Is Britain A Christian Nation?

 General, History, Politics, Religion  No Responses »
Apr 222014
 

In short: No.

The word nation refers to the people within the country (and technically outside too – at least those who share their identity), so the religion of a nation is the sum total of the religions of all the people within that nation.

According to the last census, approximately 60% of Britains put themselves down as “Christian”, which means that on the surface 40% are not Christian (and nearly 25% of the total are “not religious”).

But there is quite a good chance that a significant proportion of that 60% are not fully Christian in the sense that it may be easiest just to say “Christian” when asked without really meaning it. Particularly in smaller communities (and there’s still a fair number left), a lot of community social life is associated with the church.

And a lot of older people will remember a time when choosing “Church of England” was the closest you could get to choosing “No religion”.

But even if 60% of the population is Christian, then we still cannot say that Britain is a Christian nation – too many people belong to other religions or none at all and claiming that we are a Christian nation excludes those others.

But is Britain a Christian state?

Well yes, and no.

The Church of England is an established church; whereas the Church in Wales, and the Church of Scotland are not. Meaning that if you live in England there is an official state religion but in other parts of Britain there is not. To add to the confusion, the Church in Wales is a daughter church of the Church of England.

But whilst the Church of England is an established church, most of the rights and privileges of an established church have been stripped away over the years. The remaining rump of rights is rather negligible with one exception – the head of state is also the head of the Church of England.

But the monarch has rather less power in reality than in practice. The current queen could in theory dissolve parliament at any time she chose; in practice parliament is most likely to ignore her wishes. Similarly if the queen were to start interfering with the Church of England, the Archbishop is likely to politely but firmly ignore her.

Similarly being a member of the Church of England does not in practice give you any special advantages; nor does a non-member suffer any significant disadvantages. The only disadvantage I can think of is that if I were somehow to become a candidate to become the next king, I would be excluded from the succession because I’m not a Christian; but there are other far more significant obstacles.

But is our culture influenced by Christian values? That is an impossible question to answer unless you specify which values and allow me to point out that many so-called Christian values are in fact values shared by anyone without regard to religion.

We do have a Christian past. And a pagan past. And many other influences from the past. All of which influence the values of Britons today.

Easter: Named After A Pagan God

 Religion  No Responses »
Apr 182014
 

For the next few days, Christians will be going on about how the true message of Easter is about their religion. Well they’re welcome to their views of course, but there’s no reason why the rest of us should not celebrate Easter in our own way.

Usually by eating tons of Easter eggs of course.

The interesting thing is that the name Easter comes from a pagan god – Ēostre. And in the pagan past of England (before Bede), we used to hold feasts in her honour throughout the month of what is now called April. Which evolved into a month of celebrating the “resurrection” of Jesus and eventually became the modern Easter.

Yet another pagan custom that Christians stole.

So It Turns Out St Augustine Had Something To Say About Ken’s Performance

 Religion  No Responses »
Feb 062014
 

Recently a Creationist (Ken Ham) debated with a sensible person (Bill Nye) about the merits of Creationism. The full debate can be found online :-

However it can all be summed up by a response to a simple question: “What would make you change your mind?” :-

Bill: “Evidence”
Ken: “Nothing”

So what is this about St Augustine? It turns out that Christians have known they’ll look stupid if they get too literal about the story of creation, for a very long time. St Augustine had this to say about the likes of Ken :-

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.”

St Augustine of Hippo, from “The Literal Meaning of Genesis”, appx 400 C.E.

So I guess St Augustine is busy rolling his eyes and cringing at the sight of christians like Ken.

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! Happy Winter Solstice! Or Whatever!

 General, Religion  No Responses »
Dec 212013
 

First of all, take whatever seasons greetings you would like from the list above, and ignore the others.

And now onto the ranting.

Reading some US-based Atheist blogs, it appears that our friends on the other side of the pond can sometimes get a little wound up about what seasons greetings they receive. To the extent that a woman has been punched for saying “Happy Holidays” – hopefully the assailant will get prosecuted for ‘aggravated assault’ or something equivalent. After all getting physical with someone who has deliberately insulted you is wrong; getting physical with someone who has just wished you well is downright evil.

Except for occasional outbreaks of gross stupidity such as Birmingham’s winterval controversy, people in the UK are just a little bit more sensible about the whole situation. In particular christmas is not seen as an exclusively christian event – to the extent that I’m seen as a little weird when I wish people “Happy Winter Solstice” (and I’m happy to be thought of as weird!) even though people know I’m not a christian.

Christmas isn’t a christian event? Of course not. Even christians don’t do the religious thing over the whole period; for most there is just a short christmas midnight mass and then it is back to eating and drinking too much in the company of family. If I were the christian god, I’d be shouting “Get on your knees you miserable sinners” the whole period.

And bear in mind that some of us get confused as well: I recently wished someone a “Happy Winchester” as a seasons greeting.

The Origin And Importance Of Christmas …

 General, Religion  No Responses »
Dec 032013
 

Before those po-faced spoilsports start jumping up and down screaming that Christmas is supposed to be all about the baby jesus, let’s take a look at the origins of Christmas…

Turns out that it might not be an exclusively Christian thing after all – despite “his” name being right there in the name – as it seems there have been other religious festivals at around the same time of year. And long before Christianity.

After all the puritans did oppose Christmas as being too “pagan”. And there is a lesson to be learnt from the mistakes made during the English Civil War – however long ago it may have been – whilst the ultra-religious are perfectly free to believe that Christmas is all about religion, it is plain that the overwhelming majority of the population are more interested in the party aspect of Christmas.

No harm in that. There’s a lot to be said for having a party or two with friends, co-workers, and family in the “bleak mid-winter”. No reason to introduce any religious poppycock if that isn’t your thing.

But where did this notion of paganism in association with Christmas come from? It turns out that having a mid-winter festival has been popular for ages :-

  1. Yule is a Germanic mid-winter festival that has vestiges in our current celebration of Christmas such as the Yule log and probably the Christmas tree.
  2. Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival in honour of the god Saturn marked with revelries and gift giving.
  3. The Winter Solstice has probably been “celebrated” as a brief time of plenty before the famine months of winter begin, for thousands of years. Holly, Ivy, Mistletoe are all aspects of Christmas with a potential pagan past.

There is a tradition that the date of Christmas was deliberately chosen to match the dates of existing religious festivals; whether this is true or not is almost irrelevant. What is almost certainly true is that the importance of the christian festival of Christmas owes a great deal to earlier mid-winter festivals.

After all Christians are masters of the art of syncretism.

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