Dear Brothers and Sisters.
Alleluia, Christ is Risen. He is risen indeed, alleluia.
The ‘A’ word, which has been missing from our liturgy during the days of Lent, has returned as an expression of our joy at the Resurrection of Christ. Joy because the death and Resurrection of Christ give us new life, the eternal life promised to believers. Now that Lent is over, we also reintroduce the Gloria in Excelsis, the song of the angels at Christ’s birth. The Gloria is a song of joyfulness, but during Lent, as we put ourselves alongside Christ in his forty days in the wilderness, rather than joyfulness the emphasis is on repentance for sinfulness. It is a penitential, not a joyful season. The Gloria is sung on certain special solemnities during Lent, and again on Holy Thursday with the ringing of bells to emphasise our joy as we give thanks for the institution of the Eucharist; the bells are then silent as we begin the period of the Lord’s Passion. But at the Easter Vigil, the Gloria is sung once more with an organ fanfare and ringing of bells and the church is lit up as we proclaim our joy as the Resurrection of Christ.
The Easter Triduum from the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday through to the Mass of Our Lord’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday is the liturgical climax of the Christian year and Easter is the greatest of Christian festivals. But in 2023 Premier Christian News reported on a survey conducted by Whitestone Insight. Sadly, the survey found that one in ten of those surveyed consider Easter eggs to be more important than the Resurrection when it comes to Easter and a quarter of respondents calling themselves Christian do not believe in the Resurrection at all. You wonder what they think Christianity is about. As St Paul wrote to the Corinthians, ‘if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.’
Easter is a greater festival than Christmas, even though of course the two are interlinked, and yet while many people will go to our churches and cathedrals for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, far fewer take part in the celebrations of this great festival. The latest Statistics for Mission report of the Church of England shows that in 2024, whereas 1,858,000 people attended a Christmas service, only 953,000 attended one at Easter. More shocking perhaps is the fact that in 2017 those figures were 2.691 million ( the highest Christmas attendance for a decade) and 1.254 million respectively.
Despite these falls in attendance at Christmas and Easter, and a widely-held belief that there has been a general falling off in church attendance, a 2025 report by the Bible Society called The Quiet Revival was welcomed with much enthusiasm after claiming that the decline in church attendance had reversed. The report stated that their survey, carried out by YouGov, showed a significant growth in the numbers of people going to church. One statistic in particular got much attention – the claim that ‘in 2018, just 4% of 18–24-year-olds said they attended church at least monthly. Today this has risen to 16%, with young men increasing from 4% to 21%, and young women from 3% to 12%.’
Had these figures been correct there would indeed have been grounds for much rejoicing. However, those of you with long memories might remember Harold Wilson’s comment after losing the 1970 election: ‘the opinion polls have a lot to answer for’. Because sadly, as you may have read in the newspaper recently, the Bible Society has had to retract this report after YouGov admitted serious errors in its methodology, including a number of respondents now identified as fraudulent, and ‘it can no longer be regarded as a reliable source of information about the spiritual landscape in Britain.’
Let us pray during Eastertide for a genuine increase in the number of people attending church, including those who come to our parish of All Saints.
Blessings for a happy and holy Easter,
Fr Christopher
All Saints' Church, South Wimbledon 