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Is the Church in decline?
Some might draw that conclusion looking at data from the 2023 census.
Reporting the results, one media headline said, “More than half the population has no religion”.
It went on saying that the proportion of people with ‘no religion’ has increased from 48.2 per cent in 2018 to 51.6 per cent in 2023.
So that’s 2,576,049 people who claim no adherence to religious faith.
The number of people who identified as Christian (NZ’s largest ‘faith’ grouping), supposedly dropped from 36.5 per cent in 2018 to 32.3 per cent in 2023.
The Covid effect
During the Covid period, government implemented lockdowns, then mandatory vaccine passes for attending church services – alternatively limiting attendances to 50 people. It created considerable attrition.
A roll-on effect remains evident. Former church attendees found smaller, informal gatherings to their liking, never making their way back to corporate denominational worship centres.
Of course that preference wouldn’t necessarily show up in a census as a retraction of faith, but it could account for people stating they’d left an organised expression of Christian faith.
The census ‘revelations’ surprised me.
From where I sit, in many contexts I see churches letting their light shine and growing – though an imperfect work in progress, the true Church in its broadest sense remains bigger and more dimensional than any census could ever accurately disclose.
Many of us for example, aren’t aware of numerous hui throughout the motu where faithful Māori believers worship Ihu Karaiti (Jesus Christ).
Not to mention the generation of spiritually hungry young people embracing authentic Christianity for truthful answers to the hopeless vacuous secular humanism that’s rife today.
The future
I see a significant future for the Church. I understand people claiming zero interest in religion.
An important distinction sets true Christianity apart – Jesus did not come to inaugurate a religion. He is God’s provision to save humanity from its lost sinful state. Continue reading
- Murray Smith is a journalist for Cambridge News
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