British Prime Minister David Cameron has declared Britain to be a Christian country — something that might be a bit unsettling for almost 30 percent of people who list themselves as either having no religion or being non-Christian. The actual number of non-religious appears much higher. Indeed, as noted earlier, a majority of English citizens polled stated that they have no religion in a recent study.
Cameron is following the footsteps of his predecessor Tony Blair who recently declared atheists to be the greatest threat to the nation.
Cameron used a speech in Oxford on the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible to rail against the threatened “moral collapse” of Britain from those who believe you can “do what you please”. However, he identified himself as merely a “vaguely practising” Christian. Nonetheless, he defended the incorporation of religion in politics and declared “[w]e are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so.” Nothing vague there.
It is astonishing to see the assault on not just separation principles in England but on free speech principles (here and here). We have also seen attacks on separation principle in our own country as the West continues to toy with the incorporation of religious institutions and tenets in government (here and here and here and here).
Source: BBC
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The United Kingdom IS officially a Christian country. Unlike our country, the UK has an established church, the Church of England. The Queen is the head of the CofE. Bette Noir is totally correct. Citing the provisions of our treaty with Tripoli has irrelevant.
The problem is that CofE membership and attendance at CofE services has been plummeting for years.If you ever visit England and attend services at a CofE church you will see very few people in attendance unless there’s outstanding music (which is the only reason I go). Go to choral evensong at Westminster Abbey at 5 pm. It’s wonderful, it’s paid for by British taxpayers and it’s free!!!!
Perhaps the citizens of the UK, the vast majority of which do not attend CofE services and are not members of the CofE, might start finally asking themselves why their tax dollars are being spent to support the CofE.
They’ve put the Queen on a short[er] leash… her 1991 allowance was ten times what it is now, but that was when she still had her yacht.
From the 2011 British Attitudes Survey:
Democracy under pressure
Voter turnout figures in the 2010 general election suggest democratic engagement
remains under pressure. An increase in turnout to 65 per cent, following the low pointsof 59 per cent in 2001 and 61 per cent in 2005, offered some comfort – especially given the loss of trust in politicians we reported last year following the MPs’ expenses scandal. But the stark fact is that this was the third successive election where turnout was low: after all, it did not once fall below 70 per cent in the seven precedingdecades. And the 2010 election did nothing to persuade young people to return to the ballot box, an issue that has been particularly evident since 2001. Just under a half (47 per cent) of 18–34 year olds said they voted in 2010, down from nearly threequarters (73 per cent) in 1997 (and far lower than the rate found among older groups).
As our Political engagement chapter shows, neither the internet, nor television debates between the party leaders – the innovation of the 2010 campaign – did much toengage voters beyond those already interested in politics.
Education and ‘educational apartheid’
Critics across the political divide have condemned “the apartheid between our
private and state schools”. So our Private education chapter examines how far the
values and opinions of former pupils of fee-paying schools are in any way separate,
or symptomatic of a divide between society’s governors, who disproportionately
attended private schools, and the governed. Not only do we find that distinctions
exist (for example, in people’s political views and how they assess their own social
status), but also that they cannot only be explained by advantages conferred by family
background, educational attainment or occupation and income. So differences in
schooling appear to exert their own influence over attitudes, something which also
emerges in our School choice chapter. This finds the privately educated to be among
the most supportive of a parent’s right to choose their child’s secondary school.
The chapter also finds strong public support for both school choice and educational
equality, suggesting little apparent recognition of the tension that exists between
the two.
Delving deeper into politically disputed territory we find greater acceptance over
time of a shift from state funding of higher education to tuition fees and student
loans. At the same time, support for the continued expansion of university places
has reached an historic low, as explored in our Higher education chapter. Most
interesting, is the discovery that existing graduates are more likely to oppose
the continued expansion of higher education, thus protecting the value of their
investment in it, while those in manual occupations and without a university
degree are more likely to want to reduce barriers to participation
(…)
However, the Child poverty chapter shows that people are not optimistic that Britain
will improve in this respect in the next decade. Eight out of ten anticipate that child
poverty will actually increase (51 per cent) or stay the same (29 per cent). Most people
see tackling child poverty as an important task for government. Yet it’s noticeable that
the explanations people most often adopt to explain why they think British children live
in poverty relate to perceived poor parenting – family breakdown and parents abusing
drugs and alcohol, not wanting to work or lacking education – rather than government
failings. It’s perhaps here where the public’s views resonate with those of David
Cameron when he talks of “troubled families” and a “broken society”.
(…)
certainties are in increasingly scarce supply. Low voter turnout, falling identification
with political parties and a steady decline in religious affiliations all feature. As our
Religion chapter describes, as many as half the public say they do not belong to any
particular religion, compared with a third only a generation or so ago in the 1980s.
More specifically, the proportion who identify with the Church of England has halved
from 40 to 20 per cent. And the loss of certainty isn’t confined to spiritual or political
matters: the increased scepticism we observe regarding threats to the environment
also seems to reflect some loss of faith in science and scientists too, with over a third
(37 per cent) now thinking that many claims about the environment are exaggerated.
Such shifts in people’s fundamental beliefs are reflected elsewhere. Examining
attitudes to social morality in England and Scotland, for example, we find there have
been remarkable changes of view over time on issues such as same-sex relationships
and bringing up children outside marriage; all of them moving away from traditional
faith doctrines.
Politically, attitudes can always be expected to fluctuate, not least with the economic
cycle. Even so, our Devolution chapter describes a decline in what might broadly be
considered social democratic values in the past 10 years. A modest fall in concerns
about different aspects of economic inequality is accompanied by greater acceptance
of the better off using their incomes to buy better health and education. More
dramatically, support for government increasing taxes and spending more on health,
education and social benefits has halved from a peak of 63 per cent nine years ago, to
just 31 per cent in the latest survey. Views on tax and spend are ‘thermostatic’ – that’s to
say they need to be interpreted in the content of fluctuations in actual spending levels.
