Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “slow2” came with a note that “This is a new version of a 10-year-old joke, with script brought up to date and a technical issue fixed.” The up-to-date bit involves the report, which I discussed yesterday, that England and Wales now have more “nones” than Christians.
The “nones” in England rose from 25% in 2011 to the figure quoted by Jesus in 2014. That is a huge increase in only three years—nearly a doubling? Can anyone doubt that religion is on the way out, at least in the UK? Remember, though, that “nones” include a lot of people who believe in God, but don’t belong to an established church, as well as those who accept a “higher power”. And when established religion is on the wane, so is religion as a whole.
If it can happen in England and Wales, it can—and will—happen in the U.S.
Apart from our idiot prime minister constantly banging on about how the UK is a “Christian Nation” (how can a country’s leader be so out of touch with reality??), the UK is generally a gloriously secular place.
It’s high time our constitution was updated to reflect the fact that we are no longer living in the dark ages.
I think it’s a straightforward calculation that Christians care more than secular people, and thus that Christians might withhold their vote if they don’t get pandered to, whereas secular people would not.
[The same reason that pensioners get a triple-lock guarantee, they vote more than young people.]
It’s also the case that Conservative local associations these days are controlled by an increasingly small number of elderly and often-Christian traditionalists, and so Tory MPs and ethos is vastly more Christian than the country at large.
Sadly, the Labour and LibDem parties seem to make the same calculations, which mean that they won’t do anything to upset the Christians either.
^H^H^H^H written.
At which time we might also deal with things like ‘Lords spiritual’, head of state, the inadequacy of Latin tuition, and such trivias.
NOT an accident. The words.
The rise hasn’t been that quick. The 2011 (census) and 2014 (BSA survey) info were asking different questions.
To quote the British Humanist Association
“However, in a poll conducted by YouGov in March 2011 on behalf of the BHA, when asked the census question ‘What is your religion?’, 61% of people in England and Wales ticked a religious box (53.48% Christian and 7.22% other) while 39% ticked ‘No religion’. When the same sample was asked the follow-up question ‘Are you religious?’, only 29% of the same people said ‘Yes’ while 65% said ‘No’, meaning over half of those whom the census would count as having a religion said they were not religious.”
https://humanism.org.uk/campaigns/religion-and-belief-some-surveys-and-statistics/
To be more specific the census asked
“What is your religion?”
while the survey asked
“Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?”
The BSA (British Social Attitudes) data found 50% of the population were nones back in 2010.
Info gotten from Chris Kavanagh’s Cognitive Demons post “Have Christians suddenly become a minority in the UK?”. It has much more data.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cognitivedemons/2016/05/have-christians-suddenly-become-a-minority-in-the-uk/
While I welcome the coverage, I have to concur. Certainly the trend is as-per report, the numbers are suspect.
There is difficulty with attaching this success to expectations here in the U.S. For instance, the U.K. does not have a vast rural area and this huge region of the U.S. is especially into g*d. Also, we already know the differences politically and socially with the U.S. far behind in progressive action such as health care and other social concerns. And then there is the south — nothing remotely like it in the U.K. Optimism is good but it needs a great amount of medicine.
I think the US also suffers from never having a state religion. Having a single official religion provides a more stationary target for skepticism. The U.S.’s entrepreneurial religious landscape, with it’s hundreds and hundreds of little sects allows a diffusion of skepticism that ends up slowing down change.
It is hard to see a lack of state religion as a disadvantage other than saying we have a large number of moving targets to criticize and not one to focus on. If we bundle the Catholics, the Lutheran, Baptists, Methodist and Presbyterian into one political group and they talk and act as one, they have all jointed the state religion called republican. It is the republicanism in all of them that allows them to bring change to a grinding halt.
The hundreds of little sects, as you say, have joined forces to push the religion on all.
I think the primary “advantage” of the UK having a state religion has been: it incentivized all your religious nutballs to leave the country and go to the US. Heh.
Hmmm.
Define “rural” considering the huge differences between (metropolitan-rural) Berkshire and ‘cleared’-rural (Caithness). Very different areas.
I would not fall off the sofa in shock if the Highlands turned out to be ungodly. They have a habit of voting to the person not the platform, and I could envisage a non – believer of good character winning there.
If you look at a map of the U.S. – one of the red/blue maps to indicate party. I think you will find that the entire middle of the country from Indiana to Wyoming is very red and republican. All the state legislatures are republican, all the national legislatures are republican and just about all the governors. There is nothing but rural in several of these states, hell, Wyoming is hardly half a million people and it is probably the size of England.
