The political race between the Evangelical God and the 'ordinary one'
Credo by Stephen Plant
October 28, 2006

GRACE DAVIE, the sociologist of religion, reports a conversation that took place during a survey in Islington in 1968. The interviewer asked a resident: “Do you believe in God?” “Yes”, the individual replied. “Do you believe in a God who can change the course of events on Earth?” continued the interviewer, “No” replied the interviewee, “just the ordinary one.” The exchange could still happen today. Most Britons still believe in God, but the God they believe in is “the ordinary one” who makes little practical difference either to their own lives, or to those of the society to which they belong.

It is therefore a striking feature of Christianity in contemporary Britain that the most confident Christian perspective is the one most at odds with that of the man in the (Islington) street. Against the flow of opinion both outside the churches and to an extent on the more liberal end of the Christian spectrum, Evangelical Christianity maintains that God can change the course of events on earth and looks for the realisation of this hope in British social and political life. the rest