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| Anglican clergy Source: News |
Yes, we are a Christian country despite claims to the contrary following a poll by The Times which suggested that "three quarters of Church of England priests say Britain can no longer be described as a Christian country".
The story had wide coverage from Daily mail to The Christian Post among many others. The latest article comes from News which claims to provide 'information and analysis on the life of the Church'.
Their analysis gives rise to the false claim that "The clergy of the Communion of Anglican Churches in England are overwhelmingly supportive of the idea of completely ignoring biblical teaching on sexual morality. This is what emerges from a large-scale poll carried out by the London newspaper The Times, the results of which were published on August 29, 2023.
"The last similar poll was in 2014. The current poll shows a significant shift in opinion among English clergy regarding sexual morality over the past 10 years. The Bishop of Leeds, Nick Baines, told The Times the survey showed pastors faced the same problems as society as a whole."
But hang on a minute. The Times sent their questionnaire to 5,000 Church of England clergy of whom only 1,200 responded.
The responders then became the sample giving rise to the misleading claims which have been appearing in the media as fact.
The Rev Dr Ian Paul gives a detailed account of the 'survey' in his blog Psephizo while psephologist the Rev Peter Ould says "Anecdotally I've heard lots of clergy who refused to do the survey because they weren't sure whether results would be used against them personally, or they thought questions were biased." A sad reflection on the state of the Church of England today,
Meanwhile Jacob Rees-Mogg blasts a ‘defeatist’ Church of England amid 'Christianity failures'.
Hmm ... surely it all depends on what we mean by a "Christian country" - or if such a thing even exists! Clearly, as Rees-Mogg rightly states, our country's laws have been strongly influenced by Christian principles; the influence that the Faith has had on shaping our nation is incalculable. We also have a monarch who is crowned in an explicitly Christian and is titular Head of the Church of England (which of course does not include many professing Christians in England, let alone Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland). We also have Anglican (well, CofE) bishops sitting by right in our Parliament - I believe that the only other country which has religious leaders in its Parliament by default is Iran.
ReplyDeleteBut are we a Christian country? The "memory" of Christianity is certainly still present; we have many institutions such as schools and charities which started from a Christian basis even if they are now often secularised; we have programmes such as "Songs of Praise" on our televisions, and a Daily Service on a rather obscure part of Radio 4.
Set alongside that, one must first note that we are now a multicultural society which includes a great number of devotees of other religions; and that the number of professing church-going Christians worshippers seems almost to be in freefall. I know that many people, if asked their religion, will say "Christian" - but it seems to me that they are not disciples of Jesus in any meaningful way.
So are we a Christian country? I would say that we are not; but that we are a largely "post-Christian" country or one with a strong Christian heritage. If the predominant religion over the last 1000 years had been Hinduism or Islam, things today would have been very different.
Shut up you fool.
DeleteThe curse of multiculturalism has been imported and imposed upon us by successive woke and weak governments of all colours for the last forty years or more.
The spineless Church has been complicit while our politicians have betrayed us.
There's a muslim destroying Scotland, another muslim destroying London, an atheist gay-loving fool destroying Wales and an utterly useless and spineless Hindu moron presiding over the lot in Downing Street facilitating an illegal invasion of hundreds of thousands of economic migrants aided and abetted by dubious charities run by menopauseal women willing to have sex with them.
Multiple Councils are bankrupt, the UK is more than £2 TRILLION in debt, the armed forces have shrunk to the point of being meaningless, schools and public buildings are coming apart at the seams, teachers affirm thirteen year old girls who think they are cats, the Police ignore 99% of crime but have plenty of time to patrol Facebook for micro aggressions as Pakistani muslim gangs rape underage white girls while plying them with drugs and alcohol, the regulatory bodies do nothing, the water companies pump raw sewage into our rivers at will, our banks are corrupt and debank anyone who they dislike, the Bishops are mostly women or gay and Stonewall rainbow and trans ideologies are promoted at every possible opportunity.
Not forgetting the gangs of feral immigrants robbing Oxford Street with impunity in response to calls for anarchy on social media.
Have I missed anything from our wonderful multicultural paradise?
Well said Enoch.
DeleteI am not the only one sick to the back teeth of the limpwristed woke anything goes rainbow agenda.
The backlash is coming.
Drain the swamp to the last drop of filth.
"A strong Christian heritage"?
DeleteThe Church of England and the Cult in Wales are both busy discarding any such heritage as fast as possible.
Welby the woke and John the jerkoff compete to outdo each other with stupidity.
