eChurch Blog

The absolutely indispensable British Religion in Numbers (BRIN) website have a breakdown of religious stats based on the 2011 census and compiled by YouGov in collaboration with Cambridge University.

The result tables can be viewed here in PDF format.

I’ll start with BRIN’s synopsis of the stats:

All in all, these data point to a society in which religion is increasingly in retreat and nominal. With the principal exception of the older age groups, many of those who claim some religious allegiance fail to underpin it by a belief in God or to translate it into regular prayer or attendance at a place of worship. People in general are more inclined to see the negative than the positive aspects of religion, and they certainly want to keep it well out of the political arena.

And here’s BRIN’s breakdown:

40% of adults professed no religion, 55% were Christian and 5% of other faiths – age made a major difference, with only 38% of the 18-34s being Christian and 53% having no religion, whereas for the over-55s the figures were 70% and 26% respectively

74% of respondents had been brought up in some religion (including 70% as Christians, implying a net 15% leakage from Christianity over time) and 25% not, the latter figure rising to 39% among the 18-34s

35% described themselves as very or fairly religious and 63% as not very or not at all religious – there were no big variations by demographics (even by age), but Londoners (41%) did stand out as being disproportionately religious, doubtless reflecting the concentration of ethnic minorities in the capital

34% believed in a personal God or gods (ranging from 28% among the 18-34s to 42% of over-55s), 10% in some higher spiritual power, 19% in neither, with 29% unsure or agnostic

11% of respondents claimed to attend a religious service once a month or more, 27% less often, and 59% never – non-attendance was higher among the young (62% for the 18-34s) than the old (54% for the over-55s) and among manual workers (62%) than non-manuals (56%), while London had the best figure for monthly or more attendance (16%)

16% claimed to pray daily, 12% several times a week, 4% once a week, 7% several times a month, 4% once a month, 24% less often, and 29% never – men (34%) were more likely not to pray at all than women (24%)

79% agreed and 11% disagreed that religion is a cause of much misery and conflict in the world today

72% agreed and 15% disagreed that religion is used as an excuse for bigotry and intolerance, with a high of 81% in Scotland where sectarianism has often been rife

35% agreed and 45% disagreed that religion is a force for good in the world, dissentients being more numerous among men (50%) than women (41%)

78% (82% of the over-55s) agreed and 12% disagreed that religion should be a private matter and had no place in politics

16% agreed and 70% disagreed that Christians and the Church should have more influence over politics in the country – only among the over-55s did the proportion in favour of the proposition scrape above one-fifth

61% agreed and 18% disagreed that organized religion is in terminal decline in the UK – the over-55s (67%) were most prone to agree and Londoners (21%) to disagree

40% agreed and 40% disagreed that the decline of organized religion had made Britain a worse place – the over-55s (54%) were twice as likely to agree as the 18-34s (27%)

51% (57% in Scotland) agreed and 32% (37% among men) disagreed that all religions are equally valid

34% agreed and 49% disagreed that some religions are better than others, men (39%), the over-55s (38%), and Londoners (38%) being disproportionately likely to agree

49% agreed and 29% disagreed that it is good for children to be brought up within a religion – among the 18-34s opinion divided at 36% each (whereas for the over-55s 64% agreed and 22% disagreed)

40% agreed (rising to 46% of men and 44% of 18-34s) and 39% disagreed that religion is incompatible with modern scientific knowledge

29% agreed and 54% disagreed that there are some things in life which only religion can explain, the over-55s (35%) placing more trust in religion than the 18-34s (24%)

An email just received in response to this post:

“I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I utter words of sober truth”

It is extremely unfortunate that instead of your misleading caption above, You are out of your mind and frothing at the mouth with disingenuous pontifications to sabotage true Christian philosophy and action. You are a traitor when you “don’t give a crap” about the corrosion of God’s traditional moral marriage plan by the perversion of the gay crusade for equality for deviant sexual behavior. It is not about rights, it’s a gay plot to excuse their gross departure from sanity and morality which is clearly and emphatically condemned by God in Romans chapter 1.

Jerry Clifford, the word guru warrior for Jesus

Who are we to judge the world; that’s what I’m sick of. We should look to ourselves.

As Caral just commented:

I was reminded of what St Paul in 1Cor 5, starting at verse 12

For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God will judge those outside.

