eChurch Blog

Just returned from an open day at my son’s prospective new secondary school in which we had an informative guided tour from one of the students – an amiable and intelligent young chap.

It is a fantastic school by all accounts, great atmosphere, high performing, and deemed by Ofsted as “Outstanding” and on their “Honours List”.

We were taken to all of the classrooms and the many IT suites and to the Social, Cultural and Moral studies room.

It was at this stage our knowledgeable guide duly informed us that this used to be the Religious Education room, however they changed the name because:

Some were worried the name Religious Education gave the impression of pupils being indoctrinated to become Christians.

This is the closest approximation to his actual words I can manage and I have double-checked with my wife.

I only regret not pursuing further and finding out who primarily may have been liable to fall under this misapprehension. Our guide went on to say:

It’s exactly the same course and lesson as it’s always been.

Isn’t it astonishing that this highly respected non-faith foundation school and technology college felt the necessity and compulsion to make this change in order to avoid this particular misconception.

Lots of  articles popping up all over the Internet following Ed Miliband’s Radio 5 Live interview this morning in which he is quoted as saying:

‘I don’t believe in God personally, but I have great respect for those people who do.

”Different people have different religious views in this country. The great thing is that, whether we have faith or not, we are by and large very tolerant of people whatever their view.”

Uh-huh.

The New Humanist’s are chuffed that of the three main party leaders, two are self-confessed atheists.

Archbishop Cranmer is not so chuffed.

As for me, I’m in a belligerent mood and couldn’t care less and let’s face it, even if Ed were to become prime minister, he wouldn’t be as powerful and influential as the man at number six on this list.

Tim Kimberley over at the Parchment and Pen blog, is featuring a series based on the top ten Biblical discoveries in archaeology.

As promised, I intend to link to them from here, and so here is the eigth offering, at number three on the list:

Top Ten Biblical Discoveries in Archaeology – #3 Jericho

Oh this is classic and troubling.

Gordon hailing from the Ecalpemos blog, has put together a word cloud derived from the RSS comment feed from this blog.

Here it is:

I must emphasize this is taken from the comment feed and not the blog post feed and so represents a snapshot of conversation here on this blog from a couple of weeks ago.

Gordon comments:

Do you not think perhaps that everyone’s priorities are a bit wonky compared to whats really going on in the world?

Indeed!

And here is a nice piccy of Gordon:

Oh dear it would appear that US Atheists and Agnostics know more about world religion than Christians:

The Pew Forum

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.

On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education.

It does get slighter better with Christians out performing Atheists and Agnostics on, erm, Christianity:

On questions about Christianity – including a battery of questions about the Bible – Mormons (7.9 out of 12 right on average) and white evangelical Protestants (7.3 correct on average) show the highest levels of knowledge. Jews and atheists/agnostics stand out for their knowledge of other world religions, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism; out of 11 such questions on the survey, Jews answer 7.9 correctly (nearly three better than the national average) and atheists/agnostics answer 7.5 correctly (2.5 better than the national average). Atheists/agnostics and Jews also do particularly well on questions about the role of religion in public life, including a question about what the U.S. Constitution says about religion.

….continue reading

Further media links:

CNN – Don’t know much about religion? You’re not alone, study finds

New York Times – Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion

First Things – Americans are Religiously Illiterate

I just thought the following by Roger E Olson was fantastic and a much needed timely message. It will transpire in the end that we were all wrong to some degree or another and the only person 100% correct on all things is God himself.

If only we could get over ourselves.

I commend this to you and urge you to follow the link and continue reading this short piece:

I admit it.  I am a fallibilist–with regard to human beings (except when being infallibly inspired by God).  My definition of “theology” is human reflection on God’s infallible revelation.  (Or, in the case of philosophical theology–human reflection on God insofar as unaided reason is able to know something about God.)  In other words, I assume that all theologies (outside Scripture itself) are fallible because they are created by finite and fallen human beings.

…..continue reading

I’m sorry but this one’s doing the rounds and I can’t resist it.

The Australian:

The United Nations, tackling head-on the problem of what to do if an alien says “take me to your leader”, is poised to designate a specific individual for the task.

Some would argue that the job should fall to the US president, the leaders of Russia or the European Union. Others might suggest the Pope. One thing is certain: humanity’s lack of a leader would not make a good impression.

Instead the UN is set to select an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist who is head of its little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa).

Mazlan Othman will describe her potential new role next week at a scientific conference at the Royal Society’s Kavli conference centre in Buckinghamshire.

She will tell delegates that the recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made the detection of extraterrestrial life more likely than ever before – and that means the UN must be ready to co-ordinate humanity’s response to any “first contact”.

…..continue reading

David over at Anglican Samizdat is not impressed and Professor Barry Rubin satirically and rather cynically envisages the ‘first contact’ dialogue.

As prepared as the UN might imagine they are for alien contact, no organisation surpasses the Catholic church in this regard, who are ready and waiting to baptize our first visitors:

Just putting this one on for the morbidly weird factor.

Get Surrey:

JUNCTION nine of the M25 may have been hexed, the pastor of an Evangelical church has claimed.

Gerald Coates, of the Pioneer Engage Church in Epsom Road, Leatherhead, believes someone “motivated by dark forces” could have been recording messages of evil onto cassette tapes and then strewing the reel around areas they wish to curse.

Mr Coates, who lives in Effingham, said he had found large amounts of tape reels in the area, including around the roundabouts that lead onto junction 9 of the motorway.

He believes this could be the explanation for what he described as a “wholly disproportionate” number of crashes on the Leatherhead section of the M25, as well as the number of people who have taken their lives by jumping from footbridges.

Mr Coates and Tom Winter, a 17-year-old member of his church who lives with him, organised a vigil on the Kingston Road bridge over the carriageway on Saturday (September 18) to pray for the safety of those driving below.

The pastor said 25 to 30 people attended, and he was hopeful the event would have an effect on the accident and fatality rates.

“We are going to be monitoring the number of crashes carefully now,” he said.

“I do believe we will see far fewer incidents, but if the trend is not reversed then we will return for another vigil in mid-December.”

Mr Coates said the reaction to Saturday’s prayers had been better than he expected.

“Appropriately enough, there had been a major crash at junction 11 and the traffic was backed all the way up to junction 9,” he added.

“We prayed silently and aloud, in groups and alone and standing and on our knees.

“People were waving and shouting and beeping their horns, the whole atmosphere was great.”

…..continue reading

What do you make of this?

Revealing research from the Barna Group:

The explosion of communications devices and technology in the past decade has substantially expanded the amount of public dialogue related to all kinds of issues, including religion. Yet, even though Americans spend lots of time discussing and debating religious beliefs and spiritual practices, a new survey by The Barna Group shows that all of that interaction has translated into very little change in people’s faith life.

……continue reading

I found this comment of particular note:

The most obvious result was that according to adults, they have experienced very little, if any, change in their religious life over the five-year period. That raises questions about the impact of church-related activity – not so much whether or not impact can be achieved, but if the courses of action currently pursued are capable of facilitating and reinforcing significant change. These results are consistent with a pattern identified in Barna’s studies over the years: most of the religious beliefs, behaviors and expectations that define a person’s life have been developed and embraced by the age of 13; relatively little changes after that time. The current study underscores how little movement there is in people’s religious thinking once they become an adult.

And this fact underlies the militant atheist’s loathing of religious education and their consternation with us ‘cramming religion down our children’s throats‘.

Vee of Living Journey has a challenging and thought provoking piece ruminating on how “free” churches in the Western world stack up against persecuted churches in the East.

Well worth a read as Vee questions who really is free:

Living Journey – Free Church