(British) Christians don't want religion to influence public life

[LeftishBrit]

British Christians do not think religion should have a special influence on public policy and display low levels of belief and practice, research suggests. Despite identifying themselves with the religion, most turn out to be overwhelmingly secular in their attitudes on issues ranging from gay rights to religion in public life, the Ipsos Mori poll found.

Almost three quarters (74 per cent) agreed that religion should not influence public policy, while only about one in eight (12 per cent) thought it should, the survey found.

Conducted for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (UK), it also found that 92 per cent of Christians agreed the law should apply to everyone equally, regardless of their personal religious beliefs.

It comes as Baroness Warsi, a minister, warns that British society is under threat from the rising tide of “militant secularisation” reminiscent of “totalitarian regimes”.

(More at link. The research organization is secularist; the reporting newspaper is anti-secularist, so there could be distortions at either end. But it certainly confirms my impression of most Christians in this country.)


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9081215/Christians-dont-want-religion-to-influence-public-life.html

[3waygeek]

1. That's because Britain sent all their religious nuts here...

400 years ago.

[mr blur]

2. Interesting piece in the Guardian about Warsi and this nonsense -

<snip>
But there is no doubt that secularism is increasingly seen as a threat to liberty rather than its stoutest defender. Conservative party chairman Lady Warsi is the latest to raise the alarm, speaking of her "fear" that "a militant secularisation is taking hold of our societies". She pulls no punches in claiming that "at its core and in its instincts it is deeply intolerant" and that it "demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes".

Pretty much the same message came from Labour's David Lammy on Friday's Any Questions? on Radio 4, when he attacked "an aggressive secularism that is drowning out the ability of people of faith to live with that faith".

Warsi is taking this message to the pope, which is a bit like taking pizza to Napoli. In the pontiff's 2010 visit to the UK, he also railed against "aggressive forms of secularism", likening it to the evils of Nazism and claiming that "the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society".

Other clerics have followed suit. The leader of the Catholic church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, used his last Easter sermon to decry the "aggressive secularism" that tries to "destroy our Christian heritage and culture and take God from the public square".

<snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/14/is-religion-really-under-threat

How the hell is secularism "...drowning out the ability of people of faith to live with that faith".?

[dmallind]

3. Yep - Dawkins is single handedly closing churches, stopping Sunday School,

assembly, hymns, prayers in nigh every state school. With adults he's enforcing Sunday morning working hours, removing the Bible from bookstores, making bacon sandwiches mandatory in Bradford, and even cancelled Songs of Praise! Impossible to get religious influence in Britain today.