Implicit religion, Anglican cathedrals, and spiritual wellbeing: The impact of carol services

Abstract

Rooted in the field of cathedral studies, this paper draws into dialogue three bodies of knowledge: Edward Bailey’s notion of implicit religion that, among other things, highlights the continuing traction of the Christian tradition and Christian practice within secular societies; David Walker’s notion of the multiple ways through which in secular societies people may relate to the Christian tradition as embodied within the Anglican Church and John Fisher’s notion of spiritual wellbeing as conceptualised in relational terms. Against this conceptual background, this paper draws on data provided by 1234 participants attending one of the Christmas Eve carol services in Liverpool Cathedral to explore the perceived impact of attendance on the spiritual health of people who do not believe in God and yet feel that Liverpool Cathedral is their cathedral, and it is this sense of belonging that brings them back at Christmas time.Contribution: Situated within the science of cathedral studies, this paper links in an original way three fields of discourse: Edward Bailey’s notion of implicit religion, David Walker’s notion of the four ways of belonging to God facilitated by the Anglican Church and John Fisher’s conceptualisation and operationalisation of the notion of spiritual wellbeing. The hypothesis developed from this original integration of theoretical perspectives is then tested empirically on data provided by 404 participants at carol services who do not believe in God.

Exploring the responses of non-churchgoers to a cathedral pre-Christmas son et lumiere

“…A third strand of research has been concerned with mapping the characteristics of people who attend cathedral carol services. This strand includes qualitative studies reported by Phillips (2010), Murphy (2016), andPike (2022), and quantitative studies reported by Walker (2012aWalker ( , 2012bWalker ( , 2013aWalker ( , 2013bWalker ( , 2015 Francis, McKenna and Stewart (2024) isolated the responses of 404 participants who self-identified as not believing in God and who had completed the psychological type scales and who had completed the Fisher spiritual wellbeing measure just before the close of the service. They reported that among participants who did not believe in God, people who felt connected with Liverpool Cathedral and who felt connected with the carol service in such a way that they return year-on-year derived more spiritual benefit from their attendance than those who appeared to be more casual attenders.…”