In debates about Christian practice and moral teaching, each side invariably claims that the other’s approach will lead to fewer people in the pews. Typically, the advocates of a particular change claim that the new proposal will make the Church more attractive, welcoming and comprehensible. The sceptics counter that the Church is, or should be, committed to certain timeless truths regardless of their popularity in a society at any given time. This happened with various denominations’ liturgical revisions of the Sixties and Seventies, and with the argument over women’s ordination in the Church of England. It is being repeated now with the arguments over sexuality.

The most recent such interjection came from Dr Ian Paul, a clergyman, blogger and member of General Synod. On Sunday the Telegraph reported that Paul, a prominent Church of England Evangelical, believes the interminable debates over race and sexuality are diverting time and attention from more important matters. As a result, they are making the Church seem obsessed with its own internal rules rather than looking self-confidently outwards.

I am personally sympathetic to Dr Paul’s view, but it’s difficult to prove the matter one way or another. What is certainly true is that all churches will eventually need to pick a side. You cannot serve two masters, as someone once said, and an institution cannot continue indefinitely trying to go in two separate directions. The conservatives are right that any organisation clearly unsure of itself and plagued by self-doubt and division is going to struggle to recruit committed members. No one will give their life for a question mark. Not that Catholics should be too triumphalist. Bishop Robert Barron has criticised what he calls the “permanent council mindset”, a state of affairs where all doctrines and traditions are constantly up for discussion. Studied and deliberate ambiguity has its uses in finessing certain theological debates, but eventually lines must be drawn.

There is little evidence for the revisionist idea that you can grow congregations by “adapting to modern society”. That doesn’t mean that sticking to your guns on faith, ritual and morals is a silver bullet — most Christian churches in the Western world have been in decline since the middle of the last century. But it seems to be the case, overall, that the more conservative movements and traditions are stemming the tide better than their more liberal counterparts. The USA’s Episcopal Church — at the forefront of every trend in Christian liberal thought — is in sharp decline and will struggle to continue into the second half of this century.

In Britain, conservative Evangelical churches are full of young families, as are bastions of Catholic orthodoxy and traditionalism. Consider London churches such as St Helen’s Bishopsgate, or the Brompton Oratory. The logic of this phenomenon is not hard to understand: people value certainty, solidity and coherence. Indeed, this may be why Islam — an extremely rigid doctrine of belief — has not seen its own equivalent decline in membership, even among secular Muslims in the West.

People want a reason to get out of bed on Sunday morning, and a fixed point in a highly fluid world. I have heard more than one Catholic convert mention the motto of the Carthusian order “Stat crux dum volvitur orbis”: the cross is steady while the world turns.

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Niall Gooch is a public sector worker and occasional writer who lives in Kent.

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