Abstract
Changing Shape is a book with a well-defined and clearly articulated research question. Ruth Perrin’s focus is on the young people whom she styles Millennial Active Affirmers. These are the young people who in their early twenties conceived of themselves as committed Christians. Perrin argues that this group is important for two reasons. Here are young people who are strongly and distinctively countercultural in what Perrin characterizes as post-Christian Britain. Here is the group most obviously absent from most church congregations. For these reasons, Millennial Active Affirmers are of intrinsic academic interest, and of strategic concern for church development and policy. Specifically, Perrin is interested in the trajectory taken by Millennial Active Affirmers as they leave their twenties and journey into their thirties. She is interested in why some stay within their churches and why others leave.
Perrin approaches the subject matter of Millennial Active Affirmers from the twin perspectives of the qualitative social scientist and the practical theologian concerned with shaping Christian ministry and mission for the future. She also writes engagingly with both readerships in mind. The original data that Perrin brings to this study is derived from 47 interviews with Millennial Active Affirmers (defined as such in their early twenties) aged between 29 and 37 at the time of the interviews. The participants were recruited into the study by church leaders, snowball sampling and personal contacts: 31 participants seem to have been recruited from 23 Protestant congregations with varying traditions, together with 16 participants who described themselves as ex-Christian or as de-churched.
Evidence from these 47 interviews is woven alongside a good range of theories and literatures, as well as personal experience. For this reviewer, there are three chapters of particular importance. Chapter 6, ‘Losing faith: I don’t call myself a Christian anymore’, considers the journey of rejecting faith and distinguishes between head-driven apostasy (rational well-reasoned abandonment of faith) and heart-driven apostasy (shaped by deep wounds, frustration or anger). Chapter 7, ‘The disenchanted’, considers those who retain a Christian faith while rejecting the Church, and identifies a range of diverse motivations underpinning such detachment. Chapter 8, ‘Reshaped faith’, considers the journeys and patterns of those who persist as Active Affirmers in their thirties, and discerns five different trajectories: disappointed but persevering; realistic pragmatists; confident and calmer; of deeper faith and greater enthusiasm; and radical risk-takers.
Also, for this reviewer, two cross-cutting, intricately intertwined themes run through Perrin’s analysis: mental health issues and theology. A number of the Millennial Active Affirmers may have been attracted to stay with church communities in their early twenties as a way of dealing with mental health issues, but the kind of theology that they encountered in those churches may have compounded mental health issues for the next stage of life. If the Church wishes to engage actively with Millennial Active Affirmers, then church leaders may need to be properly equipped with theological and psychological skills adequate for the task.