Christianity More Vital in UK Today | 15th Mar 2010
March 14, 2010 by admin
Filed under Prayer Bulletin
George Pitcher, Vicar of St Bride’s, Fleet Street, and Religion Editor of Telegraph Media, was invited to Vanessa Feltz’s BBC radio show a few weeks ago to comment on the news that the number of Briton’s calling themselves Christians has dropped markedly. Responding to Ms Feltz’s suggestion that he should be downcast about the news, George Pitcher claimed he was actually quite cheerful about it.
“Leaving aside the fact that Christianity is, globally speaking, in the middle of a boom, it’s encouraging that so many people in Britain are still actually signing up to the faith. Remember, after all, that ours is the first generation for hundreds of years that isn’t Christian by default,” he said.
“Even in the middle of the last century,” he continued, “our parents would automatically tell census-takers that they were “Church of England”, without any real sense of conviction. It was just what you were. This applied less to other denominations, because the C of E was a default position – just part of the background; ambient noise.
By contrast, people these n – something unthinkable even a decade ago.”
“Secondly,” he says, “36 per cent of those surveyed were part of the ‘fuzzy faithful’… They’ve drifted from organised religion because of the fashion in recent decades for the materialistic lifestyle… Why is this encouraging? Well, Miss Feltz made a very good point: churches and synagogues and temples have historically provided networks of support, nourishment and education that we’re now lacking. The term that often crops up is ‘social cohesion’. Spirituality performed in private at home hardly has the same beneficial effects on society.
But I think people are becoming increasingly fed-up with the me-me-me consumerist lifestyle. A spiritual hunger will bring them back together in groups again, helping them to rediscover their common – and very often Christian – heritage. The resulting bodies may not call themselves churches, but that’s what they’ll be.”
George Pitcher ends with a remarkable statement: “All in all, Britain is going through one of those periods of religious refreshment that crop up every few decades…”
Source: The Daily Telegraph
BIBLE STUDY: Jeremiah 24:7
Day 15 – PRAISE: God that fewer can mean better.
http://revivalmedia.org/2010/03/14/christianity-more-vital-in-uk-today-15th-mar-2010
