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.
The (man-made) C of E has that effect on folks. They get to thinking dogma is all there is to religion, when they haven't been in spiritual churches.
It became a state-run church, for the money;
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).
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.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
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.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
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.
"The dildo of consequence rarely comes lubed." -- Eileen Rose
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?
If a man speaks in the forest and there are no women around to hear is he still wrong?
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.
Which was what founded the colonization of America; to avoid religious persecution from the C of E, in order to practice more spiritual worship.
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?
I've known liars among believers, agnostics, and atheists (and persons who generally tell the turth as well); I don't think any of these groups has a monopoly on truthfulness.
