to an interesting contrast in reactions. A Dec. 11 report published on the Christian Today Web site quoted a spokesman for the Catholic Church, who described the fall in the number of Christians as a “challenge….”
The spokesman cited the address by Pope Benedict XVI at Westminster Cathedral during his visit in 2010, “How much we need, in the Church and in society, witnesses of the beauty of holiness, witnesses of the splendour of truth, witnesses of the joy and freedom born of a relationship with Jesus Christ.”
An editorial published in the Dec. 12 edition of London’s Times newspaper was in sharp contrast. It also used the words of challenge, saying that: “The decline in Christian affiliation is a challenge to the Church.” It proposed a very different solution to that proposed by the Pope. Christianity, the editorial said: “should respond by embracing modernity.”
Most of the time, the CofE can be both a “national institution” as per the Times editorial, and a church beholden to the laws of Christ (what the Times derisively calls “a sect”).
But sometimes those two imperatives come into conflict, and it is then that choices must be made. Either way, a piper must be paid. Very shortly there will be more such times for the CofE to make a choice.