Why do we continue to point the finger and judge the world according to the standards of God, when they’re not even Christians?

Finger wagging achieves nothing. We are to live the royal law of love, and folk will be attracted by this, and then we can call them to live Holy lives unto God, as we ourselves do.

So the government is to press ahead with legislation to permit ‘gay marriage’.

Christian keyboards are ablaze.

And I don’t give a crap.

Every single day I read news of slaughtered, raped, murdered, tortured, intimidated, terrified, abducted, imprisoned, threatened with hanging, forced to convert, brutalised, Christians.

I really don’t give a crap if gay folk want to marry; if the government want to sanction it, and even if some religious organisations want to solemnise it.

Honestly, there’s more for Christians to worry about.

Is not the heart of the Christian faith to give of yourself selflessly, for the benefit of others? Or put another way, we shall love our neighbour as ourselves.

I think it is.

There’s been plenty of research over the years that show the health benefits of giving to others and volunteering. And we already know that Christians contribute substantial “volunteer hours” to the nation’s social capital. It’s with this in view that I want to highlight a fascinating study that looks at the benefits of volunteering – for the volunteer – within the context of motivation.

The study can be found in PDF format and is entitled: Motives for Volunteering Are Associated With Mortality Risk in Older Adults

The stated objective of the study was  to examine the effects of motives for volunteering on respondents’ mortality risk 4 years later. And they duly found:

Respondents who volunteered were at lower risk for mortality 4 years later, especially those who volunteered more regularly and frequently.

But here’s the interesting bit. They also found that in some cases volunteering behavior was not always beneficially related to mortality risk. Why was this?

It was all to do with the motivation of the volunteer. Is the motivation ‘self-oriented’ or ‘other-oriented’.

‘Self-oriented’ may be defined as:

We are referring to motives for volunteering that explicitly consider some personal reward such as improving one’s mood or self-esteem, escaping one’s problems, or learning a new skill.

‘Other-oriented may be defined as:

We are referring to motives that include the desire to help another person and the consideration of close others’ behavior and desires in making decisions to volunteer.

Here’s the nub of the findings:

It is important to note, however, that this study found that other-oriented motives for volunteering were associated with a significantly reduced mortality risk, and self-oriented motives were associated with a significantly increased mortality risk, 4 years later.

[....]

We found that respondents who volunteered for other-oriented reasons experienced reduced mortality risk relative to nonvolunteers, but respondents who volunteered for more self-oriented reasons had a similar risk of mortality as nonvolunteers. This analysis clearly demonstrates the importance of motives in determining health outcomes with respect to volunteering.

How’s this for a delicious irony:

It is reasonable for volunteers to volunteer in part because of benefits to the self, however, our research implies that, ironically, should these benefits to the self become the predominant motive for volunteering, potential health benefits of volunteering may be attenuated.

It strikes me that our faith is all to do with our inner ‘heart’ and motivations, and the Bible is replete with commands such as: to give, to share, to help, to heal, to save, to do good; in fact, to go as far as:

….love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

Isn’t it amazing that because of the love of God in us, and for us, we can love others, and in doing so, we all benefit.

Working with dying has taught me about living. It’s made me realize the enormous potential people have at the end of their lives. Valuing the individual and his or her experience is central to the palliative care movement. Indeed, its philosophy is: “You matter because you are you and you matter until the moment you die.”

Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement

There’s been an ongoing problem in Paris with Muslims shutting down entire major streets to perform their prayers, as a result, legislation has been passed banning ALL street prayer. This law may be extended to other Mediterranean cities.

This from the Mail caught my attention:

Public funding of places of worship has been banned in France since 1905, following the introduction of a law brought in to separate church from state.

Abdul Sidiqi, one of the country’s five million-strong Muslim population, said of the prayer ban: ‘This is another example of the government clamping down on Muslims, and the Muslim way of life.

‘If they do not want to see us in the street, then they should provide more Mosques.

‘What is going on is scandalous. The government is creating problems which do not really exist to put us in our place.’

But a spokesman for Mr Gueant said empty buildings around Paris – including a former fire station and some disused barracks – would be offered to Muslim worshippers while they waited for new mosques to be built.

Mr Gueant said there were 2,000 mosques in France, with more than half having been built over the past 10 years.

Far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen claimed that praying in the street had become a ‘political act of fundamentalists’ and that the worshippers involved looked like an occupying army.

