A CHARITY set up by an ardent Christian to fight slavery and the opium trade has identified a new social evil of the 21st century – religion.
A poll by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation uncovered a widespread belief that faith – not just in its extreme form – was intolerant, irrational and used to justify persecution.
Pollsters asked 3,500 people what they considered to be the worst blights on modern society, updating a list drawn up by Rowntree, a Quaker, 104 years ago.
The responses may well have dismayed him. The researchers found that the “dominant opinion” was that religion was a “social evil”.
Many participants said religion divided society, fuelled intolerance and spawned “irrational” educational and other policies.
People seem to do a pretty good job at being bad in the absence of religion.
These old fashioned enlightment atheists seem to think that once you eliminate religion and superstition you automatically end up with a Western Liberal Secularist like them.
Where’d they get that idea?
Is this another case of all the pots calling all the kettles black?? This potshooting has gone on for centuries – different groups – different people. At the end of this age it is going to God Almightly to separate the sheeps from the goats.
What wisdom!
It’s not whether one is religious or not. Everyone is religious to varying degrees. The real question is, “Which god do you worship? The Almighty or an idol?”
The poll’s attitudes are common enough and surely not surprising. I DO wonder how the people were chosen to be polled. In any case, their antipathy is, as it commonly is, to religion as fundamentalist, charismatic or Roman Catholicism, whose reputation for narrow authoritarianism is old, old old. The poll is therefore reflecting the bigotry – yes, this is the correct word – of scientism which has become a new religion and which, like all young and vigorous religions, seeks to curtail or destroy the competition. These people genuinely believe that science will provide the basis for ethics and morality; and they genuinely believe that neuroscience will find in the brain all t hose areas governing non-science and will reduce all non-science to biochemistry and electrical impulse so that ethics and morality can be quantified and universalized.
This is a childish hope, this equating brain and mind, but if you start with the assumption that the mind is an organic machine, then you will find it easy to believe that its operations can be reproduced and standardized. Larry
Yes, clinging to such antiquated notions as the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are detrimental to the function of society and foreign policy, indeed!
The secularists have won the PR battle with the help of the “religious left.” The godless governments of Hilter, Stalin, and Mao killed tens of millions in the 20th century as they strove to create the new socialist man. Now there is social evil.
But then rational scientific utilitarian’s of the late 20th century did the early 20th century eugenicist’s one better and killed 50 million mostly black and brown babies in the US alone (calling them a fetus instead of a Jew). May God have mercy on all our souls.
The real question is who will effectively evangelize England. It’s a country that’s rich, comfortable, and reasonably safe, thanks to friendship with the U.S. The Church of England is a religious joke; sorry if that offends, but what can you say about a religion in which clergy same-sex partners can marry (excuse me, register their civil commitment) as long as they promise the bishop to not have sex. The Catholic hierarchy, from what I hear, is still living in the glorious 70s, and Mass attendance has dropped about 30% in the past few years. The Orthodox? Mainline protestants (American style)? Both of those traditions are too culturally entrenched, so I doubt it. The evangelical groups seem to be making some headway, but how enculturated are they? Will they stand up when the police come ’round wanting to know why they don’t approve of same-sex acts? How many of them are there, anyway?
At this point, the best bet for religious hegemony in Britain lies with the Muslims, though only because the Brits seem too self-satisfied (the Dursley’s keep coming to mind here) to notice what sharia could actually mean.
Eric73: O where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding?
The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.
But some people still don’t get it…
I suppose we can badmouth those who think that.
But it’s not a very effective way to change their minds.
Perhaps Christians might learn to confess the sins that they do rather than worry about the sins of others.
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
“Light to man’s blindness, O be thou our aid!…
A statistically significant 3,500 people have said what they think about religion. Can we possibly think we’ll change their minds just by bleating about how wrong they are?
#13
So what’s your solution?
Donald Miller, in blue Like Jazz, tells a great story at Reed College – one of the most heathen colleges in the US – setting up a “confession booth” at one of their bacchanalian festivals. Of course, the trick was that when people came to confess (they thought it was a joke), it was Christians confessing to others for their own sins: self-righteousness, hypocrisy, not sharing love, not living fully into the love of neighbor Jesus wanted.
Reed didn’t go from hedonism to become Christian central. But people began to listen. Perhaps if we were a little less self-righteous and more aware of our own sins, we might find people more able to hear our message.
#14
There’s certainly much in what you say, but we do need to worry about the sins of others to the extent that saving them from the consequences of sin should motivate us to pray for them and witness to them about the availability of salvation through Jesus Christ.
ViewfromthePew (#6) wrote: “The secularists have won the PR battle with the help of the ‘religious left.'”
