Religion in Great Britain
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF RUSSIAN FEDERATION
NORTH-CAUCASIAN FEDERAL UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOLOGY, JOURNALISM AND
CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
THE CHAIR OF ROMANCE AND GERMANIC LINGUISTICS AND CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
TERM PAPER
RELIGION IN GREAT BRITAIN: CONFLICT OF BELIEFS
Performed by: Kseniya Tkachenko
Stavropol, 2012
Contents
Contents…………………………………………………………
Introduction………………………………………………
Chapter I. Christianity as the main religion of Great Britain. Main religious
groups
1.1. Anglicanism……………………………………
1.2. Church of Scotland…………………………………………………10
Chapter 2. Religious pluralism and society in Great Britain
2.1. Multi-faith Britain……………………………………………………13
2.2. Religion and society in modern Britain……………………………..19
Conclusion……………………………………………………
Glossary…………………………………………………………
References……………………………………………………
Introduction
Religion in the United Kingdom has been dominated, for over 1,400 years, by various forms of Christianity. According to some surveys, a majority of citizens still identify with Christianity, although regular church attendance has fallen dramatically since the middle of the 20th century, and immigration and demographic change have contributed to the growth of other faiths.
The Topicality of the work. Nowadays religion plays an important role in British society. Religion is closely connected with the government and economy. Consequently, it influence on different spheres of public life. This impact creates specific features in British national character. Knowledge of religion helps deeply learn mentality, culture and values of the country. All these facts determine the necessity for research of religion in Great Britain.
The object of the represented term paper is religion in Great Britain.
The subject is peculiarity of religions in Great Britain.
The purpose of the given research paper is to identify main religious denominations in Britain, to determine public attitude to religion.
The purpose identifies the main tasks of the work: 1) to describe major religions in Great Britain; 2) to identify minor religions in Britain; 3) to analyze public attitude to religion
Chapter I. Christianity as the main religion of Great Britain. Main religious groups
According to the 2001 UK census, Christianity is the major religion, followed by Islam, Hinduism, Neo-Paganism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism in terms of number of adherents. This, and the relatively large number of individuals with nominal or no religious affiliations has led commentators to variously describe the United Kingdom as a multi-faith, secularised, or post-Christian society.
There are two established or state churches in Britain: the Church of England, or Anglican Church as it is also called, and the Church of Scotland, or 'Kirk'. In spite of the fact that these churches both are Christian they have many differences in structure.
1.1. Anglicanism
What has come to be known as the Lambeth Quadrilateral defines the essential beliefs of Anglicanism. First suggested by an American, William Reed Huntington, in 1870, the Quadrilateral states four elements essential to the Anglican conception of Christian identity—the Bible, the Nicene Creed, baptism and Holy Communion, and the episcopate (William Reed Huntington, 1870). The Lambeth Conference of 1930 further clarified the nature of Anglicanism when it described the Anglican Communion as a fellowship within the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted Dioceses, Provinces or Regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, which uphold and propagate the…faith and order as they are generally set forth in the Book of Common Prayer…; promote within each of their territories a national expression of Christian faith, life and worship; and are bound together not by a central legislative and executive authority, but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the Bishops in conference.
The Anglican Communion thus holds to the faith as expounded by the Scriptures and by the early Church Fathers. It respects the authority of the state but does not submit to it, and it equally respects the freedom of the individual. The Anglican Communion does not seek to evade the challenges of the world or to live a life separate from it. Basing its doctrines on the Bible, the Anglican Communion allows a remarkable latitude of interpretation by both clergy and laity.
The Church of England holds close to the spirit of the Thirty-nine Articles, a doctrinal statement drawn up by the clergy of Canterbury in the mid-16th century and approved by Elizabeth I in 1571. Nevertheless, subscription to the articles is not required of the laity, and adherence by the clergy is expected only in a general way. Other churches or councils of the Anglican Communion take different views of the articles, but none regards them as having, for example, the status of the historic statements of belief set forth in the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed, nor do they accord them the status given to other 16th-century doctrinal statements, such as the Augsburg Confession of the Lutheran churches or the Westminster Confession of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches.
Anglicans accept a threefold order of ministry, consisting of bishops, priests or presbyters, and deacons. Although they hold to the view of succession from the Apostles, they are not committed to any particular theory regarding the conveyance of that ministry. Anglicans attempt to balance the clerical point of view with forms of authority that include the laity. Even bishops are rarely able to function without the advice and consent of other clergy and laity.
