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A post-Christian Britain


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1 minute ago, Steve May said:

That’s true.  I’m a very bad apatheist.   I’ll try harder next time.   Or not.  

You should march somewhere just to prove it. ?

Learn to listen without distortion and learn to look without imagination.

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1 minute ago, graveyard johnny said:

I think over the last few years my mrs has become a nun, nun in the morning, nun in the afternoon and nun at night.

Is it just a habit she’s got into. 

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1 hour ago, Maximus Decimus said:

I would have to question the first part of this. Christian schools have a requirement that 10% of curriculum time is spent in RE. That is effectively 2 and a half hours.

It's naive to think this much is taught by many, but you couldn't get away with doing less than an hour. Schools also face a religious inspection which is a huge deal in a faith school. One of the first things they look for is how much RE is being taught and how well it is delivered.

It wasnt about total time - it was about how they used to use religious texts/parables etc or the like for  a lot of the base of other lessons but now with a more proscribed curriculum in her opinion there was less religious emphasis. It may also be though as one of her first schools was a London Catholic primary full of various embassy staff's children where Catholicism was a uniting thread to allow the children to come together in a shared experience

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1 hour ago, Steve May said:

That’s me.  I’m an apatheist.    I don’t believe in God and I really don’t care that I don’t believe in God.   

 

Even the vast majority of those that nominally do, live their lives as if they don't.

There are a significant number of people who believe that they will see their loved ones when they die and believe in quasi-religious notions like fate and angels intervening in their lives etc. However, they don't follow any traditional religious practises.

For largely cultural reasons, they also want their child Christened, a First Holy Communion and to get married in a church and many still think that a religious school means they'll get taught right from wrong.

We are already in a post-Christian society (indigenous Brits anyway) but it seems to me that the fragile peace where religious people pretend that people still care about the religious aspect and largely secular people use the church purely for a celebration can't continue indefinitely. 

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31 minutes ago, SSoutherner said:

It wasnt about total time - it was about how they used to use religious texts/parables etc or the like for  a lot of the base of other lessons but now with a more proscribed curriculum in her opinion there was less religious emphasis. It may also be though as one of her first schools was a London Catholic primary full of various embassy staff's children where Catholicism was a uniting thread to allow the children to come together in a shared experience

Obviously, I can't speak for how things are in 'that London,' but the diocese are usually very prescriptive of what is taught. In my current diocese, the Bishop himself chooses the scheme and it can be very dry and scripture heavy at times. I'm only aware of two other schemes and they're all usually that way.

You make a good point though, when I taught around Liverpool the Catholicism wasn't nearly as big a deal as when I loved to a place with one Catholic school in the town. 

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I was at my niece's christening in Dublin last weekend and it was very much as you described - six babies all in one go with the priest struggling to be heard over constant chatter and nobody seeming to know what they were supposed to be doing.

Anecdotally I would say that a lot of the religious ceremonies that are still happening are "for Granny/Grandad's sake" or some equivalent and will naturally start to decline as the older generation depart.

A lot of people may still want some sort of family/community celebration for newborns but I suspect "naming ceremonies" will start to get more popular in the way that humanist and spiritualist marriages are now.

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17 minutes ago, damp squib said:

I was at my niece's christening in Dublin last weekend and it was very much as you described - six babies all in one go with the priest struggling to be heard over constant chatter and nobody seeming to know what they were supposed to be doing.

Anecdotally I would say that a lot of the religious ceremonies that are still happening are "for Granny/Grandad's sake" or some equivalent and will naturally start to decline as the older generation depart.

A lot of people may still want some sort of family/community celebration for newborns but I suspect "naming ceremonies" will start to get more popular in the way that humanist and spiritualist marriages are now.

This is of course true (especially in Ireland). It is the celebration aspect that people really want nowadays, they want the big day out.

The problem with humanist ceremonies is that a lot of people like tradition, they were christened so their child should be christened etc. Also, from a Catholic perspective, the first communion doesn't really have an equivalent.

I can see humanist ceremonies growing considerably amongst trendy liberal types but amongst the larger population I'm not sure. 

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31 minutes ago, Northern Eel said:

I'm nun the wiser.

I think Graveyard Johnny's wife turning into a nun has left him no option than to take it out on the bishop, by bashing him.

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20 hours ago, Maximus Decimus said:

This is of course true (especially in Ireland). It is the celebration aspect that people really want nowadays, they want the big day out.

The problem with humanist ceremonies is that a lot of people like tradition, they were christened so their child should be christened etc. Also, from a Catholic perspective, the first communion doesn't really have an equivalent.

I can see humanist ceremonies growing considerably amongst trendy liberal types but amongst the larger population I'm not sure. 

I'm not sure what a trendy liberal type is exactly but I've been to five weddings in the last three years of people in my age bracket (late 20s/early 30s) - four of them were humanist or spiritualist and only one traditional Catholic for the sake of the bride's parents who are older and from a very rural area. The christening I attended was for the same couple and none of the others have or are planning to christen their children. These people would be fairly representative of the younger Irish population. I don't think people realise what a complete psychological break there has been between my generation and the church. It's not the drifting away that happened in the UK, which allows for a cultural connection to be maintained and celebrated. It's a conscious rejection of the church, often quite visceral. I guarantee that in twenty years a church wedding will be more common in the UK than in Ireland.

