Christmas: Whose Birthday?

Some stats published by Christian Today:

• 12% of adults know the nativity story
• 36% of children do not know whose birthday is being celebrated
• 51% of people now say the birth of Jesus is irrelevant to their Christmas

As a result The Bishop of Manchester has launched a campaign with these posters:

 

At the launch of the campaign, with various Christian groups and churches in Manchester, Bishop David Walker reminded people of the importance of remembering the true reason we celebrate Christmas in an increasingly secular society. The posters will be distributed to hundreds of other sites around the country. The hope is that they will inspire people to check out their local church and find out more about the Christian faith.

Are you surprised at the statistics? Do you think the posters will work? Are people interested or just concerned with themselves? Is Christmas just an excuse to over indulge? Does this campaign touch upon another serious issues of debt?

Biggest Threat to Marriage?

Catholic Memes is a website that uses Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. It is a way of evangelising through a slightly different means, often using images and text which can provoke debate around various Catholic issues.

Yesterday, they posted: "I am not in favour of same-sex marriage, but if Christians want to really support traditional marriage, then they should realise divorce is far and away the biggest threat."

This was accompanied by the above picture, which was later followed by:

 

It provided a lot of debate with many people discussing what the biggest threat to marriage was.

 

What do you think? Should the Catholic Church focus on all these areas and not just same-sex marriage? What do you think has been most damaging to marriage?

The Conscience of Guide Leaders: God or Not?

In June it was announced that Girls Guides would drop an allegiance to God in their oath. The Queen was to remain, but it was decided that to mention God was inappropriate; read more <here>. However a number of Girl Guide groups have close ties to churches and are run by Christians, as such they have decided to keep the 'to God' part and risk being expelled from the Girl Guides.

The promise to “love my God” has been scrapped and replaced with a pledge to “be true to myself” and to “develop my beliefs”. The idea being it allowed all Guides to make the promise with sincerity.

However a group of leaders from Harrogate, North Yorks, have decided that they plan to defy the change and continue to use the old pledge at the groups which meet in their church and are supported by a Christian community.

Adding to the situation, a volunteer leader, Jem Henderson, who is an atheist has accused the group of forcing her to take the old promise, against her conscience.

The Harrogate Guide leaders' response to this was, "No one need join Girlguiding, so removing the reference to God in the interests of inclusivity removes much of what we stand for."

They added: “Girlguiding has God at its core and anyone who has issue with this is free to start their own organisation.”

However the Girl Guides HQ have made it clear that the leaders risk expulsion from the guiding movement.

Do you think the group is right to use the old oath given they are part of, and supported by, a church community? Do you think the oath should include Christian links? The Guides has always had a Christian foundation, is it right to abandon it? Do you think it would be right to expel these Guide leaders?

Read more <here>

Is it REALLY a better Easter Egg?

Christians all over the UK have been  celebrating! A 'REAL' Easter Egg which celebrates the story of Jesus' Resurrection, the absolute focal point of the Christian faith. Not only does it tell the Easter Story inside the box, feature Christian imagery on the outside, but it is also Fair Trade AND makes a donation to charity.

The Bishop of Hereford said that he expected for there to be a "real demand for an egg explaining the religious understanding of Easter on the box" and he encouraged Christian shoppers to "hunt out a Real Easter Egg and complain if they are not being stocked."

Vicky Beeching, has written about her views on this in the Independent, from the context of her experience of living in 'Bible-Belt America'. She says: "The problem is this: creating a choice for people of faith between a 'Christian product' and a 'regular' one merely reinforces the sacred-secular divide in society."

Reflecting on the Bishop of Hereford's comments, she replies that to be saying, ""Hi Waitrose, let me yell into your ear about your lack of Christian branded Easter eggs" seems like an oxymoron if our faith is about love and graciousness towards others."

She feels that it is yet another small brick, which contributes to a big wall, whereby Christians are working towards ghettoising - increasingly living in a separate world from the secular society, as she says, her Christian faith encourages her to "engage with the world in a spirit of love."

However on the flip side to this, Easter is an increasingly secular time of year (see also, Christmas!). Is it not right that Christians should be promoting these eggs and reminding the population that Easter is a time to celebrate, not just over indulge for the sake of it?

What do you think? Should Christians be searching out and questioning supermarkets not selling The Real Easter Egg? Is it creating a sacred-secular divide? Will non-believers be drawn to the eggs?

Read more:

• The Real Easter Egg site
• Vicky Beeching's blog

Officially LESS Religious?

The statistics prove it, the UK is a very different place to 10 years ago. The 2011 census results have started to be released since late last year and now it becoming available in various different formats:

• The number who claimed to be Christian in 2001 was 72% (37.3 million), in 2011 it was 59% (33.2 million).
• Christianity is the only religious group who have decreased in number, but actually increased in Newham, Haringey, Brent, Boston and Lambeth.
• Over 240,000 people highlighted an 'other religion' on their census form - including 176,632 Jedi Knights. (Source)

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Obviously the trends in the UK are similar in many European countries, but in many other parts of the world, religion continues to grow. 

So what are the results? Stories such as these: Air cadets rewrite their oath to remove God from pledge presumably? 

Secularisation is a key feature of UK society, that much is hard to deny. The questions will rest upon how the religious respond? Will this lead to conflict? Will secularisation continue at the same rate? Will the increase in growth from other religions affect the UK data for the 2021 census?

Changes in Upminster, UK:

Read more, including interactive representations: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/dec/11/census-2011-religion-race-education and http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/dec/11/census-england-wales-maps-religion