Worship is the centre of Anglican life. Anglicans view their tradition as a broad form of public prayer, and they attempt to encompass diverse Christian styles in a traditional context. Although The Book of Common Prayer is the most apparent mark of Anglican identity, it has undergone many revisions and wears national guises. The prayer book of 1662 represents the official version in the Church of England, but a 1928 version is commonly used. In 2000 the church introduced Common Worship, a modernized collection of services and prayers, as an official alternative to the 1662 prayer book.
Outside England a few Anglicans still rely upon the English prayer book of 1662, but most have their own versions, increasingly in languages other than English. All forms hold to the essential, historic elements of the prayer book but incorporate local idioms. In recent years there has been a recovery of ancient liturgical styles and vestments as well as an increased emphasis on the Eucharist as the central act of Christian worship. Experimental rites have appeared in different parts of the Anglican world. Change in Anglican worship has meant increased variety, new roles for the laity, and a tendency toward freedom of expression while retaining the essence of the church’s traditional forms (Vexen Crabtree, 2000).
Often said to be the middle way between Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, the Anglican Communion is comprehensive in matters of doctrine and practice. While asserting the importance of the apostolic succession of bishops and The Book of Common Prayer, it nevertheless allows a considerable degree of flexibility in most doctrinal and liturgical matters. Thus, within the Communion there are several schools of thought and practice, including High Church, Anglo-Catholic, Low Church or Evangelical, and others. The various churches of the Anglican Communion, though autonomous, are bound together by a common heritage and common doctrinal and liturgical concerns, and there has always been a considerable amount of interchange of ecclesiastical personnel.
The Anglican Communion consists of autonomous national churches that are bound together by intangible links best described as ties of loyalty between the see of Canterbury and each other. Although the archbishop of Canterbury is respected throughout the Communion and his words carry great moral authority, he exercises no jurisdiction over any part of the Communion other than the diocese of Canterbury and the Church of England as a whole through the authority vested in synods and convocations. Like a family, the Anglican Communion changes its form and shape, growing larger when new provinces (areas of jurisdiction) are formed and smaller when schemes of union with non-Anglican churches are consummated.
The basic unit of the Anglican Communion is the diocese, a geographic area over which a bishop presides. Dioceses generally form part of a larger unit known as a province, but even these are far from uniform in configuration. A province may, for example, be part of an autonomous church: the Anglican Church of Australia has five provinces and that of Canada four; the Churches of England and Ireland have two each; and the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA), has nine (Grace Davie, 1997). Some provinces, however, include whole countries, such as Japan, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Other provinces cover a number of countries, such as the provinces of Southern Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, the West Indies, and the Southern Cone of America. On occasion, one diocese covers a whole country or even several countries, such as the diocese of Polynesia.
The mother church of the Anglican Communion, the Church of England, has maintained close connections with the state. It has representative bishops in the House of Lords and can properly be called the established church, even though, contrary to much popular opinion, it is in no sense supported financially by the state. The Church of England itself is without question the church of the English people, even though many of the country’s citizens do not so regard it (Monica Furlong, 2000).
The Anglican Communion has never had much worldwide structure—indeed, it has been characterized by its lack of structure. Even meetings of Anglican church leaders have been restricted, except in very recent times, to the Lambeth Conferences and to pan-Anglican congresses, which involve clergy and laity as well as bishops. Only three such meetings were held in the 20th century: in London in 1908, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., in 1954, and in Toronto, Canada, in 1963. The Lambeth Conference of 1968 recommended the formation of the Anglican Consultative Council, an advisory body of about 60 members, including bishops, clergy, and laypersons; its president is the archbishop of Canterbury. The council shares information, coordinates policy, and develops unified mission strategies. Although it lacks binding authority, the council increases the Anglican tendency toward consultation in matters of faith and life. It meets at two- or three-year intervals between Lambeth Conferences. It replaced the Lambeth Consultative Body, whose members were the primates or presiding bishops of the various national churches, and the Advisory Council on Missionary Strategy, which came into being after World War II. The Lambeth Conference of 1978 recommended that the primates of all Anglican provinces meet regularly, and they have since done so in various countries of the Anglican Communion.
The importance of conversation among Anglicans is reflected in the extent of change in some branches of the Anglican Communion. In the second half of the 20th century, most churches of the Anglican world revised their versions of The Book of Common Prayer. In the United States, revision of the Episcopalian prayer book was extensive. The new prayer book of 1979 reflected years of liturgical study, trial drafts, and discussion. It offered unprecedented liturgical options, including the use of modern English liturgies and opportunities for informal worship. The controversy generated by the book abated only slowly.
