Anglican Mainstream

Jamie Doward and James Legge, Guardian

"We don't do God," Alastair Campbell famously insisted when journalists pressed the former prime minister, Tony Blair, on matters of faith.

But it appears that New Labour's high command missed a trick by declining to talk up their religious convictions, for new research suggests they would have been preaching to the converted: people with faith are far more likely to take left-of-centre positions on a range of issues, including immigration and equality.

The research, revealed in a new report by the thinktank Demos, undermines the widely held view that members of religious groups are more likely to have conservative tendencies.

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Michael Merrick comments: [...]  Take for example this passage:

Indeed, despite religion’s adherence to fundamental core values that tend to be considered conservative, religion has also been the impetus for revolutionary social change, including the abolition of slavery and civil rights movement

From Civitas

From The Telegraph

Young people's hostility towards faith is not as extreme as society perceives with many taking the issue of religion seriously, Rowan Williams will say in his Easter sermon.

Speaking at Canterbury Cathedral later today, Dr Rowan Williams will argue that a number of youngsters appreciate the role religion plays in shaping and sustaining human existence and are keen to learn about it.
 
He will warn that now was the "worst possible moment" to downgrade the importance of teaching religion in secondary schools.
 
Delivering his last Easter sermon as leader of the Church of England, Dr Williams will say: "There is plenty to suggest that younger people, while still statistically deeply unlikely to be churchgoers, don't have the hostility to faith that one might expect, but at least share some sense that there is something here to take seriously – when they have a chance to learn about it.
 
"It is about the worst possible moment to downgrade the status and professional excellence of religious education in secondary schools – but that's another sermon."

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From BBC News

By Steve Doughty and Jack Doyle, Mailonline

As PM urges support of Christianity, his own Minister tells Europe Britons do not have right to wear cross at work

David Cameron’s promise of a fightback against the assault on Christianity was sabotaged yesterday by his own ministers who declared that Christians have no right to wear a cross at work.
The Home Office said that any Christian who does not like it should find another job.

The ministerial line on the right of a worker to display a token of faith was laid down in a statement to European human rights judges. It gives the Government’s opinion in a key test case.

The document, prepared under the supervision of Lib Dem Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone and approved by Home Secretary Theresa May, says Christians must be content to keep their religion for their own time.

Those who are unwilling to do so are ‘free to resign and seek employment elsewhere’.

The blunt rejection of the rights of Christians was disclosed two days after David Cameron said he believes that a ‘Christian fightback’ is under way against attempts to ban the wearing of crosses and crucifixes.

Mr Cameron told a gathering of Christian leaders that ‘the values of Christianity are the values that we need’ and Downing Street said ‘the Prime Minister has made it clear that his view is that people should be able to wear crosses.’

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By George Weigel, First Things

Christmas occupies such a large part of the Christian imagination that the absolute supremacy of Easter as the greatest of Christian feasts may get obscured at times. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, an Italian biblical scholar, suggests that we might begin to appreciate how Easter changed everything—and gave the birth of Jesus at Christmas its significance—by reflecting on the story of Jesus purifying the Jerusalem Temple, at the beginning of John’s Gospel.

In this prophetic and symbolic act, Ravasi writes, Jesus draws a sharp contrast between a religion of superficiality and self-absorption and a pure faith, centered on his person. God can no longer be present in a Temple that has ceased to be a place of encounter, the “meeting tent” of the ancient Hebrews; that Temple, however magnificently constructed, had become a place of superstition and self-interest. In cleansing the Temple, Jesus is declaring that God is now present to his people in a new and perfect way and in a new “meeting tent”: the incarnate Son, “the Word … made flesh” who dwells among us, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). He, Jesus, is the new Temple, and to recognize that and live in this new mode of the divine Presence one must “remember,” as St. John writes at the end of the Temple-cleansing story (John 2:22).

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From The Guardian

At an Easter reception in Downing Street, David Cameron ventured where even Tony Blair feared to tread, quoting from the Gospel of Luke, speaking of 'we Christians', and welcoming the Christian 'fightback'. 'The values of the Bible, the values of Christianity, are the values that we need', he said. In your view, is it acceptable for a modern prime minister to espouse Christian values so openly?

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By Cristina Odone, Telegraph

by Nicholas Watt, Guardian

By Guy Stagg, Telegraph

By Graeme Paton, Telegraph

Ministers were embroiled in a fresh row over faith schools today after suggesting they should reserve just half of places for children from religious families.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said a decision to cap the number of believers admitted to a new Roman Catholic comprehensive in London “seems very sensible”.

In a leaked letter, he welcomed moves to turn 50 per cent of places at the school over to children of other faiths and none.
 
The comments were immediately seized upon by campaigners who said it sent out a “powerful message that such religious discrimination is increasingly viewed as an outmoded and unwelcome practice on its way out”.
 
But it is likely to anger religious groups who have opposed previous suggestions of limiting the number of believers admitted to faith schools.
 
Last year, the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Reverend John Pritchard, was heavily criticised after calling on head teachers to reserve no more than one-in-10 places at Church of England schools to practicing Anglicans.
 
Greg Pope, deputy director of the Catholic Education Service, told the BBC: "We would not seek to open a new voluntary-aided school unless there was demand to fill it.

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By Nadine Dorries, MP, Conservative Home

From Press Association

A leading Church of England bishop has launched a scathing attack on broadcasters whom he says suffer from a "ideological knee-jerk" response to religious programming.

The Rt Rev Nick Baines, Bishop of Bradford, said that beyond the BBC and the "odd bit of Channel 4", religion had been dropped by broadcasters as if it were a "toxic contaminator of decent culture".