My point is simply, because England or Norway goes secular is no indication that we are even close to that here. The bible belt use to run across Alabama to Texas but now it runs thru Iowa and Nebraska and almost to California.
The Guardian article linked to above says “Christianity remains the world’s largest religion with over 2 billion adherents.”
A world population search returns a result of over 7 billion (currently 7.4 billion).
Therefore, it seems to me that a more justified, but still generous, estimate of the percentage of the population who are “Christians adherents” would be about 28.6%, not 43.8%.
Those who argue that Christianity must be the One True Religion because it has more adherents than any other religion need to be reminded that the majority of the world’s population believe that Christianity is false.
Ah, sorry, I understand now, “the population” means the population of England and Wales.
This reminds me of a book by H. G. Wells where 10 objects are observed being launched from Mars, and every single one of them lands in and attacks England. I don’t need to tell you what the name of the book was.
Herbert (IIRC) had it in for his home town. I am told they make a ‘thing’ of their Martian annihilation.
[QUOTH THE RAVEN ] Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough / It’s not fit for hoomins now!
Note that the Catholics make it practically impossible to *take oneself off the lists* if one has been registered as receiving a baptism – local CFI members were trying to do this. So the numbers are … suspect.
(I also don’t know how they estimate numbers for religions that are not nearly as centralized, like Islam.)
At the risk of being accused of creeping accommodationism I have to say the “mind your own business pick and choose” religiousity of the NONES doesn’t bother me so much. It’s infinitely preferable to the steely eyed hard boiled fundamentalism I grew up with.
The problem will be as the influence of the religious right declines it’s members will grow more and more frenzied. And they still have a great deal of influence. The NONES are inherently NOT a single minded special interest group with form commitments and common goals. So while their influence will certainly be felt, it’s size won’t necessarily match it’s impact.
Fanaticism is the outcome of feeling abandoned or attacked, e.g., War on Christmas is almost exclusively manufactured.
In the short term a jihadi-like Christian attitude is easily anticipated as a response to a vanishing world view. On the hand, long term effects of more people simply becoming disinterested will have a measurable effects on lowering fanaticism. The most ardent believers will have no structured community to rely on for justifying or pursuing any dogma ridden deeds.
And nor will they have any funds to do them with.
Yeah, I won’t use terms like atheism “will” happen in the U.S. until this group is too small to foment an actual violent revolution. As they grow more isolated and desperate I wouldn’t rule anything out.
Umm. Atwood, Gilead. Having a beer – absence moment. Handgirl …. no “Handmaids Tail”
If what it means to be religious is that one believes in God, then the bar is set basically at at all time low. This is the muddy waters of Deism and mild agnosticism.
But what most people mean by religious is once a week church goer and modest prayer to get in the pants of a coworker. Let’s count 4 hours / week. That makes most of these people about 97.6% atheists.
Granted a Muslim or Christian might restrict their clothing or sexual activity, but the decision takes but two minutes, living with the decision, can amount to a lifetime, possibly, of misery. I still count only the decision time not the blind ignorance time.
The bit with the moon is brilliant.
Momentum surely seems to favor the waning of religion in the West. If something could just give it a boost in the East, now…
I hadn’t noticed the moon until you mentioned it. And the I noticed the stars had changed position in the last panel too. Such delightful attention to detail!
“Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.” (Revelation 1:3)
All depends on what your definition of “near” is, is the thing, I suppose. Slow and “relativist,” huh, Xtians?
I don’t get the significance of the missing Moon in panel 4. Does it have something to do with Mo’s “slow” comment?
Oh, wait. I get it–Jesus took so long to answer that the Moon had either set or risen out of the picture frame (depending on which way they are facing.)
I guess we now know who’s a little slow…
I don’t know any Christians, or more to the Point they haven’t mentioned it to me, and after a few bevvies when the Subject arises ,they are either Agnostic or Athiests, mind you next door is Pagan, now whether that is real or a ruse to frighten the odd Jehovahs Witnesses that appear from time to time,I’m not sure, and they are getting more and more infrequent. I fancy that the figures in the Survey overestimate the amount of God botherers extant in the Country.
I’m just back from a drive through England and Wales. I saw many churches but a high percentage of them were in ruins.
Once-lovely stone structures that are now just tumble-downs. One was converted to a community center. I think that’s a hopeful sign.