Equally controversial were the admission of women to the church’s priesthood and the prospect of women bishops. Women had been ordained priests in Hong Kong in 1944 and in 1971. By the mid-1970s, women in various parts of the Anglican world called for the priesthood to be opened to them. The impact was greatest in the United States and Canada, where women eventually constituted a significant percentage of seminary students. American Episcopalians approved women as priests in 1976 after heated debate. While several other Anglican churches took a similar course, the Church of England preferred to study the issue. Opponents of the ordination of women feared the loss of the church’s Catholic heritage, while advocates saw a chance for Anglican leadership in expanding the ministries open to women in the church. After two decades of debate, the Church of England ordained its first women priests in 1994.
The Lambeth Conference of 1988 confronted the possibility that a woman would become a bishop in the United States. That possibility became a reality in 1989, when Barbara C. Harris was ordained a bishop. (She was elected as a suffragan bishop of Massachusetts but did not head a diocese.) In subsequent years, other women were consecrated as bishops. In 1990 New Zealander Penelope Jamieson became the first diocesan bishop, and in 2006 the ECUSA elected Katharine Jefferts Schori as the first woman presiding bishop of any member church of the Anglican Communion. The Church of England voted to consecrate women as bishops in 2008. The election of women as bishops or presiding bishops was welcomed by some members of the Anglican Communion and strongly opposed by others (Ronald Hutton, 1999).
The consecration in 2003 of V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as the bishop of New Hampshire, U.S., posed another challenge to Anglican solidarity. Robinson’s consecration met with strong opposition throughout the church—especially in Africa, where bishops called for the ECUSA to repent and came close to forging a schism over the matter. Like the elevation of women to the bishopric, the consecration of homosexuals to the office of bishop also created an obstacle to improved relations with the Roman Catholic Church. In 2004 the leaders of the Anglican Communion member churches agreed to a moratorium on the ordination as bishops of individuals in same-sex relationships. After the ordination of Mary Glasspool, who was in a same-sex relationship, as a suffragan bishop in the diocese of Los Angeles in 2010, the Anglican Communion imposed sanctions on the ECUSA, barring its members from participating in ecumenical dialogue and in discussions about Anglican doctrine (V. Gene Robinson, 2003).
1.2. Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland is Presbyterian in its structure, governed by a system of local, regional and national 'courts' or councils. 'Presbyterian' government refers to the sharing of authority in the church by an equal number of 'elders' (elected from the membership of the church) and ministers. Both are ordained for their special tasks. The local council is the Kirk Session, consisting of elders and the minister. The regional council is the Presbytery, which looks after all the churches in the area. The national council is known as the General Assembly and convenes each year in Edinburgh. This meeting establishes the laws which govern the church and the priorities for the coming year.
The Assembly represents all presbyteries. In between meetings its work is carried out by several councils covering such areas as mission, education, social services, worship, doctrine and finance.
The most public position in the Church of Scotland is that of Moderator who chairs the General Assembly. It is an honorary (which means unpaid) and elected role held for a year. The Moderator makes local and international visits during the ensuing year, encouraging the church and representing the church to wider society.
The General Assembly used to be known as the 'nearest thing to a Scottish parliament'. Now that the Scottish Parliament is re-established, the Church, along with other churches, keeps in close touch with parliamentarians and contributes to the discussion on the issues of the day.
Unlike the Church of England, the Church of Scotland does not have to take orders from Parliament. Following the Church of Scotland Act of 1921, the Church was given freedom from interference in spiritual matters.
The same Act acknowledged the Church as 'a national church' with a responsibility for providing a parochial ministry to the people throughout the whole country.
The reigning monarch is not seen as head of the Church as in England. Nevertheless, he or she is given a special place in that he or she attends or is represented at each General Assembly.
The Church of Scotland is one of the Reformation churches. It believes that this means that it must continue to reform as new insights are gained about the church and how it can meet the needs of the times.
The main beliefs of the Church of Scotland are found within the Bible, in the New and Old Testaments together. Like all mainstream churches, it accepts the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; that God is experienced as Father, Son (in Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit. It sees Jesus Christ as the only head of the church and teaches that the church is his "body". The Bible has a central place in the life and worship of the Church. It is usually read and preached from at services.
The Church of Scotland does not have a prayer book which has to be followed but does have a book of resources and models for worship. The singing of hymns is an important feature of services and most members possess their own hymn book.
