Easter is the great Christian festival of hope and rebirth. But Britain’s churches have few reasons to be cheerful about their own future. The 2021 census results, published in November, found that for the first time less than half the population identifies as Christian. Thousands of churches have closed their doors in recent years, some repurposed into art galleries or museums.
In the midst of decline, however, a religious success story is changing the shape and enriching the texture of British Christianity. To a remarkable degree, black majority churches (BMCs) are a countercultural growth industry in a country which is perhaps less secular than it believes itself to be. Research suggests that the rise in non-white church attendance in recent decades may more or less match the drop-off in white churchgoers. Though predominantly Pentecostal, BMCs also exist within the Anglican communion and other historic church traditions, the Baptist Union and Methodism. In London and Britain’s other major cities, former bingo halls, warehouses and shops have been transformed into places of worship, channelling the evangelical intensity of African and Caribbean Christianity.
Starting here is now as good a place as any in giving an account of modern British religiosity. Seeded during the postwar waves of immigration from the Commonwealth, the BMCs were formed partly in response to hostility encountered in white Christian churches. As well as religious consolation, they offered a safe haven, advice and economic assistance to communities forced to contend with pervasive racism. These social functions continue: BMCs played a vital role, for example, in challenging the ruinous impact of payday loan companies on low-income households. But the cultural influence of black British Christianity extends far beyond that.
The England football team has showcased the faith of black footballers such as Bukayo Saka and Raheem Sterling, both raised in the Pentecostal church. During his 2019 appearance at Glastonbury, Stormzy introduced his Christian anthem Blinded By Your Grace by telling a largely white and presumably mostly secular crowd: “This is what it sounds like when Glastonbury meets God.” The rapper namechecked the shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, who has spoken of the faith he inherited from his Guyanese parents, and of their generation’s struggle to find a welcome in the churches of the “motherland”.
The higher profile is confirmation of the fascinatingly complex and changing layers of diversity that constitute modern Britain. A history forged in sometimes hostile circumstances has made churches such as the one attended by Saka a spiritual repository and beacon for communal values, along with a focus on individual self-esteem and self-betterment. Cosmopolitan London, where 48% of churchgoers are black, is also the most religious city in the country, with the most devout Christian population. Within the BMCs themselves, there are signs that generational change may come to challenge traditional thinking.
Discussing the significance of BMCs in this newspaper in 1979, Trevor Beeson, the radical Anglican theologian and future dean of Winchester, wrote: “In these African and West Indian churches lies the best hope of re-Christianising the British nation and in helping the weary churches of these islands to rediscover the true character of Christian faith and worship.” The depth of secularisation in the country at large renders the idea of such a “reverse mission” implausible these days. But in bleak times for the established church, and a Eurocentric presumption that for religion the only way is down, black British Christians are writing a chapter of the national story which suggests that faith has a future.
