Edward Lucas writes: Wherever we go on Sunday mornings, we have to arrive early to get a seat. At the 10 am children’s service at Chelsea Old Church, the language of the prayers is archaic, but that does not bother the scores of youngsters, from tots to teenagers, as they sing hymns, read and act out a Bible story in full costume, answer questions in return for Mars bars, take the collection and read prayers. Dogs bark joyfully. But somehow nobody finds it hard to sit still when the professionally run choir is singing: last week’s anthem was Elgar’s Ave Verum.

Later, for the sung Prayer Book Matins, it gets even more crowded. But my wife Cristina Odone is Roman Catholic, so we often head to the Latin Mass at the Brompton Oratory. Incense wafts out of the doors, while outside the church the crowds mingle with the congregation from the next-door powerhouse of evangelical Christianity, Holy Trinity Brompton, home of the Alpha Course.

None of this gives you the feeling of what statistics suggest is a dying religion in a post-Christian country. For all their liturgical and doctrinal differences, what all these congregations have in common is a belief that Christianity matters. It matters because it is true, and because it helps you live your life fully, as your Maker intended.

Conviction matters much more than the differences between the various strands of Christianity, which outsiders often find bewildering. In fact they reflect the diversity of the human condition: they are a plus, not a minus. For some believers the sense of mystery is paramount; others particularly prize aesthetics, or tradition. Some want structure; some want informality. The Bible may be taken wholly literally, or largely metaphorically. The real problem is that so much of the Christian church in Britain has lost its conviction — and thus its power to convince.

“cannibalism acted out to please the Sky Fairy”

To be fair, the modern age is tough on Christianity. The cult of pseudo-rationality puts its claims under a wrongly focused microscope; how can you actually believe this stuff, the Dawkinsites ask, not realising that their own moral and even scientific beliefs are based on hefty doses of supposition and wishful thinking. In an age where deference is seen as a sign of weakness (albeit selectively: don’t joke about Islam), mockery abounds of anything that sounds serious, complicated or important: when I contributed to a book about Anglicanism, I was told Christianity is “cannibalism acted out to please the Sky Fairy”.

Meanwhile, other gods (notably Mammon and Bacchus) have simple, powerful offerings. Loving your neighbour is hard. Doing business with him, or getting drunk with him, is easier.

And there are own goals too. The hypocrisy and cruelty involved in endemic child abuse in some churches, and the equally appalling cover-ups, have eviscerated Christianity’s moral authority in the eyes of many — though they in fact illustrate that humans are sinful and that the voice of the powerless must be heard above that of the powerful. Both are central messages of Christian teaching.

The issue of sexual morality is dividing the Anglican communion this very week, as my cousin Justin Welby hosts its squabbling bishops in Canterbury. It is interesting to note that Jesus had almost nothing to say on this subject, except to denounce divorce — which even the most hardline African and American Bible-thumpers now regard as worthy of forgiveness.

But these problems pale beside the central one: a lack of conviction. It does not matter what you emphasise in your preaching, or practise in your worship, but if you go about it with the embarrassed jokiness that has become the house style of many Christian churches, you are not going to get people out of bed on a Sunday morning. The worst advertisement for Christianity in this country, I sometimes feel, is Radio 4’s Thought for the Day: platitudinous conclusions drawn from lame anecdotes.

In a largely secular society, many people look at these problems and yawn. It is nice to have churches for weddings and funerals but why care if they are empty the rest of the time? Some do more than yawn. A new novel by Quentin Letts, The Speaker’s Wife, is based on a sneaky (and not implausible) scheme by secularist politicians to turn empty churches over to property developers to ease the housing shortage. Secularists want to chuck the bishops out the House of Lords, and religion off the airwaves and out of schools.

I think that pushing Christianity out of public life is a mistake, even for those who feel no attachment to the religion. One reason is civilisational: if you want to understand this country’s history, literature and culture, it helps to have a rough idea of what people have believed and practised over the past centuries.

More importantly, removing Christianity eases the path not for modernity, but for the nihilistic medievalism of the jihadists. Even dilute Christian identity helps to counter the charge that modern society is shallow, corrupt and hedonistic. People want meaning in their lives, and will flock to those who offer it. The past 50 years show that the creation of a moral vacuum in society has not been a success.

I worry about that more for my country than for my church. We can survive persecution, or we would not be here now. The lack of conviction, though, and the apathy that it stokes, is a far bigger problem. The worst enemy of Britain’s Christians is not the secularists, but themselves.

Read the original article in The Times

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