The Spiritual Revolution: A Response from the Parish

Abstract

This response paper considers three aspects of the argument presented in The Spiritual Revolution: (i) the validity of drawing universal conclusions from the research project, particularly when it is clear that a significant number of churches are experiencing growth; (ii) the claim that the ‘subjective turn’ is a new idea in describing decline in church attendance – it is an idea that crops up regularly in assessments of the state of the church and may simply be regarded as a manifestation of the postmodern condition; (iii) the difficulty of categorising congregations in the way the book does – in the author’s experience there is much more complexity and diversity in congregational life than is accounted for here.