Take a look at the book, “unChristain” by David Kinnaman (President of the Barna Research Group) and Gabe Lyons. Barna did a three year study on the attitudes of “outsiders” (those unchurched and the Christian disaffected that no longer attend church) concerning Christians. Since Barna is an Evangelical group, the data and analysis generally relate to American Evangelical/Born-Again Christians/denominations.
The results of the study are pretty damning of the Religious-Right and American-Evangelicals/Born-Agains. They have a terrible, terrible reputation among the American public in general. It isn’t the “religious-left” that caused most of the respondents to view American Christianity with such disdain, but the “religious-right.”
Of course, no one is innocent. As we within the Church continue to conduct our business and deal with our problems in the same way the world does, I don’t blame people outside the Church for having such a terrible perception of us. He are hypocrites! Why does it surprise us when the public sees right through our hypocrisy and want nothing to do with the Church?
The results of the article and “social evils” don’t surprise me either. Do we understand that we are doing this to ourselves? Do we understand that the way we deal with each other is defaming the cause of Christ?
Evan, you say, “we do need to worry about the sins of others to the extent that saving them from the consequences of sin should motivate us to pray for them and witness to them about the availability of salvation through Jesus Christ.”
If this has worked for you, then great. Continue. But among most of my own secular friends, its a non-starter. They do believe in sin, however. But statements like yours make them feel like you’ve got everything figured out – that you’re better than they are.
Why not start with “I’m a sinner. I don’t love my neighbors, Christians and non-Christians, enough. I have the urge to tell other people how to think. I think my life is better than theirs. I find myself being self-righteous and limited in my thinking. I often think I have all the answers. I’m a sinner. But Christ led me to love others and it is through him I have learned to love who I am. And I’m deeply sorry that, being a sinner, I’ve been so self-righteous and hypocritica to think I’m better than you, when I’m still confronted by how selfish I am.”
Well I think you are right, but what does it matter. As VGR says above:
1. Jesus loves us anyway. He accepts all of us.
2. There is no sin, and even if their is, all are saved regardless (if the concept of salvation has any meaning).
3. So why should I change my behavior? And why should we want anyone to be Christians as all paths lead to God (if there is a God). Come to think of it why should I even want to be Christian?
At least that’s what I hear liberal Christian clergy saying. See VGR’s interview above.
#17
We should honestly acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness against God and against our non Christian brothers and sisters. This is a good start, but it doesn’t guarantee that our non Christian brothers and sisters will like or understand us.
We’re all sinners stuck in the same boat. Therefore, we’re no better than they are. But then again they are no better than us. If confessing our sins requires us to admit that we who have been saved from sin continue to sin against the God who graciously saved us, then we must [i]a fortiori[/i] expect opposition to God’s will, and God’s people, on the part non-Christians.
But of course we simply can’t dismiss all ill will toward us as evidence of sinfulness on the part of non believers. This ill will often means that we are indeed smug, patronizing, or judgemental. (And note that liberals are just as guilty of this as conservatives; for instance, the VGR interview.)
However, although we are not less sinful than non-Christians, we do in fact claim to understand things about God and humankind that non Christians don’t know. Not, of course, as a result of own moral or intellectual merits but as a result of what God has done for us. To deny this would be to deny God’s truth.
So, I’m glad your secular friends think they believe in sin; again, it’s a good start. But as Christians we must confess that we can’t even believe in, much less understand, sin until we are convicted and forgiven of the same through Christ.
But there’s someone who says it much better than I can:
The Agony
Philosophers have measured mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.
Who would know Sin, let him repair
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man, so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skin, his garments, bloody be.
Sin is that Press and Vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through every vein.
Who knows not Love, let him assay,
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.
— George Herbert
The poll is miniscule but it does suggest that Br. Michael is right. One central issue here is sin. There is no reason to believe in sin if the failure to believe does you no harm and, indeed, does you some good, by removing a set of burdens and responsibilities from your shoulders.
The very notion – I have seen it above often – that we are all sinners is itself an elegant piece of vanity, that by degrading oneself, one enhances one’s percentage of winning the jackpot. This precisely how the rest of the US sees those religions who go on and on about being sinful. If sin is meaningless to you, then what reasonable conclusion should a man come to when those who profess to be burdened by sin insist that ALL mankind share this burden with them. This will seem to be a religion only Uriah Heep could love… all those damned hypocrites who are so ‘umble they want to make sure they have the power to make all others as mealy-mouthed ‘umble and they are.
This is why sin and its history cause such resentment and repulsion among those for whom sin is worse than a meaningless expression. If medicine will provide you with new knees (and it will) and retirement will let you live in Santa Fe (and it will) and play golf, what the hell is all this sin garbage?
To the rest of the US and all those folks in England, we look like mewling hypocrites, people who do not strive to make their lives better – and we all know what this consists of – but to make everyone else’s lives worse. Larry