Britain a Christian country?

I find this story interesting, I've noticed Camoron getting a bit more fundamentalist lately. The man really, really annoys me. I don't think that he is all that religious but Thinks that to appear religious will help in certain sections of this country and more importantly America. I agree with the open letter sent to government by the collection of egg heads and luvvies the other day. Religion has no place in politics or government.

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A group including academics, authors and philosophers responded in an open letter to the Telegraph in which they said Mr Cameron's description of Britain as a Christian country had "negative consequences for politics and society".

The group, which included author Philip Pullman, comedian Tim Minchin and philosopher AC Grayling, wrote: "Repeated surveys, polls and studies show that most of us as individuals are not Christian in our beliefs or our religious identities."

They added that claiming Britain was a religious society "fosters alienation and division".

Isn't Christianity a way of life...so how can you put parts of your life into seperate boxes ?
 
Political viewpoints cannot be seperate from how you live your life....if so you are living a lie.
 
If you profess to being a christian then... seperating parts of it into convenient boxes doesn't work.
 
If you profess to having no faith then what do you believe in ?....a multi-cultural England which has lost the foundations that it was built on to make us once a great country....ending up just another shade of grey, losing any real identity at all.
 
If I'm asked what are you...I would say no to being European,no to being British,but yes to being English and white stock going back centuries, please don't take that as being racist it's just a fact of who I am, living in what I claim is a christain country still.

Christianity and politics go hand in hand.....ask any other religious group that same question and they would not seperate those two things I'm sure.

"The 2011 census found 59% of people in England and Wales said they were Christians - down from 72% a decade earlier.

In Scotland the figure was 54% - down from 65% - while the percentage fell slightly to 83% in Northern Ireland." BBC article.

If that makes Britain a Christian country then I'm the next pope.

And I guess that a large proportion of that 59% count themselves as Christians because they got married in church & once attended a service and can repeat some of the Lord's Prayer. And before anyone claims that you don't have to attend church to be a believer, isn't that a bit like saying "I regularly make love with Kelly Brook." simply based on fantasising about it.

I read that the other famous Tory, Tony Blair is on a crusade against radical Islam at the moment as well. I better get me birth certificate out!

No, I'm not religious (technically I'm an agnostic), however you simply cannot ignore religion's (let's keep it simple - Christianity's) all-pervasive thread through our society and history. Whether you regard it as (at best) an irrelevance or (at worse) dangerous and/or evil the fact remains that this country - along with many others - is steeped in it. It has shaped virtually everything on this island since the 3rd or 4th century.

Perhaps instead of saying "we are a Christian country" he would have been better saying "we are a country shaped by Christianity". Nothing untrue or (necessarily) wrong about that.

bjorn_yesterday wrote:

No, I'm not religious (technically I'm an agnostic), however you simply cannot ignore religion's (let's keep it simple - Christianity's) all-pervasive thread through our society and history. Whether you regard it as (at best) an irrelevance or (at worse) dangerous and/or evil the fact remains that this country - along with many others - is steeped in it. It has shaped virtually everything on this island since the 3rd or 4th century.

Perhaps instead of saying "we are a Christian country" he would have been better saying "we are a country shaped by Christianity". Nothing untrue or (necessarily) wrong about that.

I don't disagree with that - especially the nice distinction between being a Christian country & one shaped by Christianity. To claim that this is a Christian country is just plain wrong - it may once have had a basis in truth but is no longer the case.

Claiming to be a Christian country is too divisive. I am an agnostic/atheist if you like so I don't want to feel any more out of kilter with the government than I do now (if that's at all possible) so surely Camoron should stay away from this in his work and public? The whole point is that government should represent everybody regardless of race, religion, sexual preference or gender. How would you feel if you are a devout Jew or Muslim hearing that?
The government should be running the country to the best of their ability in a totally impartial manner, not with a Jewish, Muslim or Christian bias.
Also although we have had Christianity for 1500 years the history of the British people goes back much further than that. Easter has been adapted to include the pagan festivals around the spring equinox, the Easter bunny is actually a Hare and a sign of fertility and rebirth yet I wouldn't suggest that as a nation we are pagans. (Although I can as an outdoors man relate to that more so than the story of creation.)

I'm antagonistic.

Cameron's doing a diet UKIP thing as he thinks they might get some of his votes.

How is being a bit Christian doing a UKIP? He's all for lots of immigrant labour so they can all get jobs around the house done cheaply.

It's the twee middle English idyll of a small church in the countryside, tea with the vicar. People like that. A rose tinted idea. People who would vote Tory or (now) UKIP. They like that old-fashioned idea of Englishness.

Not for the first time, I think you two have missed each other's use of irony. My guess is that you'd be in agreement.

But what do I know?!

I'm sure we would agree on some things, but The fact remains that I don't like Cameron, Hairy publicly despises him but has posters of him on his bedroom wall. For that reason I wouldn't take anything that Hairy says about Cameron at face value.

I would prefer a poster of Cameron on my dartboard.... to replace the well shredded one of the Thatcher women.

