Saturday, December 23, 2006

Cwismas time mistletoooe and woine

We're pretty much ready for Christmas, I think. Most of the presents are wrapped and stuffed haphazardly under the tree, M is out doing the food shopping as I blog and I'm to go pick up my granny later this afternoon.

The Guardian has an interesting article about a poll today. It's based on phone survey of 1,006 people (A peculiar number. Why not stop at 1,000 to make the maths easier? :D. I would!) and we all know to be sceptical about statistics, I hope.

Curiously, they found that non-believers outnumber believers two to one in the UK. This surprised me.

"Most people have no personal faith, the poll shows, with only 33% of those questioned describing themselves as "a religious person". A clear majority, 63%, say that they are not religious - including more than half of those who describe themselves as Christian.
Older people and women are the most likely to believe in a god, with 37% of women saying they are religious, compared with 29% of men


...

But a spokesman for the Church of England denied yesterday that mainstream religion was the source of tension. He also insisted that the "impression of secularism in this country is overrated".
"You also have to bear in mind how society has changed. It is more difficult to go to church now than it was. Communities are displaced, people work longer hours - it's harder to fit it in. It doesn't alter the fact that the Church of England will get 1 million people in church every Sunday, which is larger than any other gathering in the country."
The Right Rev Bishop Dunn, Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, added: "The perception that faith is a cause of division can often be because faith is misused for other uses and other agendas.""


I do find it peculiar that only 54% of the people interviewed who said they were Christian are intending to attend a service. But maybe they're more of the puritan bent :P. (Oh, it struck me yesterday that I'd forgotten to bring up Mithras in that post, but since his myth was swallowed up or lost, it's perhaps not that relevant). No, seriously, it's because half the people who described themselves as Christian also described themselves as non-religious, so must have started off mis-labelling themselves. I suppose it's still a cultural norm.

NORM!

Oddly I am attending a church service tomorrow. If they'd interviewed me, it would have confused them. :D We're going to a children's service. It does feel more Christmassy if you go to something like that, I think. It's probably my upbringing creeping out. We used to attend church every Sunday (and of course at Christmas) in my formative years.

I am a mass of contradictions sometimes :D: angsting over religion in schools at some points and then taking my kids to a service :D. I think it's a matter of control and presentation. I know how I will answer questions, I'm not too sure about teachers... But don't worry, I'm not telling S it's all rubbish or anything like that, I simply add in the "some people believe" parts.

1 comment:

Mephitis said...

Merry Christmas!

Thank you, we got it.