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Why is it that concerns about valuing and nurturing the participation of all God’s people in mission and ministry have proved so remarkably persistent in the Church of England, in spite of the widespread consensus about the urgency of addressing them and the many positive initiatives of the last fifty years? At least part of the answer lies in the way they are intertwined with the dynamics of ‘secularization’, itself a deeply contested term.25 Casanova’s influential analysis distinguished three strands in studies of secularization: the differentiation of social space into autonomous spheres, with religious institutions losing the power to determine understanding and behaviour beyond their limited domain; the privatization of religion, with religious voices ceasing to have influence in politics and the public square more generally; and the decline of religious belief, practice and affiliation, with associated reductions in scale of religious communities and institutions. Reflecting on the radically altered profile of religion in global politics during the 1980s, Casanova contended that while it had been argued that modernization of societies made all three forms of secularization inevitable, in fact only the first – differentiation – was integral to modernization.26

Church leaders in this country, as elsewhere in Western Europe since the Second World War, have been sharply conscious of secularization, without necessarily disentangling the different threads in how it is presented in social science. Casanova’s analysis is useful in illuminating how the phenomenon of secularization has drawn contrasting responses from the churches in the post-war decades. Secularization as differentiation marks the eclipse of Christendom, conceived as a society in which a Christian church is favoured by the state, whose authorities are members of that church and give it comprehensive formal and informal influence in political and cultural life. Few would argue that this shift is a straightforwardly negative development.

It clarifies the character of the ‘saeculum’ – the duration of human history – as the time in which different loves and loyalties are in a contest for the hearts of people. The clearing away of the appearance of a devoted Christian nation and the emerging of thought-forms running counter to Christian faith make it harder to be Christian, and especially unreflectively Christian. Yet they also open a space of freedom within which reflective, intentional discipleship can be fostered, and the church can find its place in an open public square alongside other voices and other actors. On the other hand, secularization as privatization of religion and secularization as decline in religion present more obviously direct challenges to the churches. These may be felt most sharply in the case of those such as the Church of England that had held a privileged place in public life and secure access to material resources in the Christendom era.

Two related effects of the dynamics of secularization provide crucial context for the series of publications and initiatives reviewed in the previous section: the perceived weakening of Christian influence in political, social, and cultural life, and the progressive diminishment in church membership and material resources. In both cases, it is not difficult to understand why fostering the full participation of the laity would be considered vital for any serious attempt to combat or at least mitigate these effects. In a society where ecclesiastical office and theological knowledge no longer carry authority beyond their limited social spheres, those whose place in other areas of public life rests on their routine involvement and specialist expertise within them must take responsibility for exercising Christian influence and maintaining a Christian presence there. Hence the need to support lay discipleship. In a church where clergy are struggling to maintain the worshipping communities and associated institutions that they have inherited, lay people are increasingly crucial both for drawing in new members and for making the demands of ministry bearable by taking on new roles and responsibilities within their worshipping communities. Hence the need to support lay ministry.

Clear lines can be drawn, then, between some of the more obvious perceived effects of secularization and the concern to promote lay discipleship and lay ministry since the Second World War. Those lines also suggest where we might look for signs of what has made that support less effective than has been repeatedly hoped. If support for lay discipleship and ministry is motivated by concern to address certain losses for the church associated with secularization, then if those losses could be either reversed or addressed in some other way, would such support then cease? Supposing, for instance, the case was made that more effective clerical leadership was in fact the key to regaining Christian influence in public life and to growing worshipping communities: would the call to promote fuller lay involvement in discipleship and ministry remain so compelling? While the impact of secularization may bestow an urgency on enabling the participation of the whole people of God in the whole work of God, it cannot create a fundamental imperative. Unless that imperative is understood and grasped as one that arises from the heart of Christian faith, then support for change to enable greater participation by the laity will always be vulnerable to erosion when someone claims to have a superior tactic for addressing the church’s problems. It will also be clouded by the feeling that it is an unfortunate necessity that adverse circumstances have forced upon us, rather than a joyful response to the abundance of God’s gift. Has the Church of England as a whole really understood and embraced the theological imperative for the participation of the whole people of God in the whole work of God?

The complexity of secularization as analysed by Casanova and others also, however, indicates why advocacy of lay discipleship and ministry has faced some powerful headwinds over that same period. Most obviously, secularization as differentiation and secularization as privatization inevitably affect the thinking of religious people in far-reaching ways, and not only those identifying as having no religion. They mean that Christians imbibe, without being especially conscious of it, a mentality that shrinks faith’s authority and relevance to the limited domain of its recognized social institutions on the one hand and privatized individual religious practice on the other. Once that mentality takes hold, exhortations to church members to live the life of discipleship day by day in every part of life will struggle to find purchase in minds and hearts. This is not a matter of such appeals being consciously dismissed or resisted, but rather of them appearing to be operating on a plane that does not readily connect with the world as it is actually seen to be. Moreover, within that limited domain of public religious institutions and private religious practice, it seems evident that those with the professional skills and the acknowledged authority to maintain the institutions and advise on the practice are very much at the centre of things. That is likely to mean, first and foremost, the clergy, however much they might benefit in these tasks from the assistance of lay people in secondary and supporting roles. The effects of secularization, then, in the loss of Christian influence and church membership point to the vital importance of lay discipleship and lay ministry. Yet at the same time, the effects of secularization on the way we all see the world undermine the plausibility both of the relevance of discipleship to the whole of life and of the equality in mutuality of all ministries.