eChurch Blog

The following is taken from a new report on patriotism based on a survey of a weighted sample of 2,086 British. The research was carried out by Demos. You can view the entire report here.

Here’s some snippets and key findings:

People who are religious are more likely to be patriotic than are those who self-define as atheists or non-believers. This finding is significant for a number of reasons – but most importantly because it shows that:

A strong identity aside from the national or civic does not necessarily conflict with patriotism and public pride but supports greater feelings of national esteem

In order for a person’s religious identity to contribute to, and support, feelings of patriotism it does not necessarily have to be a religion that is in some way ‘national’ or even majority

Our polling shows that 88 per cent of Anglicans and Jews agreed that they were ‘proud to be a British citizen’ alongside 84 per cent of non-conformists and 83 per cent of Muslims – compared with 79 per cent for the population as a whole.

Religious faith also influences optimism about Britain’s future – although here the results are a little less clear-cut, with differences between different faiths in how they respond to the statement ‘Britain’s best days are behind her’.

Almost 50 per cent of Anglicans agreed with the statement – compared with a baseline of 45 per cent, making members of the Anglican Communion marginally more pessimistic about Britain than the population as a whole.

However, significantly, British Muslims were less likely to agree – only 31 per cent believe that our best days are behind us – than either Anglicans or the population as a whole. This optimism in British Muslims is significant as – combined with their high score for pride in British – it runs counter to a prevailing narrative about Muslim dissatisfaction with and in the UK.

While it is true that there are significant challenges to integration for some in the British Muslim community – and justified concern at the levels of radicalism and extremism in some British Muslim communities – overall British Muslims are more likely to be both patriotic and optimistic about Britain than are the white British community.

Other key findings included:

British Muslims are more likely than secularists to strong agree with the statement ‘I am proud of how Britain treats gay people’ (almost 20% of Muslims and less than 10% of people no religion).

14% had attended a Church of England service in the last 6 months and 15% had attended another type of religious service.

Only 35% agreed that they took pride in their faith.

Almost 4 in 5 respondents believed that people in Britain are less proud of their religion than they were 50 years ago.

As I say, you can download the report here, but I feel I’ve extracted most – if not all – the pertinent stats relating explicitly to religion.

Just recently I became aware that the Catholic Church may teach we all have a Guardian Angel. As a consequence, I enquired about this on Twitter and ThirstyGargoyle pointed me in the direction of  the Catechism of the Catholic Church (336), which states:

From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession.²⁰² “Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life.”²⁰³ Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God.

ThirstyGargoyle informs me this catechism is derived from the Scripture: Matthew 18:10:

See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.

A good discussion ensued and EdwardBGreen bought to mind the following Scriptures:

Hebrews 1:14 – Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?

And

Pslam 91:11 – For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways;

ThirstyGargogyle noted in respect of this belief that:

It’s one that people forget, I think. It sounds superstitious, so it’s often swept under carpets.

And Gerrarrdus observed:

Protestants don’t like it much. But it’s based on real scripture.

I agree with Gerrarrdus; in general Protestants don’t like the idea of an Guardian Angel and it’s certainly not a concept I ever came across in Protestant circles.

But even good Catholics may struggle with this concept, as WorldofNic commented:

I feel slightly protestant about this. I’ll have to pray to come round to the idea

As with many aspects of converting to Catholicism from Protestantism, there are many new and rather alien concepts to grasp and it’s not always easy to weed out the ‘old ways’ of thinking, and replace with the new. We do so like to hold on to our congnitive security blankets.

But ironically, this issue of a personal Guardian Angel is not one I find troublesome; on the contrary, I find it rather soothing and intuitive.

There has been many times in my life in which I should have met with my end; or at least grave injury, and yet have walked away unscathed. I always had the feeling that someone / something was looking after me, even before I became a Christian. And so I suppose this enables me to easily accept the idea of a Guardian Angel. Since being a Christian, I have readily accepted the idea that God was looking after me, and so it is no great leap to discover that His mechanism to accomplish this would be through His angels.

Any thoughts?

Oddly enough I find myself in accord with Mike Judge of the Christian Institute when he says: “It would be terribly sad”.

Currently the Girl Guides pledge is:

I promise that I will do my best, to love my God, to serve the Queen and my country, to help other people and to keep the Guide Law.”

The Secular Society has taken up complaints with the Girl Guides Association from those who felt ‘excuded’. Consequently, the Association will consider reviewing the pledge, with an eye on removing the reference to God.

Thankfully, at this point the Scouting Association have no plans to change their pledge:

On my honour, I promise that I will do my best,
To do my duty to God and to the Queen,
To help other people,
And to keep the Scout Law.

T’is all a sign of the times I suppose….

There’s been some new – and extensive – research conducted looking at the representation of Muslims and Islam within the UK press. The researchers analysed over 200,000 media articles written over an eleven year period: 1998 – 2009.

Engage have the details, but I was particularly drawn to this quote:

The study, conducted by Dr Paul Baker, Professor Tony McEnery and Dr Costas Gabrielatos, reiterates key findings from other studies reinforcing claims of media bias towards fringe groups at the expense of mainstream Muslims, and on word association with Islam and Muslims engendering negative connotations with the religion and its adherents.