It's a huge relief to see that the vast majority of the population pay them no heed whatsoever and long may it continue.
Don't forget the sicko that turned up to a Matinee performance for youngsters at the Globe theatre wearing a gimp suit and the staff and management who's only concern was that the one in the gimp suit might overheat.
DeleteNever mind the children.
Protect the gimp!
Bewildered
And here's the problem in a nutshell.
DeleteThe 30 by 30 policy.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/06/first-sea-lord-warns-against-armed-forces-diversity-targets/
As much use as teats on a bull, the Seven Sacred spaces and the Sneak-a-peek rubbish.
I agree entirely with Enoch.
DeleteAn utterly spineless Hindu fool.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/09/06/rishi-sunak-changing-gender-trans-kings-speech-school/
More worried about his Electoral chances than protecting children from the Stonewall poison.
Shameless and craven.
There was no need for the intemperate language at the beginning of Enoch’s response to Baptist Trainfan. BT simply provided an analysis of ways in which the UK was or was not a “Christian country”. What is more, his contribution was, as it always is (whether or not one agrees with him), thoughtful and expressed politely.
DeleteRB
Totally agree RB, Baptist Trainfan is a thoughtful contributor on this blog and didn't deserve such a disgraceful outburst by @Enoch. I don't see how the substance of Enoch's summary fundamentally disagrees with Baptist Trainfan's so all I can assume is that Enoch wanted to troll him.
DeleteEnoch, I suggest you apologise to BT for your unseemly and unwarranted outburst.
WHAMAB
Thank you both. I don't think, though, that I'd agree with Enoch's analysis, which seems to blame multiculturalism for many of society's woes.
DeleteI'd prefer to say that we've arrived at where we are today because of (a) the Reformation and its emphasis on spiritual individualism; (b) the Enlightenment, the advance of "scientific method" and their critical and reductionist approach to religion; (c) the long-term consequences of Empire and colonialism; and (d) the increased movement of people around the world in general. At the risk of being political, I'd want to add the populist spread of Thatcher's mantra that there is "no such thing as society" being taken to mean that individuals bear no responsibility to anyone but themselves.
A further thought. It has been suggested that the rise in foreign missions actually had an unintended negative consequence within the churches. What do I mean? Well, missionaries came back to Britain describing what they'd seen of other religions. Granted, they often spoke of "pagan" or "heathen" religions in pejorative terms; nevertheless they made British Christians aware that there were other religions "out there", many of them ancient and with complex theologies. This knowledge helped to shatter the universal "sacred canopy" of belief in one God.
DeleteTosh.
DeleteYou've got it back to front.
The people of these islands have been fully cogniscent of other religions for literally miliennia.
Pre Christian times we had the Celts with their
rock and river gods and goddesses along with the Druids.
The Romans brought with them their Pantheon and a complete knowledge of the Greek equivalent. Then came the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Vikngs, from which many of our current days of the week take their names even to this day.
Christianity begins to show up during the sixth and seventh centuries but takes decades if not centuries to spread fully.
Shortly after the Normans arrive we're sending off soldiers and Knights to the Crusades to free Jerusalem from the curse of Islam, followed by battles for Malta, Spain, central and eastern Europe.
Marco Polo brings back knowledge from India and China and later explorers from North and South American tribes.
By my reckoning, there was full knowledge of most mainstream religions long before European Missionaries went out. Indeed, the existence of such knowledge was the catalyst for them setting off to convert the poor ignorant heathens.
I did say, "It has been suggested" - and I can't remember where I read it! You are of course at liberty to disagree!
DeleteThe Anglican clergy in the photo don't fill me full of confidence.
ReplyDeleteMostly women and old men.
Probably at least half of them homosexual and 95% of them drippy and woke.
As was predicted, the Church has now already become female dominated, driving out men at both clergy level and in the pews, simultaneously and inevitably softening biblical teaching especially in areas of sexuality. Unsurprisingly, all respect has been lost and no-one is listening, for which in these circumstances we should be truly grateful.
ReplyDeleteLW
Pilavachi scandal.
ReplyDeleteWelby damns himself.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/06/mike-pilavachi-church-england-investigation-soul-survivor/
"It's my tradition, it's how I grew up."
Says it all.
There's nothing Christian about this.
ReplyDeleteGreat Ormond Street Hospital diversity team is as busy as ever and Global Butterflies insisting on 150 ways to express gender.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/06/great-ormond-street-hospital-lgbtq-policy-guidance/
The NHS is not short of tax payers money to squander on such degenerate drivel.
