I keep asking myself: is the spiritual weather shifting out there or is it just me noticing new clouds? Years of following Jesus have taught me that what seems solid, settled, and \u201cdone\u201d often isn\u2019t. The tangled roots of faith are always wriggling, refusing the simplicity of census boxes.<\/p>\n
We are pretty familiar with the idea of the Spiritual but not religious people but I have been following the Nones Project<\/a> research from America that Toby Jones is involved in. If you squint sideways at it, there\u2019s something of our own messy British spiritual landscape there. Especially when we dig into the Dones, those completely finished, and then the NiNos, the \u201cNones in Name Only\u201d who are still whispering secret prayers, holding onto invisible strings, or turning up at a candlelit church despite claiming no religion at all.<\/span><\/p>\n But what does this really mean for us in the UK, trying to read the culture and context and wondering if the so-called \u201cquiet revival\u201d is just one more weather front that will drift off by Thursday?<\/span><\/p>\n The Dones sound like people I\u2019ve met around the campfire, feet up, story shared. They\u2019re not staging a protest; they\u2019re just done. The chapter closes quietly. But if you ask where their roots go on a hard night, there\u2019s often a thread leading somewhere, a family ritual, memory, old hopes still warm somewhere inside. Against this backdrop we have The Quiet Revival, where church attendance is quietly up. Are these young people supposedly filling our pews the NiNos nosing around the edge, curious and awkward, or are we witnessing a quiet boomerang, a returning of people who never truly left in spirit?<\/span><\/p>\n I wonder if we\u2019ve got the whole thing upside down. Maybe the \u201crevival\u201d was always growing beneath our feet, wild, resistant, unplanned, like those pop-up spaces and listening benches I\u2019ve found so beautiful in the mixed ecology. Maybe the really radical thing is learning to notice the gentle stuff instead of chasing the fireworks.<\/span><\/p>\n When I look back, I see it again and again: community is rarely tidy; the best spiritual wisdom comes from the edges, the in-between places, the unpolished questions. Perhaps we\u2019re \u201chuman becomings,\u201d as Pip Wilson said, meant to unfold in all our messy, glorious, uncontainable uniqueness. The language of faith is always more experiment than doctrine, more bless and release than possess and control, so we need great care for those now turning up.<\/span><\/p>\n Maybe we are not living through a spiritual comeback but people are opening their eyes to the quiet revival that\u2019s been running, barefoot, in our midst all along, and only noticing it now there is some bums on seats. So maybe bums on matter if helps the church wake up to what\u2019s been happening all along, and attune itself the gift these people are bringing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I keep asking myself: is the spiritual weather shifting out there or is it just me noticing new clouds? Years of following Jesus have taught me that what seems solid, settled, and \u201cdone\u201d often isn\u2019t. The tangled roots of faith … Continue reading
\n<\/span>The NiNos I meet everywhere, The \u201cI\u2019m not religious but\u2026\u201d crowd. The ones who\u00a0 can\u2019t stand the boxes but show up for something real, a blessing in my garden, a\u00a0 chat on a sofa in a high street, the kind activist or volunteer engaged but not sure why, often looking to belong. Linda Woodhead\u2019s research says our own British \u201cnones\u201d are full of patchwork belief, doubt, ritual, history all looping round like strands of bramble and honeysuckle. Got to love an ecological metaphor!<\/p>\n