Sticking with quizzes - have you tried https://www.moviedle.app/ - guess the movie when it’s compressed to 1 second! More time = more guesses; answer in as few guesses as possible. One quiz per day. Maddening, but more fun then proroguing parliament …
I know a few young (20-something) Christians, all white, well-off, well educated - privileged, liberal, left-leaning; and every single one of them prefers and actively seeks out Evangelical churches. Which makes me think either there’s a liberal strain of Evangelical ministry somewhere, or the people I know are picking and choosing which bits of the ministry they respond to. There’s a dynamism in the Evangelical church in England that obviously holds a massive appeal for young ‘uns
That’s interesting. The Alpha Course has been very popular within Catholicism over the last couple of decades, and you can see that as an attempt to evangelicise what CNA otherwise be a quite fusty liturgy etc. so maybe there’s a wider point that people just want something a bit more … pizzazzy from their religion. Have you seen the episode of Rev where the cool young vicar in a gilet turns up and has smoothies at the back of church?
Heh. Have actually not seen Rev, keep meaning to though. I’m stabbing in the dark (as an atheist myself) but I wonder whether they are actively seeking the spiritual/mystical in the same way their contemporaries seek it in some of the wilder interpretations of ‘social justice’ politics (not meant pejoratively). Basically seeking a controlling, boundary-imposing force with moral heft and a bit of wonder in it. Whereas CofE (as in your piece) not quite awe-y enough, however many discos and gilets it offers.
Having been a teenage and 20 something white middle class left-leaning evangelical Christian (a long time ago) part of the appeal is that you get to hang out with boys in an environment your parents don't object to. The music is good (for a certain value of good) and there's a sense of belonging. It's not stuffy like your gran's church.
Sticking with quizzes - have you tried https://www.moviedle.app/ - guess the movie when it’s compressed to 1 second! More time = more guesses; answer in as few guesses as possible. One quiz per day. Maddening, but more fun then proroguing parliament …
I know a few young (20-something) Christians, all white, well-off, well educated - privileged, liberal, left-leaning; and every single one of them prefers and actively seeks out Evangelical churches. Which makes me think either there’s a liberal strain of Evangelical ministry somewhere, or the people I know are picking and choosing which bits of the ministry they respond to. There’s a dynamism in the Evangelical church in England that obviously holds a massive appeal for young ‘uns
That’s interesting. The Alpha Course has been very popular within Catholicism over the last couple of decades, and you can see that as an attempt to evangelicise what CNA otherwise be a quite fusty liturgy etc. so maybe there’s a wider point that people just want something a bit more … pizzazzy from their religion. Have you seen the episode of Rev where the cool young vicar in a gilet turns up and has smoothies at the back of church?
Heh. Have actually not seen Rev, keep meaning to though. I’m stabbing in the dark (as an atheist myself) but I wonder whether they are actively seeking the spiritual/mystical in the same way their contemporaries seek it in some of the wilder interpretations of ‘social justice’ politics (not meant pejoratively). Basically seeking a controlling, boundary-imposing force with moral heft and a bit of wonder in it. Whereas CofE (as in your piece) not quite awe-y enough, however many discos and gilets it offers.
Agreed - some people *like* the exact same sense of regulation that puts
me off.
Having been a teenage and 20 something white middle class left-leaning evangelical Christian (a long time ago) part of the appeal is that you get to hang out with boys in an environment your parents don't object to. The music is good (for a certain value of good) and there's a sense of belonging. It's not stuffy like your gran's church.