According to a UGOV poll, younger people are ignorant of the basics of Christianity. Well, I won’t claim any surprise – standards of education in the UK have been declining for a couple of decades. Yes, despite government claims to the contrary, obtaining basic educational qualifications today is easier than when I did mine. At least my generation learned the basics of grammar – English and foreign languages. Conversational French is all very well, but a true understanding of a language is underpinned by an understanding of its grammar and it is a good idea to start with one’s own.
I digress – this was about Christianity. What amuses me is the Church leaders’ disappointment at an increasingly secular society in the UK. Don’t they realise that this is a good thing? Obviously not. True religious tolerance is built upon an acceptance of each individual’s right to practice whatever belief system they choose. This will only happen in a truly secular system. There is no place for a theocracy (and the Christian church has demonstrated what it can do when that happens – the inquisitions anybody?) in a modern liberal democracy. No, true tolerance means that everybody has the right to express their religious views free from oppression or sanction by the “state” religion – and that includes the right of non-believers to criticise, satirise and ridicule if they see fit.
So while Church leaders are concerned that Britain can no longer be described as a Christian country, I am content.
As society and education progress people are less willing to believe everything they are told and start to question things like Christian doctrine.
Only a few hundred years ago a lot of people believed that the world was flat and that the Sun orbited the Earth.
By the time we get to the 23rd century religion will be finished and people will worship pure science.
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Good post. I couldn’t agree more.
Though the USA was founded with the intention to have a clear separation of church and state, freedom FROM religion as well as freedom OF religion, many Americans do not agree and are trying to roll back time…Visit me @ http://confessionsofalibertine.blog-city.com/
And then we have people on consistories who want to shun anyone who’s not straight, white, conservative, and rich. The ones who give religion a black eye and turn off the seekers.
[Longrider replies] I wonder at the mentality of the religious right in the USA. Are their memories so short that they forget that their nation is built upon religious refugees fleeing from persecution by the state religion? Clearly so, it would seem. The founding fathers had the right idea – keep state and church separate for the good of both. Curiously, as Europe grows closer to this ideal through a process of evolution, the USA is being dragged away from it.Visit me @ http://longrider.blog-city.com
If people are religious then so be it but yes, there must be a clear separation of church and state and in the USA and increasingly so, with TB’s government in the UK, we are seeing a meshing of the two.Visit me @ http://iridescence.blog-city.com/