How familiar does that sound? I mean, does anybody else ever sigh heavily when you see the same extremist fringe Christians trotted out in the media and touting themselves as the ‘voice of Christians’? And when I say extremist, I’m not referring to just one side of the coin. And the ‘word association’ element is so important also. I see so many examples of carefully crafted media pieces designed to prod you in a certain direction through the choice of wording. This applies not just to the portrayal of Christianity and Christians, but also the portrayal of moral and ethical issues, such as abortion and euthanasia.

But then again, how ‘newsworthy’ is the moderate, nuanced, balanced, mainstream, approach? This doesn’t sell newspapers and the like, does it.

I’d love to see similar research conducted on the Christian representation in the UK press. I think it would be enormously revealing. Perhaps such a study has already been undertaken and I’m not aware of it. Please do let me know if this is the case.

There’s real outrage in Pakistan as the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) have issued guidelines to the mobile phone operators, in order to enforce text content filtering of ‘offensive’ words.

There are two lists of this ‘objectionable content’ in English and Urdo and I’ve seen the list in English, but won’t link to it as it is rather nasty.

The bone of contention from the Christian world is that the phrases: ‘Jesus Christ’ and ‘Got Jesus’ are included; however, to give them their due, they have also banned ‘Satan’ and ‘Devil’.

I will say that there are many references to homosexuality which have been banned also.

Anyway, here are few of my favourite ‘obscene’ banned words:

Barf

Bite me

Black out

Budweiser

Cocktail

Dip stick

Fart

Headlights

Idoit (Yep spelt incorrectly just in case)

Poop

Pearl necklace

Piss head

Reefer

Slime

Smart ass

Snot

Tampon

tongue

Turd

Virgin

I’m sure Pakistan will be all the purer for this move.

Here’s a snippet from Sally’s Journal today:

I will continue to have good days and bad days, but am glad to say that the bad days are growing further apart, I am heeding peoples advice to be gentle with myself and am making use of the ministerial counselling service. I will also continue to be open about the fact that I suffer from depression, it is far too often a hidden illness and carries a stigma with it that it does not deserve. To many people suffer in silence and feel ashamed of their illness, but while it is so often invisible it is very real and can be extremely debilitating.

And here’s a comment (deleted) I received in response to my post: Confession: I struggle with accepting God’s love, as I generally feel unlovable:

Where does the ‘illness’ end and just being a self-obsessed, manipulative little so-and-so begin? It is a question many of those who claim to be burdened with mental illness seem to avoid asking… Yet demonstrate that it is a bit of an oversimplification to presume the two are mutually exclusive…

Discuss.

Not everyone will be able to relate to this post; in fact, it’s good news if you can’t.

I think, as Christians, most of us will have come across the phrase: “God shaped hole”. The idea being that there is something of a void that exists within man that can only be filled with God. This is not my personal experience frankly; I don’t recollect feeling that something was missing before I believed. Having said this, it is certainly true from my experience that God satisfies a longing of sorts, that you didn’t know existed before you were found by Him.

A cursory Internet perusal reveals the notion that God will fill every vacuum within a person, or that He will ‘deliver’ or heal every ailment. Again, from my experience this is simply not true.

There are some of us that experience chronic emptiness which seems to emanate from our stomach and that simply cannot be done away with. It is characterised by extreme feelings of hopelessness, boredom, self-loathing, and every other negative feeling / emotion you can imagine.

This chronic emptiness could well be described as a ‘hole’, as that is exactly how it feels. Because of its fluid, changing and elusive nature, it is impossible to pin down and resolve. The only strategy is diversion, which is exactly what I am engaging in with this blog post.

I came across this small quote on Wellsphere:

As a Christian, it isn’t the “God shaped hole” for Him to fill…I already know that emptiness.  Despite what other Christians think, it isn’t about just letting God fill it.  It doesn’t happen that way with everything. I know that the majority of it is filled with self-hatred and self-destructive.  As those layers are given up or healed in my life, my emptiness feels more real.

This is absolutely right; very perceptive in fact.

The truth is, for whatever reason, God does not solve every affliction; we know He could, and the reasons He does not is way beyond the scope of this blog post; way beyond my understanding and pay grade.

He may give us strength to get through; then again, at times, it feels as though He is totally absent in our suffering.

We know, of course, the day will come in which He will heal all of our afflictions of mind, personality, and body; but until that day comes……

Not everything is a ‘God shaped hole’.

If faith isn’t everything, then it’s nothing.

SOURCE

According to a new Pew Global Attitudes Survey a mere 21% of professing British Christians viewed themselves as Christian first, with nationality second. This is down from 24% in 2006. 63% of Christians view themselves as British first with 10% saying both equally.

I find this surprising as I tend to view myself as Christian first and foremost.

How do you view yourself?

There’s a break down of stats over at BRIN.

Some of us spend our lives attempting to appear ‘normal’ for one reason or another.

And then, of course, there is the fact that the term ‘normal’ is not only fluid and culturally defined; I don’t think there is anyone brave enough – including social scientists – to step forward and define ‘normal’ in a concrete sense, unless of course we are to talk in terms of ‘statistical norms’.

I don’t think I’m alone in reflecting on what I assume to be ‘normal’ and then looking at myself and feeling that in some way I dissapoint this idealistic term.

And so to my question: Is there such a thing as a ‘normal’ Christian? Or is the term ‘normal’ coupled with ‘Christian’ a misnomer as Christians are supposed to be counter-culture?