Abstract
A widespread decline in church participation in Western societies over recent decades has been well documented. Numerous scholarly and journalistic reports reinforce a numbers-based narrative. But there are religious dimensions that are neglected through this focus on numerical declension. The emergence of “spiritual capital” in sociological and other scholarly literature provides a needed lens for chronicling an alternative narrative in contemporary Christian churches. A William Temple Foundation paper, Faith in Action: The dynamic connection between spiritual and religious capital, argues that a regressive spiral of institutional decline can be happening simultaneously with a progressive spiral of growth in spiritual or religious capital. The Christian Science movement provides a useful case in point. The Church has faced over several decades, along with many Christian churches, a downward slope when members and churches are measured numerically. At the same time, there is the uninterrupted continuity of a defining spiritual asset for this denomination, namely healing through purely spiritual means – an asset consistently accompanied with empirical evidence. This healing aspect reveals reserves of spiritual capital disclosing not only a contrasting narrative to that of decline, but a fuller picture of the movement’s current vitality. The paper assesses the applicability of spiritual capital as a means for providing the counternarrative about Christian Science specifically, while also signaling its potential application across the array of Christian denominations in the West that are declining according to numerical measures.
Presenters
Scott ThompsonSenior Writer and Editor, Committee on Publication, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Massachusetts, United States Robin Harragin Hussey
Student, PhD, University of Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Religious Community and Socialization
KEYWORDS
Spiritual Capital, Church Decline, Christian Healing, Narratives, Assessment