Iggy wrote:

Claiming to be a Christian country is too divisive. I am an agnostic/atheist if you like so I don't want to feel any more out of kilter with the government than I do now (if that's at all possible) so surely Camoron should stay away from this in his work and public? The whole point is that government should represent everybody regardless of race, religion, sexual preference or gender. How would you feel if you are a devout Jew or Muslim hearing that?
The government should be running the country to the best of their ability in a totally impartial manner, not with a Jewish, Muslim or Christian bias.
Also although we have had Christianity for 1500 years the history of the British people goes back much further than that. Easter has been adapted to include the pagan festivals around the spring equinox, the Easter bunny is actually a Hare and a sign of fertility and rebirth yet I wouldn't suggest that as a nation we are pagans. (Although I can as an outdoors man relate to that more so than the story of creation.)

Good point well made but Paganism has never had any effect on the laws that frame this constitutionless country whereas Christianity is there like a writing through a stick of rock.

Our lack of a constitution is the point here: everything is legal until it is deemed otherwise which means the passing of a law. At one time a Royal decree or proclamation was all that required but the English Civil War resulted in Parliament being ascendant and Parliament has always seen the Bishops as an integral part of the House Of Lords and they are appointed by the Anglican Church with the reigning monarch leading it as he/she has done ever since Henry VIII. Do we really believe that religious integrity is genetically inherent? Of course not but it is enshrined at the root of everything that defines us as British.

Factor in as obvious examples a whole raft of laws such as blasphemy, universal bank holidays (an obvious corruption of "Holy Days") for Christian festivals and trading restrictions on Sundays.

We now live in a world where the controlling influence of religions is waning as various other tools are seen as rather more sensible than those handed down through a bizarre mixture of arbitrary choices (why this one and not that one? Ask whichever Pope it was who chose the writings he preferred that constitute our modern bible why he chose them and disregard inconsistencies introduced by translation through several different languages but the influences of their resulting superstitions and quasi-paranormal gobbledegookery is pernicious and is deeply embedded and undeniable.

Once upon a time the genuine ignorance of the masses meant that any answer to the big questions ("why do we die?", "why are we born?", "why does it get dark every day?" etc) was better than no answer at all and "God made it so" was the best/only option going but we know better now (even if we don't know everything yet).

So, yes, we are a Christian country and have been so for centuries but the sooner we become truly secular, like France, the better because even if it made little practical difference it would make an important philosophical statement about what it means to be British and we can't really try to keep other religions out of the legislature if we allow Christianity such a central role.

All religion is bunk.

Just one point about the controlling influence of religion being a waning infuence.

That might be so in Christianity....but not in many other religions,....especially the muslim world.

Some of them but not all and usually those with the least educated general population.

They'll wise up eventually as education eventually triumphs over ignorance - as it always, inevitably does.

It'll just take some time.

Sir Frank, when you consider that so-called Christian Law was significantly extracted from Judaic law and that "pagan" was as a norm applied to anything non-Christian, the influence of non-Christian belief upon English law is very clear. Similarly a basis of our laws were also taken from what Anglo-Saxon paganism brought here. Of course it was then overlaid by centuries of Christian influence but even then it could be claimed that, in England, lots of that was about political expediency rather than religiosity.

I suppose so.

I sort of think of Pagan as meaning ancient British. Stonehenge, mistletoe, druids and so on. Perhaps i should not.

That brand of Paganism centres on the sun, the seasons, the Circle Of Life, hakuna matata and so on.

And celebrating all of that, worshipping it even, makes far more sense to me than any of the Abrahamic faiths.

My point though was a simple one, Cameron's statement about being a Christian country would have immediately alienated all the Buddhists, Muslims, hindus ect. No one can deny the influence of the Church on this country but to say that we are a religious country would have been far more accurate.

Iggy wrote:

My point though was a simple one, Cameron's statement about being a Christian country would have immediately alienated all the Buddhists, Muslims, hindus ect. No one can deny the influence of the Church on this country but to say that we are a religious country would have been far more accurate.

I'm not sure if it would alienate other religions....if you go to a Buddhist.Muslim,Hindu etc country you would realize what the local religion is.... and accept that they aren't a Christain country....and if you settled there you would know that you are in a minority being from a Christain country.

I'm not even sure we are a "religious" country. Many claiming to have a faith pay only lip-service to that faith. I see no reason not to dis-establish the CofE (England is one of the very few countries to have an established 'church' - the rest are almost all Muslim). We could then move closer to a truly representative democracy without the seats in the Lords automatically going to the bishops. Next we'll move on the hereditary peers (no, maybe I'd go for them first - at least the bishops are there representing their flocks), & finally remove the royals. Easy.   

The CofE.....the Anglian Church..... is not where Christianity in this country is flourishing.

Broadsheet newspapers and Tabloids as well, see the Anglian Church as the voice of Christianity in this country.....there are many rapidly growing churches in the charismatic movement and other free churches that have taken the place of the Anglican movement and have a more significant position in this country then many people realize.

When you think back a few years.... the then Bishop of York....No2 in Anglianism.... literally confessed to having no personal faith, of course going back a few further years the CofE church was set up by Henry V111 to get his divorce....not mainstream Christianity in many peoples thoughts.

About 5 years ago I was prevailed upon to attend 2 Christian services. The CofE one was appalling - some bloke with a funny collar talking as though he was bored, having gone through it too many times, to an audience who were very old. The other was at a large Baptist Church. They were really friendly, lively and covered all ages - even young people    You can see why other denominations may be thriving. And I am far from being a believer nor even agnostic.

The point is, I don't want any religious group having any say in how any country is run.

The alternative is the Billingdon club.....    

Nah, the Bilderberg Group run it all anyway.