Plan B Forum

And now congregation, put your hands together and give thanks, for I come bearing Good News. Britain is now the most irreligious country on earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else. Some 63 percent of us are non-believers, according to an ICM study, while 82 percent say religion is a cause of harmful division. Now, let us stand and sing our new national hymn: Jerusalem was dismantled here/ in England's green and pleasant land.

How did it happen? For centuries, religion was insulated from criticism in Britain. First its opponents were burned, then jailed, then shunned. But once there was a free marketplace of ideas, once people could finally hear both the religious arguments and the rationalist criticisms of them, the religious lost the British people. Their case was too weak, their opposition to divorce and abortion and gay people too cruel, their evidence for their claims non-existent. Once they had to rely on persuasion rather than intimidation, the story of British Christianity came to an end.

Now that only six percent of British people regularly attend a religious service, it's only natural that we should dismantle the massive amounts of tax money and state power that are automatically given to the religious to wield over the rest of us. It's a necessary process of building a secular state, where all citizens are free to make up their own minds. Yet the opposition to this sensible shift is becoming increasingly unhinged. The Church of England, bewildered by the British people choosing to leave their pews, has only one explanation: Christians are being "persecuted" and "bullied" by a movement motivated by "Christophobia." George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says Christians are now "second class citizens" and it is only "a small step" to "a religious bar on any employment by Christians".

Really? Let's list some of the ways in which Christians, and other religious groups, are given special privileges every day. Start with the educational system. Every school in Britain is required by law to make its pupils engage every day in "an act of collective worship of a wholly or mainly Christian nature". Yes: Britain is still a nation with enforced prayer. The religious are then handed total control of 36 percent of our state-funded schools, in which to indoctrinate children into their faith alone.

In 1534 the Act of Submission of the Clergy removed the right of all appeals to Rome, effectively ending the Pope's influence. The first Act of Supremacy confirmed Henry by statute as the Supreme Head of the Church of England in 1536. (Due to clergy objections the contentious term 'Supreme Head' for the monarch later became 'Supreme Governor of the Church of England' - which is the title held by the reigning monarch to the present.)

Such constitutional changes made it not only possible for Henry to have his marriage annulled but also gave him access to the considerable wealth that the Church had amassed, and Thomas Cromwell, as Vicar General, launched a commission of enquiry into the nature and value of all ecclesiastical property in 1535, which culminated in the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536–1540).

Lord Jim wrote:I'm curious...

Are there any non-American people of faith on this board, or are you all a bunch of hell-bound heathens?

Lord Jim wrote:are you all a bunch of hell-bound heathens?

loCAtek wrote:The (man-made) C of E has that effect on folks

Gob wrote:Interesting question Jim, my money's on only our American members believing in fairy tales.

Gob wrote:

Lord Jim wrote:I'm curious...

Are there any non-American people of faith on this board, or are you all a bunch of hell-bound heathens?

Interesting question Jim, my money's on only our American members believing in fairy tales.

thestoat wrote:

loCAtek wrote:The (man-made) C of E has that effect on folks

I utterly agree. Though I don't believe the Catholics are pure in that respect.

loCAtek wrote:I don't believe in fairy tales, I believe in spirituality.

You might wanna write that down, I keep saying that but you keep repeating falsehoods.

loCAtek wrote:

thestoat wrote:So, the death is not of British Christianity, but British dogma. There hasn't been spiritual Christianity in the UK since the 1500's.

loCAtek wrote:Is that how you know an atheist? They don't listen, but lie?

Gob wrote:

Lord Jim wrote:I'm curious...

Are there any non-American people of faith on this board, or are you all a bunch of hell-bound heathens?

Interesting question Jim, my money's on only our American members believing in fairy tales.

Gob wrote:

loCAtek wrote:I don't believe in fairy tales, I believe in spirituality.

You might wanna write that down, I keep saying that but you keep repeating falsehoods.

What you call spirituality, I call fairy tales, you may want to write that down.

Scooter wrote:

loCAtek wrote:

thestoat wrote:So, the death is not of British Christianity, but British dogma. There hasn't been spiritual Christianity in the UK since the 1500's.

I suppose that depends on what you mean by "dogma" and "spiritual". What was THE Christian Church in Western Europe until the early 1500s was as dogmatic any religious institution, second only to the remnant that was left after the Protestant splinters fell away during the Reformation, when it became even more dogmatic through the decisions reached by the Council of Trent. Conversely, several religious movements emerged in the UK in the 17th and 18th centuries (e.g. Methodism, Quakerism) that were founded on a more personal and less dogmatic relationship with God.

thestoat wrote:

loCAtek wrote:Is that how you know an atheist? They don't listen, but lie?

I have never found any of the atheists I have spoken to lie. But I have known clergy lie. And the church has lied all through its existance - since well before atheists were allowed to have an opposing view. Burn a witch, anyone?