You can read more: here, here and here.

According to Forbes working as Clergy is the number one happiest job. And the happiest of all clergy are those that are least worldly.

So there you go.

Hat-tip: Fr Stephen

And the worst jobs can be found here.

Pope Benedict’s ‘Impelling Duty’ is to rebuild the full and visible unity of this Church. It will be forged through orthodoxy (right teaching) and orthopraxy (right practice) but it will be lived within a legitimate diversity of expression within the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

SOURCE

As depression and anxiety begin to ravage my mind, this post will be a random patchwork of things that have caught my attention. My depression and anxiety are non-reactive and endogenous, or put another way, not sparked by external changes in circumstances.

Psychology today has a little piece on anxiety and I can’t decide if I agree with this conclusion or not:

Therefore, the main concern about anxiety is not what you fear, but how you perceive what you fear. Anxiety is not the fear of a thing, it is the fear of the way you think about a thing. And, it is the perception of the thing that leads you to feel the way that you do about it.

On the subject of mental health, I read an interesting little study on the prevalence of mental health problems among users of NHS stop smoking services. Those with experience of folk with mental health issues, will not fail to notice the prevalence of smokers. Spend any amount of time on a psychiatric ward and you’ll notice this. Given this, it makes sense to study smoking cessation amongst the mentally ill.

Wifey has just left to attend a 2 hour annulment interview at the church, could do with your prayers. Hopefully this will lead to an annulment, Marriage Convalidation, and finally being received into the Catholic Church.

But of greater import for your prayers is the news that fellow blogger Anthony has recently lost his little brother Bobby, and could do with your prayers as he ponders his own future in light of this.

Insightful article detailing the presentation Scott Stephens delivered to the Intelligence Squared Debate in Australia, arguing for the proposition: “Atheists are wrong”. Well worth a read and sums up much of how I feel about New Atheism and is entitled: The unbearable lightness of atheism.

And here we confront a desperate contradiction at the heart of so much atheistic hyperbole (accurately identified by Bernard Williams and others). The New Atheists rely heavily on the thesis that religion is the enemy of progress and human flourishing, and that once the last vestiges of religion are done away with, humanity will be far better off.

But they also claim that all religion is “man made,” and self-evidently so. This begs the question: if religion is indeed this all-pervasive source of corruption and prejudice and moral retardation, where do they believe that religion itself comes from, if not the human imagination? And so, as Bernard Williams puts the question:

“if humanity has invented something as awful as [these atheists] take religion to be, what should that tell them about humanity? In particular, can humanity really be expected to do much better without it?”

And so, it would seem that we are left with an unavoidable choice: either these atheists are really misotheists, God-haters, who rage against the very idea of God, the Good, Truth and Law, and so desperately try to will God out of existence; or their oft-professed faith in the inherent human capacity for progress is without justification; or the history of religion reflects the extraordinary human capacity to pursue the Good, as well as its equally pronounced tendency for Evil, idolatry and nihilism.

Intriguing to note that The Council of Europe is weighing a resolution that would a ban sex-selection abortions.

Following my recent article on a post Assad Syria, Patriarch Beshara Butros Rai – head of the Lebanon’s Maronite Christians – is deeply concerned at what exactly would replace the current regime:

Many of Syria’s minority Christians, which include Maronites, are concerned that Islamic extremists could rise to power should Assad’s regime collapse.

Rai last week echoed that fear, voicing concern of a takeover by the radical Muslim Brotherhood, a movement the Syrian authorities have blacklisted for decades.

“We endured the rule of the Syrian regime. I have not forgotten that,” Rai said. “We do not stand by the regime, but we fear the transition that could follow.

“We must defend the Christian community. We too must resist.”

And who can blame them for fretting? Only yesterday we had the news that Libya is to create a modern democratic state based on…… “moderate Islam”.

Following the news that Sean Duffy has been sent to prison for 18 weeks for trolling on the Internet, Index on Censorship have an interview with an Internet troll, by the name of Paulie Socash, which affords a fascinating glimpse into the mind and motivations of the troll.

On a lighter note, David has taken a stunning image of [what we think is] an Accipiter Striatus: The Sharp Shinned Hawk, in his back garden.

That’ll do and I’m feeling better for some reason….

“Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment…. For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God…. His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”

SOURCE