Editorial: Christians might agree common ground to try to arrest decline of the religion

The decline seems to get ever more pronounced.

The most recent census data for England and Wales shows that most young people say they have no religion.

Almost a third of Christians are now pensioners.

This is causing understandable concern among Christian leaders.

It would be easy to over-state the decline of Christianity. In fact it is a religion which has thrived for the best part of two thousand years, its weakest period being in the centuries immediately after Christ.

So the Christian message has endured remarkably well. It is also growing in some parts of the world, which can offset the decline in Europe and America.

But there is no doubt that that the UK decline is marked, and while the decline in Northern Ireland is less stark it is nonetheless significant, and this presents worrying scenarios on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Note how, within a small number of years, traditional positions on matters such as opposite sex marriage or abortion have not only become marginalised, but are positively threatened as being unacceptable (be it in the form of pressure on those who want to demonstrate against terminations or pressure on churches to approve same-sex relations).

This is not to say that Christianity only has conservative positions. It sometimes has liberal or radical ones. The point is that Christian views can be cast aside.

Given that it has been such a pillar of our civilisation, that is a new scenario.

With Catholic church attendance in particular decline in NI (weekly church attendance was around 95% in 1968 and has plummeted) many Christians may begin to find common ground in tackling the big challenges they face.