Vicar’s Viewpoint


Is Britain a Christian country? Government statisticians have been hard at work analysing the data collected from the 2011 census, and the preliminary results make for interesting reading. The results from the question “What is your religion?” indicate that 59% of the population actively identify themselves as Christian - some 33.2 million people; whereas only 25% declared that they had no religion. By this measure alone, the Christian faith is clearly an important part of national life.


Some commentators in the secular press want to highlight the trends between the


2001 and 2011 censuses, with the number of people identifying themselves as Christian being 13% down, and the number of people indicating no religion being 10% up. This indeed represents a challenge for the Church’s continuing task of communicating the Good News entrusted to us.


However, these raw statistics need interpretation as well as number crunching. What


was the faith question in the census actually measuring? It could be argued that the census question in effect measured which group people wanted to identify themselves with, which is not quite the same as measuring faith or spirituality. To ask “What is your religion?” is to invite a response that taps into cultural Christianity, and this in turn touches on the relationship between belonging and believing. Sociologists have pointed out that you can have belonging without believing; that is, people can indicate a sense of identifying with our national Christian cultural heritage without necessarily being committed to a full statement of Christian belief. On the other hand, you can also have believing without belonging; that is, people believe in God and maintain an openness to the spiritual realm without necessarily belonging to one particular faith tradition.


I suspect that human nature remains consistent and we can see across the centuries


and across cultures an abiding sense of the reality of God. Three thousand years ago, the writer of the book of Eccelesiastes spoke of the search to discover the origins of the sense of eternity that has been set within our hearts, and two thousand years ago St. Augustine coined the memorable phrase of our hearts being restless till they find their rest in God. What we are seeing now in Western society is a declining commitment to self- identification with a cultural Christainity, but nonetheless the search for faith is ever present.


To identify oneself as a Christian is becoming increasingly a sign of a positive decision


and commitment. Indeed, over the last decade, there has been a 40% increase in the number of adult baptisms in the Church of England. On the other hand, the number of those who actively promote atheism remains consistently low. The National Secular Society has an estimated membership of 5,000, which is the same as the British Sausage Appreciation Society.1


This year we are holding Confirmation Service at St. Bartholomew’s Church on 29th


September. If you would like the explore the Christian faith further, or feel the time is now right to make a positive decision in your journey of faith, please let me know.


Your friend and Vicar, Richard 1 http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2012/12/census-2011.aspx 3


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44