This report is the product of three years’ work by a special commission of the Evangelical Alliance UK. As such, it represents a major contribution to the Alliance’s Movement for Change initiative – a programme launched in autumn 2000 ‘to reinvigorate Christian witness and make a significant impact on the moral and spiritual heart of the nation.’
The Faith and Nation Commission undertook its task very consciously with regard to the significant decline in British church affiliation which has occurred since the 1960s, and which has resulted in only 6% of the population attending services regularly in England and Wales today. The Commission was also aware that these statistics reflect broader cultural, sociological and intellectual trends which are profoundly challenging the status, role and witness of the Church in 21st century Britain. In analysing these trends and addressing the challenges they present, the report focuses particularly on the changing public function of the church in a nation which no longer takes its bearings from Christianity in the way it once did. Specifically, it seeks to address a British national context no longer bound up with ‘the faith of the church’ as enshrined in the Bible, creeds, prayer books and Christian rites of passage, but marked instead by a growing diversity of religions and worldviews, clustered together by government under the catch-all rubric of ‘faith’.
Against this background, the report assesses the identity and tasks of the Christian community at the start of the new millennium, as it works out its calling to be ‘Church’ in relation to the ‘State’ and the ‘Nation’, or nations, of the United Kingdom.
The Commission’s terms of reference were as follows:
Intending to evaluate and shape the ongoing contribution of Evangelicals to society, and seeking to uphold religious liberty, the Commission will investigate Faith and Nation in the UK. It will aim to inform the strategic thinking of the Evangelical Alliance through a study of the place of religion in the socio-political life of 21st century Britain. Integral to the Commission’s analysis will be engagement with relevant theological and constitutional issues.
The emphasis on religious liberty here is a response to various secularizing forces which have already begun to challenge established Christian freedoms, and which are set to do so more forcefully in future. Chief among these is the introduction of new laws and policies driven by concepts of ‘equality’ and ‘rights’, which were once derived from the biblical doctrine of creation, but which now increasingly cast classical Christians as intolerant, exclusive and unfit for the civic sphere. The highlighting of socio-political, theological and constitutional aspects of faith is reflected in the three main strands of the report. Although these strands are closely interwoven in the final text, they were first treated separately by three sub-groups of the Commission, each of whom gathered written contributions from a wide range of sources in their field, and then convened sessions in which expert ‘witnesses’ made verbal submissions and were subsequently interviewed.
