CHURCH ATTENDANCE HAS ALWAYS BEEN YO-YO

This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Church attendance has always been yo-yo

There has been a great deal in the Mercury recently regarding religion. Apparently it faces an inevitable demise.

Hasn't it always?

There was certainly a decline in religious attendance in the last century in this country – but there was a massive increase in the 19th century.

This was compared with the very sparse church attendance in the 18th century – which succeeded the general attendance in the 17th century.

I think this yo-yo behaviour is quite usual. A moribund church, for example, experienced a great resurgence of interest around AD 1000.

Way back in the first century BC, the Roman philosopher Cicero was writing of those who had recently decided that the majority who believed in the gods were wrong and that we had no souls after all.

In contrast with the argument that human history leads us ever onwards and upwards, this suggests that humanity's opinions more resemble a pendulum which swings from one extreme ("we believe!") to another ("we do not believe!") but spends the least of its time in the middle ("actually, we're not sure").

This not only applies to religion. It seems to be common to most human activity.

Even scientists convince themselves that they have almost everything sorted out only for some genius to wander up and casually chuck it all into air again. In politics, capitalism is sanity, then socialism insanity, then capitalism is the obvious solution, then socialism explains all.

There is a suspicion that the next generation reacts to the excesses of the previous by going to the opposite end of the spectrum.

Whatever the case may be, it is likely that religion will be with us for the foreseeable future.

Russ Ball, Leicester