However, it’s striking that support for ‘tax and spend’ policies has reduced to a level last
seen in 1983 in the aftermath of recession and continuing ‘stagflation’ in the economy.
Not sure I’d call it Christian, but given the ideological fissures,it’s on its way to being one.
“rail against the threatened “moral collapse” of Britain from those who believe you can “do what you please”.
*************
He was referring to Rupert Murdoch and News Corp’s invasions of privacyby phone hacking, I would suppose.
You don’t say….
British Prime Minister David Cameron has declared Britain to be a Christian country
======================================================
that’s like saying Obama declares the united states to be a republic.
Bette Noir
Of course England is a Christian country; it has an official Church, with the Monarch as its head. Their laws are not like ours.
Entirely correct. Being aware of this fact and also being the learned, well read English subject they were and thus knowing the horrors this connection caused England for many centuries, our Founders wisely seperated these two factions.
The Treaty of Tripoli of 1797 (think the Marine Corps’ song “…to the shores of Tripoli…”) signed by President John Adams, a Founder and among the more religious ones at that, contains the following statement in Article 11, “In no way was the United States of America founded on the Christian religion….” The treaty was adopted unanimously and without objection by the Congress which still had several other Founders in its bodies. Clearly, this speration was the intention of those who set up our government and established our country’s original values. They did not want to see English history repeated in America.
Hmmm, are the microbes putting on our robes or putting on the ritz?
Everyone knows Mrs. Brown is the greatest believer in god in Great Britain, so
let’s see what she thinks.
Mrs. Brown can be just a tad vulgar so be prepared…
So what and who cares … can’t buy your way into heaven with words ol’ boy … gotta have the actions … at least that’s what Christians tell me.
UK Christians need to hire a better PR guy.
Dean Fox.
Here is the IRS publication on 501(c)(3) organizations, which includes the case of religious organizations. 501(c)(3) is a fairly common tax status.
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You say “Taxation and auditing does not [prevent the practice of religion] but unsurprisingly the US religious organisations disagree”.
Some in the church feel that tax exemption is a problem.
Martin Gugino – I shouldn’t make such sweeping statements, most US religious organisations would disagree with removing automatic tax exemption for religions.
He may mean that England is historically Christian which is true. And citizens in the USA or in England, or Canada I suspect, would get a higher score on a test about Christianity than on a test about Islam or Buddhism, though possibly they would not acquit themselves well on any of those.
The remark that “atheists [are] the greatest threat to the nation” is scary, if he means that atheism is immoral. One can always hope that he is referring to the “godless capitalists” who are currently at work destroying the financial systems of western civilization with their belief in unregulated free markets, to the point of rolling back child labor laws.
He certainly does not mean that the citizens, as Christians, are dedicated to social justice to the point of resisting religious and civil authorities, as did MLK, Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or their supposed leader Jesus Christ.
Perhaps he meant England is a vaguely christian nation?
If history acts as the guide, this will not end well.
It looks like England is following our lead in advancing the agenda of the far religious right. Hpw can they be so far right, and be so wrong?
” . . . as the West continues to toy with the incorporation of religious institutions and tenets in government” — while simultaneously and, one might say, hypocritically and beyond irony, criticizing Muslim countries for being under the sway of theocratic influence. Oh, my bad, I forgot. All religions, other than evangelical ‘christianity’ have no legitimacy and are evidence of the devil at work. Some, like certain strains of Judaism are necessary to serve the myopic evangelical narrative.
Dear Mr Cameron, I am an Atheist and I’m not afraid to say so.
As to separation of state from religion we don’t have a constitution which demands such a separation, although I must say it doesn’t seem to help much in the USA.
Yes, I would like to see state and religion kept completely separate. That said is my take is that the state can implement laws that affect religions as long as they treat all religions equally. That is they can tax and audit them just as they would any other organisation.
What a state cannot do and what I’m sure the founding Father’s intended was legislate against a specific religion or group of religions. Or unreasonably prevent the practice of religion. Taxation and auditing does not do that but unsurprisingly the US religious organisations disagree.
In fact it would be more constitutional to tax and audit religions and only allow tax breaks for genuinely charitable acts*1 because then the IRS wouldn’t be forced in to breaking the constitution by having to decide what a religion is.
1* Charitable Act. The act of giving freely to those in crisis* without the expectation, promise or suggestion that something tangible or otherwise will be received in return.
2* Those in crisis. Those who are deemed by the state to require assistance, that is registered charities or those whom qualify as “in crisis” as defined by the state such as the homeless or victims of a disaster or what ever the state chooses as a definition in accordance with the wishes of the people.
Proviso the state shall not confer charitable status on any religion unless they confer it on all who profess to be religious groups WITHOUT QUESTION; this means any group could profess to be religious, including atheist organisations.
Of course England is a Christian country; it has an official Church, with the Monarch as its head. Their laws are not like ours.
England might consider changing its stance, though, as it is clearly outdated. Church and State both gain, when one stays out of the other’s way. I say that as an American.
Organized religion historically has served as both a control of the people and as a means of rallying people demagogically to a cause. It is non-coincidental that as we are on the cusp of a Feudalistic Corporate takeover, spurred on by multi-national corporations, such statements appear.
“However, he identified himself as merely a “vaguely practising” Christian. Nonetheless, he defended the incorporation of religion in politics and declared “[w]e are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so..”
This statement alone shows it is demogoguery.
Did he appoint himself head of the Anglican Church while he was at it? He may be a vaguely practicing Christian, but he’s a fully practicing theocrat.