As a 'national' church, the Church of Scotland sees its duty as being to relate to all citizens and institutions, providing opportunities for learning about the Christian faith, and for worship and pastoral care for all. As well as service to local communities and other social programs, it provides a comprehensive structure of institutional care. Anyone is welcome to worship in the Church of Scotland irrespective of belief, age, and nationality. Worship is led by a minister but may also be prepared and led by deacons, 'readers' and elders. Services are held every Sunday (and at other times during the week) and contain periods of preaching, prayer and singing. There are also weekday groups for prayer, study and spiritual exploration.
Along with the reading and preaching of the Word, Holy Communion is central to the worship and life of the Church. Along with Baptism, Communion is seen as a sacrament (Jeremy Paxman, 1998).
Clergy in the Church of Scotland are known as 'Ministers of Word and Sacrament'. A Church of Scotland Communion is open to any member of any branch of the world-wide church. Its own members are generally welcomed to Communion after a ceremony of public declaration of faith and admission but, increasingly, children who are baptised are taking a full part. It has been the custom that Communion is celebrated with great ceremony only infrequently, but now more Communion services are held, especially at special festivals. At one time, people sat round a table to share the bread and the wine. More commonly today, people remain in their pews (with cloths to show that they are 'part of a table') while elders serve them.
Chapter 2. Religious pluralism and society in Great Britain
2.1. Multi-faith Britain
Every year two thousand Jews in Britain head for a University in the middle of the country for Limmud. This is a cross community education experience with hundreds of different workshops on Jewish religion, life and culture which happens to take place over the Christmas holiday period. It feels wonderfully countercultural to be learning Judaism when the rest of the country is enjoying the rather secularised British Christmas. The University obligingly takes down the Christmas trees and the tinsel for us and a corner of England becomes Jerusalem for a week.
Generally though Britain is a multicultural society. The Government's National Curriculum requires children to experience religious education throughout their school career. This begins, even in places where there are hardly any Jews, with children in most elementary schools lighting Hanukkah candles, learning about Diwali, the Hindu festival and Eid, the Muslim end of Ramadan, together with putting on the school Nativity Play telling the birth narrative of Jesus. It means that the majority of British children, even if religion plays very little part in their own family life, end up knowing a little about all of the larger religious groups in the country (Bryan Wilson, 1999).
The only place where this does not necessarily happen is in the more right-wing schools of the burgeoning faith school sector. There are thousands of faith schools which are wholly supported by the British government so that they are fully within the state education sector. The vast majority of state supported faith schools are Christian, controlled by the Church or England or the Roman Catholic Church. There are also more than thirty Jewish state schools, and a small number of recently established Muslim, Sikh and Hindu schools. They are not required to teach about other religious communities though some do.
The national narrative though the experience of children, is that religion is important and that every religious option is of equal value, however in state schools which are not specifically of another religion school assemblies are meant to be mainly Christian in character.
In the mainstream of British life people are encouraged to be religiously pluralistic. Local Councils and the national government promote and fund inter-religious cohesion at all kinds of levels, from multicultural festivals to local multi-faith fora to talk about local issues with a faith dimension such as facilities in new housing estates. Organisations like the Council of Christians and Jews, the Three Faiths Forum, the Scriptural Reasoning Society and the Co-Existence Trust work to bring faith groups together in dialogue. However, they do not count among their activists evangelistic Christians, ultra-Orthodox Jews and Islamist Muslims. There is almost in Britain, a coalition of liberal religion stretching across the Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities.
Religious pluralism's mainstream place in Britain is often demonstrated at times of national celebration and commemoration. At the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations and the President Rabbi of the Movement for Reform Judaism sat with Christian faith leaders in the front of Westminster Abbey. Each year National Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27th will bring people from a variety of faith communities together to mark and abhor genocide in their past. The Jewish community's national Mitzvah Day and its Hindu counterpart national Sewa Day brings faith groups on the streets together to volunteer help to the wider community.
Britain is a comfortable place to come into contact with faiths other than your own. The contact is mostly in the name of community cohesion and does not often get far beneath the surface of just enjoying each other less challenging rituals or volunteering together for a shared community need.
Britain is a multi-faith society in which everyone has the right to religious freedom. Although Britain Christian society, people are usually very tolerant towards the faiths of others and those who have no religious beliefs.
Apart from Christianity, there are at least five other religions with a substantial number of adherents in Britain. These are usually composed of either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.
