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Most of those concerned with urban mission in the United Kingdom currently favor community development or community organizing models of training. They would like to see Christians actively involved in local community action. They welcome the proliferation of small Christian communities that are integral to the neighborhood or network in which they serve. They have a particular concern for groups that are marginalized and therefore relatively powerless in British society, including the Blacks, women, and the poor. Even those who use different evangelistic models inherited from the vital urban mission of the previous century are deeply concerned, as their forebears were, to see the churches grow locally. What is not so clear is how this focus on local, particular, community issues addresses the wider national and global forces that largely determine what happens at the grassroots. Nor is it clear how this focus moves churches forward in their evangelization of an increasingly multifaith and multicultural population.

Today, therefore, British urban mission trainers need to grapple with a series of problems surrounding the meaning of "community." They revolve around three questions: (1) How does the Christian congregation relate to the local neighborhood? Can the gathering of local Christians honestly be described as a community? (2) Can the territorial neighborhood in the city be fairly described as a "community" any longer? How will the local community (if that is what it is) relate to the still-dominant institutions of our day? For example, many British urban mission projects rely heavily upon government or charitable funding. To what extent does this dependence imply a submission to the plans and strategy of the powerful, and a subtle disempowerment of the weak? (3) How does our present pattern of training, influenced by models of community development and organization, approach the wider global issues of gospel, society, and culture?

In this article, I will briefly trace the decline of British urban churches and their influence in the twentieth century, highlight significant British training initiatives since the Second World War, and suggest some ways forward. If training for urban mission is to relate to the unresolved challenges in the British city today, we need change in current patterns of theological training. I suggest some possibilities in the conclusion.

The Missing Urban Masses

The urban masses of Britain have been outside the churches at least since the Industrial Revolution. Some would say it has been much longer than that. When they came to the cities, the working class saw the all-embracing and coherent rural community give way to socially and culturally differentiated networks. They were largely excluded by their lifestyle and hard working conditions from the churches in which the dominant middle classes felt comfortable (and in control).

Middle class Christians, spurred on by evangelical revivals, relieved poverty, visited the sick, evangelized women and children, and built hundreds of local mission halls. While many discovered a living faith and social uplift through denominational and interdenominational initiatives, the independent chapels, like the churches, tended to separate believers from the mass of the working class. Workers in turn became increasingly alienated from the Christian churches, if not Christianity itself.

The poor turned to secular movements for more radical political reform. The attempts of the churches to remedy the situation with things like Sunday evening evangelistic services for workers and servants accomplished little. Parachurch missions like the Salvation Army, insofar as they were successful, highlighted the weaknesses in the structures, ministry style, language, and form of the established denominations but they were not grassroots movements among the poor. They were the missionary concern of Britain's middle class Christians.

By the end of the nineteenth century it was clear that the strenuous efforts of the churches had not improved the church-going habits of the urban masses. Since then the position has further deteriorated. For instance, in a working class district of South London in 1903, Anglican church attendance of adults totalled 2.3 percent of the population. In 1985, a Gallup Poll revealed that nationwide, Anglican church attendance of adults in urban priority areas had fallen to 0.9 percent of the resident population. There has been an even more catastrophic decline in suburban church attendance.

In this century, the churches have been losing the middle classes. The scientific revolution, the impact of two world wars, and the loss of status of the ministry have all contributed to a marginalizing of the churches in a society that is now 90 percent urban. While the middle classes once served the highly influential established churches and their denominational offshoots, they no longer find it necessary to attend, let alone belong, except as a matter of personal choice. Sometimes people still point to the resilience of middle class church attendance by identifying well-attended services and celebratory events, but this is deceptive. In 1903, for instance, 21 percent of a South London suburb attended an Anglican church. In the 1985 Gallup Poll referred to above, only 1.5 percent attended Anglican worship in non-urban priority, or more middle class, areas. One could argue with some force that the churches have not lost the inner cities because we never had them, but we have lost the suburbs.

New Religious Forms

Why, then, does one hear inner city areas like Handworth, Birmingham or Lenton, Nottingham (where I live) sometimes described as God-fearing areas? What happened in my part of Nottingham was that Afro-Caribbeans flooded in after the war to take up low paid employment in the factories. They were followed by Asian immigrants, many of whom succeeded in small local businesses. The churches did not welcome either group warmly or effectively, and sometimes overtly discouraged them. As a consequence, the traditional denominations went into decline while Black churches multiplied, and adherents of non-Christian faiths established new centers of worship.

Have we identified one of the biggest challenges to British churches in the century to come? Many urban areas are now inhabited by the faithful of non-Christian religions on the one hand, and believers from small ethnic and network Christian churches on the other. Habits of religious observance hold up well in the inner city. In the outlying working class estates, the picture may be different, but one can still trace a strong thread of implicit religion. In the middle class suburbs, the traditional heartland of twentieth century British Christianity, the churches are ailing.

Throughout this century, Christian thinkers have tried to address the decline in active membership and influence of the churches. It has been easier, however, to analyze the problem than to implement solutions. This is because we have been slow, first, to break free of the presumption that the community is the church. In Britain, the nonconformist churches pioneered the way at the turn of the century by championing the state education system and resisting the development and expansion of church schools. They were hastening the process of the secularization of the churches. In Britain, even the Anglicans are becoming now what they and others have always been in other parts of the world-associational bodies of believers rather than communal expressions of the people's shared Christian faith. But British Christians have not found it easy to slough off their deeply ingrained perceptions of Christendom and their place within it.

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Ian Bunting is a graduate of Oxford University and Princeton Theological Seminary. He has served as an ordained Anglican minister for more than 30 years, most of them in urban areas of northern England. He recently completed a two year research project on patterns of theological training appropriate for urban ministries. Address: 13 Rolleston Drive, Lenton, Nottingham NG7 1JS, England.


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