Something is changing across the western world when it comes to faith. The long secular surge has stalled and Christianity is once again gaining ground. So reports that champion of faith, The Economist.
In Canada, Britain & France the share of the ‘nones’ (people not declaring any religious allegiance including the spiritual, the atheist & the agnostic) has stopped growing. In seven other western European countries the rate has slowed markedly. Spain, Portugal, Italy & Finland are no less Christian today than they were in 2019. Even in Sweden the change is helping slow the catastrophic decline of the Church of Sweden. Active withdrawals have fallen for the past 5 years. They are still declining just at a much slower rate. All across the West young people are turning to some form of Christianity and fewer older people are giving it up.
The biggest question for researchers then is ‘why?’ As none of them will attribute this interest in faith to, *checks notes* God, there must be another explanation. But God can use even plague for His purposes if He so sees fit. Which happens to be the explanation most favoured by social scientists. The COVID pandemic of 2020-2022 turned people to God. Or rather it shook people out of complacency and made them question their lives. They questioned their sense of purpose and meaning and upon realizing they had neither went looking for both.
As the article says, “Hardly anyone saw this coming, just as hardly anyone predicted the pandemic. God moves in mysterious ways—and so do people.”
But it’s not that mysterious.
Mark Sayers pointed out in October 2020 that renewal and revival are almost always preceded by a crisis. I’m not as astute a reader of the times that Mark is, but even I could pick up on this.
In February 2020 I wrote that the comfort of our society left us ill equipped to handle the hardship of a pandemic and would leave many struggling. In April 2020 I asked ‘Will a pandemic turn Europe back to God?’ and first expressed the idea that there might be a spiritual bump but maybe not in Sweden.
I think there’ll be some differences in the spiritual side of things too. I’m hearing stories from lockdown countries of ‘a greater openness’ to the Gospel and online services booming in the UK and elsewhere. That’s not true in Sweden. There is no great existential crisis here, and life is disrupted but not critically so. So why would your average secular Swede look for Jesus any more today than a few months ago? If there is any kind of spiritual bump up from this coronavirus pandemic it likely won’t be felt in Sweden.
In October of that year I wondered whether Sweden would miss out writing,
So I wonder whether post-pandemic, whenever that is, will Sweden miss out on the spiritual change the church here needs because it has managed this pandemic in such a way that it is not in a crisis? Sweden is deeply secular and it seems unlikely that this pandemic will alter that or the approach of the churches here in any substantial way.
It’s too early to tell whether Sweden will miss out or not but if Sweden does experience a turnaround in faith (and there are signs we might) then I hope people will look for another explanation because in our case it probably won’t be attributable to COVID.
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