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1 hour ago, damp squib said:

I'm not sure what a trendy liberal type is exactly but I've been to five weddings in the last three years of people in my age bracket (late 20s/early 30s) - four of them were humanist or spiritualist and only one traditional Catholic for the sake of the bride's parents who are older and from a very rural area. The christening I attended was for the same couple and none of the others have or are planning to christen their children. These people would be fairly representative of the younger Irish population. I don't think people realise what a complete psychological break there has been between my generation and the church. It's not the drifting away that happened in the UK, which allows for a cultural connection to be maintained and celebrated. It's a conscious rejection of the church, often quite visceral. I guarantee that in twenty years a church wedding will be more common in the UK than in Ireland.

I'd imagine there could be a difference between how that break looks in Ireland versus Northern Ireland, where I assume there's something of a performative element in being seen to be a Catholic?

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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22 hours ago, Maximus Decimus said:

This is of course true (especially in Ireland). It is the celebration aspect that people really want nowadays, they want the big day out.

The problem with humanist ceremonies is that a lot of people like tradition, they were christened so their child should be christened etc. Also, from a Catholic perspective, the first communion doesn't really have an equivalent.

I can see humanist ceremonies growing considerably amongst trendy liberal types but amongst the larger population I'm not sure. 

To be honest I've been to several cousins weddings recently, mixture of Catholic and Anglican (I think anyway, I was raised in a catholic  primary school and high anglican secondary to the point I could barely tell the difference except the occasional latin, so it could have been any prod denomination), and they all sort of seemed the same. References to love and commitment in the bible and a few nice hymns and poems.

I think we're heading for somewhere between apathy towards religion and a more 'generalised religion'. People pick and choose bits essentially in a very 'democratic' way. The importance of religion in giving at least some comfort and moral guidance in life, be that through community, rites of passage, dealing with death, serves a very functional purpose that people like; doctrinal adherence to scripture written over a thousand years ago people generally don't like. Its a logical progression of a generally more educated, liberally opinionated and maybe even more cynical population that questions authority more readily and is less likely to commit to religious institutions it feels are out of touch with much of the modern world. Perhaps thats making religion too easy, but in my view a more generalised version of religion and religions themselves (Christianity imo is best equipped to deal with this) moving into the modern world is what is required.

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1 hour ago, damp squib said:

I'm not sure what a trendy liberal type is exactly but I've been to five weddings in the last three years of people in my age bracket (late 20s/early 30s) - four of them were humanist or spiritualist and only one traditional Catholic for the sake of the bride's parents who are older and from a very rural area. The christening I attended was for the same couple and none of the others have or are planning to christen their children. These people would be fairly representative of the younger Irish population. I don't think people realise what a complete psychological break there has been between my generation and the church. It's not the drifting away that happened in the UK, which allows for a cultural connection to be maintained and celebrated. It's a conscious rejection of the church, often quite visceral. I guarantee that in twenty years a church wedding will be more common in the UK than in Ireland.

I definitely got that vibe whenever I've been to the Republic of Ireland. The fact that the catholic church served as a conservative bulwark made it almost anachronistic in the new republican society. A rejection was bound to happen.

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Marks and Spencer have a good selection of chocolates and sweets to celebrate Eid/Bayram. 

I got a lovely box for a friend cost only £3. It's celebrated by both secular people and religious. 

Last year I was lucky to be in Turkey for Eid and the shops had a great selection of sweets and savouries. Everyone was at the beach?

I enjoyed seeing the sweet selection today.

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19 hours ago, gingerjon said:

I'd imagine there could be a difference between how that break looks in Ireland versus Northern Ireland, where I assume there's something of a performative element in being seen to be a Catholic?

Weirdly it's kind of the opposite. I've been an atheist since my teens and, in the Irish context, am completely opposed to the Catholic Church as an institution yet across the border I am unmistakeably a "Catholic", because religion was always just a proxy in the Troubles for nationality/ethnicity.

People are much more likely to be performatively Irish e.g. GAA jerseys, tricolours, rebel songs, or performatively British (Union Jacks, pictures of the Queen, giant bonfires for some reason).

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19 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

I definitely got that vibe whenever I've been to the Republic of Ireland. The fact that the catholic church served as a conservative bulwark made it almost anachronistic in the new republican society. A rejection was bound to happen.

Unfortunately post-independence Ireland was only ever a republic in name only. Shortly after the civil war there was a "quiet" counter-revolution which preserved the ruling class by simply replacing the British authorities with religious authorities. That has been partially rejected in recent years.

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1 hour ago, damp squib said:

Unfortunately post-independence Ireland was only ever a republic in name only. Shortly after the civil war there was a "quiet" counter-revolution which preserved the ruling class by simply replacing the British authorities with religious authorities. That has been partially rejected in recent years.

You've said it better than I could.

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Change happens, and the abilty to adjust quickly enough is the question. This will affect all religions and it may be more appropriate to talk of a post religion Britain.

For some though religion doesn't seem to have held them back and prevented them from behaving badly so even if it does alter what's the point?

2 warning points:kolobok_dirol:  Non-Political

 

 

 

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