Trends in Church Life: The Spiritual Revolution

Abstract

This paper employs empirical research methods to ascertain ways in which Christianity may need to develop if it is to retain active support in the West. It describes outcomes from a two-year locality study undertaken by a team from Lancaster University with the aim of mapping ‘contemporary patterns of the sacred’ (more fully developed in the 2005 book The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion Is Giving Way to Spirituality by Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead). One major finding was that ‘subjectivized’ forms of religion and spirituality (those which speak to and resource personal subjective life) appear to be growing rapidly at the expense of traditional forms of religion. The paper concludes with thoughts on ways in which Christianity could develop that would help it to make headway within a subjectivised culture.