The oldest is the Jewish community, which now numbers barely 300,000, of whom fewer than half ever attend synagogue and only 80,000 are actual synagogue members. Today the Jewish community in Britain is ageing and shrinking, on account of assimilation and a relatively low birth rate, and is in rapid decline. A survey in 1996 revealed that 44 per cent of Jewish men under the age of 40 are married to or are living with a non-Jewish partner (John Wolffe, 1998).
Between 20 and 25 per cent of Jewish women in this age range also marry outside the community. Even so, it is the second largest Jewish community in Western Europe. Two-thirds of the community live in London, with another 9,000 or so in Manchester and Leeds respectively, and another 6,000 in Brighton.
Jews returned to England in the seventeenth century, after their divvious expulsion in the thirteenth century. At first those who returned, were Sephardic, that is, originally from Spain and Portugal, but during the last years of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century a more substantial number of Ashkenazi (Germanic and East European) Jews, fleeing persecution, arrived. Ashkenazis form 70 per cent of British Jews.
As a result of these two separate origins, and as
a result of the growth of Progressive Judaism (the Reform and Liberal
branches), the Jews are divided into different religious groups. The
largest group, approximately 120,000, are Orthodox and belong to the
United Synagogues. They look to the Chief Rabbi of Great
Britain for spiritual leadership. A much smaller number of Sephardic Orthodox still recognize a different leader, the Haham. The two Progressive groups, the Reform and Liberal Jews, which roughly equate with the broad church and modernists of the Anglican Church, have no acknowledged single leader, but they do have a number of rabbis who command a following among those who admire their wisdom. The Progressives account for 17 per cent of the entire community. Thirty-seven per cent of Jews claim no religious affiliation at all.
There is also a Board of Deputies of British Jews, the lay redivsentation of Anglo-Jewry since 1760, to which 250 synagogues and organizations in Britain elect redivsentatives. It speaks on behalf of British Jewry on a wide variety of matters, but its degree of genuine redivsentation is qualified in two ways: fewer than half of Britain's Jews belong to the electing synagogues and organizations; and none of the community's more eminent members belongs to the Board. In fact many leading members of the community are often uneasy with the position the Board takes on issues (Charlotte Hardman, 1999).
As in the Christian church, the fundamentalist part of Jewry seems to grow compared with other groups, especially among the young, and causes similar discomfort for those who do not share its certainties and legal observances. The most obvious concentrations of orthodox Jews, who are distinguishable by their dress, are in the north London suburbs of Golders Green and Stamford Hill.
There are also more recently established religious groups: Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Muslims. The most important of these, not only on account of its size, is the Muslim community. There are 1.5 million Muslims and over 1,000 mosques and prayer centres, of which the most important (in all Western Europe) is the London Central Mosque at Regent's Park. There are probably 900,000 Muslims who regularly attend these mosques. Most are of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, but there are also an increasing number of British converts. Apart from
London, there are sizeable Muslim communities in Liverpool, Manchester, Leicester, Birmingham, Bradford, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Islam gives coherence and a sense of community to people of different ethnic origins. It also gives Britain informal lines of communication with several Muslim countries.
During the past quarter century, since large numbers of Muslims arrived in Britain, there has been a tension between those Muslims who sought an accommodation between Islam and Western secular society, one might call them modernists, and those who have wanted to uphold traditional Islamic values even when these directly conflicted with secular social values. The tension has been made worse by the racism Asian Muslims feel in British society. Until 1989 it might be said that those Muslims who were relatively successful economically and socially were the divailing example of how Muslims could live successfully in the West. However, in 1988 many Muslims were deeply offended by the publication of Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses, which they considered to be blasphemous.
Many Muslims were offended by the reaction they saw from the rest of society and from government. The blasphemy law, mainly on account of its age, only applied to Christianity, so they were unable to prosecute Rushdie. But perhaps what they found most offensive was the patronising attitude of non-Muslim liberals, who lectured them on the values of a democratic society in a way which was dismissive of Muslim identity and feeling. Muslims found themselves in conflict with those who had divviously been perceived as their friends, those of the secular left who had championed immigrant rights and most strongly opposed racism.
After the Rushdie affair other external factors also stimulated a Muslim revival, including the Gulf War (1991) and also the suffering of Bosnian Muslims (1994-1996).
Within the British Muslim community as a whole, which like Jewish and Christian communities, is divided into different sects and traditions, modernists lost influence to traditionalist leaders. Mosque attendance increased and religious observance became an outward symbol of Muslim assertion. In 1985 only about 20 per cent of Muslims were actually religiously observant. By 1995 that figure had risen to about 50 per cent.