Writing in the Radio Times, the bishop said ITV saw "no need" to consider religion – despite the fact, he said, that more people shape their lives around religious conviction and practice than attend sporting events.

"The point is not that religion should be privileged or protected," he wrote.

"It is not to argue that religious propaganda should find space in the schedules of broadcasters.

"But it is to maintain that we can't understand people, events and the way the world is if we don't take religion seriously."

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By Graeme Paton, Telegraph

The teaching of Christian values in schools is being eroded by the Government’s “utilitarian approach” to education, the Church of England warns today.
 
Children’s moral and spiritual development is being “pushed to the side” because of reforms that put an increasing focus on learning facts and figures, it is claimed.
 
In a major report, the CofE said that religious education was being marginalised in many schools but the Coalition “seems to have no will” to address the problem.
 
It criticised a decision to exclude RE from the English Baccalaureate – a new school leaving certificate that rewards pupils gaining good grades in five academic disciplines, including maths and English.
 
The Church also highlighted a decline in the number of new RE teachers being trained and a refusal to include the subject from a major review of the National Curriculum, which will set out the key facts pupils should learn at each age.
 
Dr Priscilla Chadwick, a former private school headmistress and chairman of the CofE’s education inquiry, said all schools valued the importance of assessment but insisted it should not be at the expense of “nurturing the whole child”.

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by Hannah Furness, Telegraph

Religious groups are being inhibited from doing vital work in the community because of outdated anti-Christian prejudice, academics have claimed.

Research into the involvement of faith groups in social and charity work has highlighted “inaccurate and out-of-date assumptions” still blighting their work.
 
It suggested government money was still difficult to access, with civil servants wrongly assuming a faith organisation will put pressure on people they help to convert.
 
Academics Dr Sarah Johnsen and Dr Adam Dinham have now claimed fears about religious groups are misplaced, with “no foundation” in modern-day community work.
 
Their findings are based on years of research in the charitable sectors, and will be presented at the Westminster Faith debates on March 21.
 
Dr Dinham, head of the Faiths and Civil Society unit at Goldsmiths, University of London, said he had identified a “subconscious secularism” running through modern society.
 
He said: “It’s not outright hostility, but a misconception that faith-based groups want to evangelise or will restrict their services to people of the same faith.

“People and authorities which commission services from faith-based providers are often concerned they will have strings attached. If they can find other services to use, they will do.

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By Peter Mullen, Telegraph

by Cole Moreton, Telegraph

The next Archbishop of Canterbury will have his work cut out as the nation negotiates a painful transition of faith.

[...]  So when people talk about Britain losing touch with its Christian roots, which Christianity do they mean? The answer lies in the Thirty-Nine Articles, written in 1563, and the basis of the trinity of Church, Crown and state. Scotland, Wales and Ireland contribute to the soul of Britain but the special status given to the Church of England put the Articles at the core of the Christianity that has shaped us. That core remained intact at an institutional level until recently.

Now the ties that bind Church and state are snapping. The population has changed. The claims of Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and other faiths must be recognised, as must atheism. Because the Government wants our votes, it often takes the lead on social change. The Church sees itself as standing up for enduring truths.

The brilliant, dedicated people working in the parishes – as in other faith groups – were doing the Big Society long before David Cameron named it. But as an institution, the Church of England is failing. It lacks the money, priests and people to care for every soul in every parish. It must find new ways of being the national Church for a nation that has moved on.

“There are an awful lot of people now who don’t really know how religion works, let alone Christianity,” said Dr Williams. “Does wearing a cross offend people who have no faith, or non-Christians? I don’t think it does.”

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By Daniel Martin, Mailonline

The march of secularism means Britain may no longer be a Christian country in just 20 years, a report said yesterday.

If trends continue, the number of non-believers is set to overtake the number of Christians by 2030.

Christianity is losing more than half a million believers every year, while the count of atheists and agnostics is going up by almost 750,000 annually. 

Research by the House of Commons Library found that while Christianity has declined, other religions have seen sharp increases. 

In the last six years, the number of Muslims has surged by 37 per cent to 2.6million; Hindus by 43 per cent and Buddhists by 74 per cent. But the number of Sikhs and Jewish believers fell slightly.

The researchers said the number of Christians had only held up to the extent it has because of high levels of immigration over the last decade.

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Li Focus: On the pastoral issues faced by Christian leaders when helping those struggling with sexual purity, pornography and sex addiction in and outside the church.

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By Matthew Parris, Spectator

[...]  ‘Faith’ means faith. Doubt is not faith. Faith is not seeking but finding. Real Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Jewish believers are being patronised by kindly agnostics who privately believe that the convictions of those they patronise are delusions. A lazy mish-mash of covert agnosticism is being advanced in defence of religion as a social institution. But ‘whatever floats your boat’ is not the wellspring of Judaic belief. The God of the Gap is not the God of Islam. Jesus did not come to earth to offer the muzzy comforts of weekly ritual, church weddings and the rhythm of public holidays.

[...]  Beware (I would say to believers) the patronage of unbelievers. They want your religion as a social institution, filleted of true faith. It is the atheists, who think this God business matters, who are on your side.

As an unbeliever my sympathies are with fundamentalists. They seem to me to represent the source, the roots, the essential energy of their faiths. They go back to basics. To those who truly believe, the implicit message beneath ‘never mind if it’s true, religion is good for people’ is insulting. To those who really believe, it is because and only because what they believe is true, that it is good. I find David Cameron’s remark that his faith, ‘like Magic FM in the Chilterns, tends to fade in and out’, baffling. If a faith is true it must have the most profound consequences for a man and for mankind. If I seriously suspected a faith might be true, I would devote the rest of my life to finding out.

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