That’s me in the corner…

The BBC News Page this morning has an interesting article about the forthcoming census.  As a Christian, I have to say that I support the basic principle of the British Humanist Association’s Census Campaign (even if I disagree with some of the underlying motives).

It’s about time that we got people to think honestly about their faith.  The Church of England suggested to the BBC that “Christianity is a religion that people identify with, regardless of their level of church-going,” but I am left wondering exactly what this form of Christianity is.

My gut feel is that the religion a lot of people identify with is one which vaguely hopes in a God and an afterlife, and has something to do with ‘being good.’  Identifying oneself as a ‘Christian’ in this case is a way of affirming oneself as a ‘good person.’  I think that most people feel that they are ‘good,’ and for some, ticking the Christian box on the census adds a sense of authenticity.

Personally, I am reminded of one of Jesus’ parables, as recorded by Luke…

In my experience, a lot of people are ignorant of what it really means to be a Christian.  It’s a shame that the Church has not always stood up for itself, and it should be encouraged to do so.  In the meantime, although I support many of the policies the BHA appears to stand against, I remain hopeful that the poster campaign will encourage people to think about faith for themselves, and make an effort to understand what being a Christian is all about.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the purpose of religion

One of the things which featured in the recent debate on this post is the idea that “religion should be about improving oneself”. This has got me thinking; ‘religion’ of course takes many forms, but in the vast majority of cases I disagree with this. To paraphrase MarkC, religion is certainly something which as a by-product might help with “improving oneself”, but however you measure self-improvement it is not the sole point, certainly not in the Judeo-Christian case. In fact, if your sole aim is to “improve yourself”, why waste your time playing around with the trappings of religion? Most religions are based around the idea of faith in God, and that, surely, is the point. Considering Christianity specifically, Jesus said “ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself ” and so ‘religion’ should not be in danger of becoming all about wo
Read more

atheism is a matter of faith, not science: the debate continues

Following the letters page in last Wednesday's Metro and the follow-up comment on this post I’m pleased to see that the beginnings of a debate are brewing, and I intend to use this post to pick up the baton again. Unsurprisingly, I’m going to start by responding to the aforementioned comment. I apologise if my tone was deemed to be a bit sharp, but I have no hesitation in defending the point I was trying to make. According to dictionary.com , faith can be defined as “belief that is not based on proof.” As there is no proof that God does not exist, belief that God does not exist (i.e. atheism) must be faith. Now, I take your point that “as human beings we are always revising and fine tuning what we hold to be true based on the evidence to hand, what we discover and our ability to determine what is probable or improbable.” To digress slightly, that is why switching on the Large Hadron Collider is going to be something of a milestone, as it could either serve to prove a theory or
Read more

och, I'm back

Well, I've been back from Bonnie Scotland for a week now, actually, but I've been a bit busy since then. As my mother discovered when she visited a while back, Scotland is not as wild or backward as one might think ("they have a Marks and Spencer's in Inverness!") and Sam and I had a wonderful few days. We spent the first two days in Edinburgh staying with our great aunt, which was fantastic. I think I've paid tribute to her before in this corner of the blogosphere, and her legendary status was confirmed when it transpired that the random Edinburgh couple who sat next to us on the journey North actually knew her (I kid you not). On arrival she took one look at my Grade 2 'style' and exclaimed "what's with the hair?!", and it was nice to see that all was well. Edinburgh, I have decided, has JP's seal of approval and I did enjoy seeing the sights. We packed quite a lot in, including an exhibition on tartan which turned out to be re
Read more