Bewildered
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66860266
DeleteA "symbol of an abominable society".
Catholic Italy and illegal LGBTQIA surrogacy.
Slap in the face to Zebedee and Ruth and ilk but possibly further proof that the Brtitish establishment - in form of the Police Service - has lost its Christian-forgiving values.
ReplyDeleteYet another disgusting, sorded C-in-W priest, the Rev Kennett-Orpwood banged up for his pretty vile paedophilic practices. As Zebedee often demands of rouge police officers that they be stripped of their pensions, I assume the C-in-W will also now strip this cleric of any deserving towards his clergy stipend pension.
Keep up the good work lads. There's room for one more at Wandsworth Scrubs.
Old Bill
Ex CinW priest and yes, entirely sordid.
Deletehttps://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/disgraced-north-wales-vicar-jailed-27670961
Hopefully the vile creature has been defrocked and depensioned by the cult in Wales.
What does the chocolate teapot have to say about it?
This is just sad for all concerned, most certainly the children whose images have been obtained, shared and distributed. Sad for Jason's family who have done their very best to help him with his privation and depravity. Ultimately sad for him - he was a very gifted priest.
DeletePerhaps in prison he can be protected from worst self and be rehabilitated in the way we would all hope. Sordid, yes, but not beyond redemption and maybe in prison the chaplaincy service will help him seek the newness of life that Christ brings. I'll continue to pray for him and for all concerned.
Asaph
Repeat offender.
DeleteRehabilitation already hasn't worked.
We have to hope that a stint in prison will both protect vulnerable teenagers from him but also bring about a rehabilitation for him. The Bible deals with the “not yet”.
DeleteAsaph
We're living in the reality of the here and now, as is he, especially if he drops his bar of soap in the prison showers.
DeleteThis has just got to be the story of the month.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/08/marianna-spring-bbc-journalist-disinformation-lied-on-cv/
BBC fact checker on their verification team caught out falsifying information on her own CV to try and get a job.
🤣 🤣 🤣
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/08/soul-survivor-mike-pilavachi-abuse-church-of-england-abuse/
ReplyDeleteChurch of England trying yet another abuse cover up?
Welby is an utter disgrace.
Bewildered
@ Zebedee (08-09-2023)
ReplyDeleteWrong again Zebbers: Once priested, a priest remains a priest for life (unless defrocked). A priest can have his licence to officiate removed by his Bishop meaning that he/she can't function as a priest in that particular church, but he remains a priest ... even in prison. Ex-vicar perhaps, but not ex-priest and that's where the Church fails.
Which part of defrocked and depensioned did you not understand or was wrong?
DeleteHave you mastered copy and paste yet or does that still remain as much a challenge for you as English comprehension?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/09/literary-agents-authors-lgbtq-disabled-people-colour/
ReplyDeleteStraight white able-bodied aspiring authors not required.
Only LGBTQIA, Trans, black, disabled will be published.
Blatantly overt discrimination but why is it not being "called out" or "cancelled"?
Where are the inclusivity/diversity micro aggression and thought police?
Perhaps with greater reference to the managed decline thread, but there are several good letters in today's Telegraph concerning the deliberate deconstruction of the Parish system.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2023/09/10/letters-church-bureaucracy-pushing-parishes-to-extinction/
Bewildered
Here's another dirty side to the so-called religion of peace, proving it's not just Christianity that has problems with perverts.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtube.com/watch?v=_5ZqEWSeKj4&si=7oo8TWhST1qNTGSS
Pleasure marriages available for as little as thirty minutes.
It's almost as bad as Telford, Oxford, Rochdale and Rotherham, the only difference being they pay their own underage vulnerable girls.
DeleteMetropolitan plod fitting someone up again?
ReplyDeleteIt's so much easier than catching shoplifters and burglars.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/12/jacob-rees-mogg-selfie-hale-byrne-far-right-darroch/
And this is the all too predictable outcome when plod flatly refuse to deal with shoplifters.
Deletehttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/12/shoplifting-row-peckham-london-sparks-protest/
Amusingly, the black woman has obviously decided to play the race joker while the shopkeepers name strongly suggests he's anything but white, while the usual BLM rentamob show up to push their weight around.
Del boy and Rodney won't be seen in Peckham nowadays.
Bewildered
This poor man was beaten up and brain damaged by the Met plod in 2010 at a student demonstration and subsequently charged, falsely, multiple times and persecuted for twelve years.
DeletePlod have now finally conceded and paid out compensation.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66827856
Violent thugs in uniforms.