By John Cole

People are finding new ways of 'belonging'

(4) A new 'Tribalism'

And this is the manner of people's new way of 'belonging'. In the past people have experienced their belonging as part of the public structure of community and family life or through organisations and institutions such as the churches. Today 'belonging' is experienced in a much more random and informal way. The result is a new, complex and constantly-changing 'tribalism', which may look fragmented but which is remarkably intimate - while it lasts!

Each one of us is likely to be part of several such 'tribes' - informal groups who may be here today and gone tomorrow - but which may, for no particular strategic reason, be quite durable. The overall durability to which all contribute is the survival of the human race itself.

It is quite a task to identify the dynamics of this renewed 'tribalism' in our own lives, let alone in the lives of people in our locality. However, we need to know something of what is going on, if only so that we can open up credible lines of communication between these 'tribes' and the Church as it witnesses to the good news of Jesus Christ.

One serious effect of the emergence of this vast web of 'communities by association', this new 'tribalism', is that the traditional local church has a much reduced public profile. The notion of the church at the centre of the life of the community is one which certain groups in society still like to cling onto, not least many church people themselves. But the reality is very different.

The statistics of declining church attendance are not as gloomy as has been sometimes suggested. The numbers attending church regularly remain remarkably stable - especially in smaller congregations (although for 'weekly' attendance, 'fortnightly' might be more realistic). The decline is among those who used to come occasionally, the fringe. We will have more to say about the fringe in chapter three.

Decline among occasional attenders is exactly what we would expect in a society which is redefining what is meant by local. Regular churchgoers increasingly fit the mould of being one 'tribe' among many (special dress, private language, arcane rituals, shared attitudes, shared heroes).

The place of the church in a geographical area is now represented less by concentric circles, and more by a series of randomly overlapping shapes.

Yet if Christians only experience 'church' in the context of their own private tribe, it has ceased to be 'local'. Conversely, if, as it is ever more clearly the case, people are developing a spirituality in a whole range of more informal 'local' contexts where they experience deep relationships in community, how can we become engaged so that this emerging spirituality is Christian?