The end of Christendom is nigh

If you are of a traditional turn of mind, you might well go to church this Christmas, sing the carols you knew in childhood and feel a bit of a Dickensian glow. If you are already Christian, the experience will confirm your sense that what is commemorated is the most stupendous thing in human history – the arrival of Jesus Christ, whether or not you believe the stories as told in the readings.

Statistically, however, it is highly unlikely that you will be going back to church for months – probably not until next year. If you did venture into your local church on a normal Sunday, you would find a tiny band of old people like me who go regularly and who are wondering, all the time, how much longer it can all continue.

When Dr Johnson visited the Hebrides, he famously exclaimed: ‘That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.’ Deeply learned and Christian as he was, his mind easily reverted, in Iona’s ruins, to the era when the monastic hours had echoed in those walls.

In Scotland today, where Johnson’s piety once grew warm among the ruins, churches are closing every single week. It has been calculated that 40 per cent of Church of Scotland churches have closed in the past decade, including major architectural sites such as Brechin Cathedral. Roman Catholic churches are likewise closing down at a rate of knots all over Britain, and the Church of England, which is in the unlucky position of having guardianship of all the extant pre-Reformation churches, is faced with the problem of what to do with such places, which are scarcely, if ever, attended.