Yet the Islam of young British Muslims is different from that of their parents. It is less grounded in the culture of the countries from which their parents came. Young Muslims come from several different ethnic origins but they all share their religion and their British culture and education.
This is leading to a 'Britain-specific' form of Islam. As a result, in the words of one religious affairs journalist, 'For every child who drifts into the moral relativism of contemporary Western values, another returns home with a belief in a revitalised form of Islam. Many parents find the second just as difficult to come to terms with as the first.'
British Islam is sufficiently vibrant that a Muslim paper, Q-News, now appears regularly. One of its editors is a woman, Fozia Bora, itself a statement on the relatively liberal culture of British Islam. Indeed, a new sense of self-confidence emerged out of the initial feeling of alienation over The Satanic Verses. It is partly self-assertion against anti-Islamic divjudice, but it is also the comfort felt in a relatively tolerant environment. Fozia Bora believes that 'Britain is a good place be Muslim. There is a tradition of religious and intellectual freedom.' In the opinion of Dr Zaki Badawi, one of Britain's foremost Muslims, 'Britain is the best place in the world to be a Muslim – most Muslim states are tyrannies and things are harder elsewhere in Europe.' (Fozia Bora, 1998)
Anti-Islamic feeling, however, remains a factor in racial tensions in Britain. In the words of the Runnymede Trust, which concerns itself with race relations, 'Islamophobic discourse, sometimes blatant but frequently subtle and coded, is part of the fabric of everyday life in modern Britain, in much the same way that anti-Semitic discourse was taken for granted earlier this century.'
There are other areas of Muslim frustration. Some want Muslim family law to be recognized within British law, a measure which would allow Muslim communities in Britain to follow an entirely separate lifestyle governed by their own laws. Others want state-supported Muslim schools, where children, particularly girls, may receive a specifically Muslim education in a stricter moral atmosphere than exists in secular state schools. The state already provides such funding for Anglican, Catholic and Jewish schools within the state system. It was only in 1997 that the first Muslim school obtained financial support from the state (Gilbert Currie, 2002).
Smaller communities include about 450,000 Sikhs who mainly originate in the Indian Punjab. They live mainly in London, Manchester and Birmingham. There are over 200 gurdwaras or temples in Britain. There are about 320,000 Hindus living mainly in Leicester, London and Manchester. There are about 150 mandirs in which Hindus worship, the largest, in Neasden, north-west London, is also the largest outside India.
2.2. Religion and society in modern Britain
With over 170 distinct religions counted in the 2001 Census, the religious make-up of the UK is diverse, complex, multicultural and surprising. Less than half of the British people believe in a God and the latest British Social Attitudes results saw over 50% say they're not religious. Yet for some reason about 72% told the 2001 census that they were Christian. 66% of the population have no actual connection to any religion or church, despite what they tend to write down on official forms. Between 1979 and 2005, half of all Christians stopped going to church on a Sunday. Religion in Britain has suffered an immense decline since the 1950s. Four in five britons want religion to be private, not public, and have no place in politics. All indicators show a continued secularization of British society in line with other European countries such as France.
The primary social research tool in Britain is the British Social Attitudes Survey, an annual mini-census. The latest published results are for 2009 and show that 'No religion' was stated by 50.7% of the UK population. A few years before that, comprehensive professional research in 2006 by Tearfund found that two thirds (66% - 32.2 million people) in the UK have no connection with any religion or church. In 2003 August, only 18% of the British public said they were a practicing member of an organized religion, 25% they were members of a world religion. According to these results, one fifth of self-declared members would also not describe themselves as practicing that religion. Presumably the others remain members for traditional reasons or due to social pressure (Steve Bruce, 2006).
Tearfund (2007) on 2006 research
Belong to a religion 74% 71% 55% 37% 31%
and attend services
Does not belong 3% 5% 26% 31% 38%
Those who 'do not belong' have first shed the practical and theoretical underpinnings of their religion, before finally overcoming social pressure to state 'your' religion. There are many who are not at the later stages of this secularisation process, so they still say they 'belong', although they are in the process of forgetting and discarding the physical and mental aspects of what they say they belong to. Sociologists know that if they count heads and ask about beliefs, more people say they belong to a religion, and say they have the beliefs of a particular religion, than actually do. People over-state their own religiosity; that's why statistics from polls will often give higher percentages of 'believers' than will head-counting and deeper investigations.
Currently, regular church attendance in the United Kingdom stands at 6% of the population with the average age of the attendee being 51. This shows a decline in church attendance since 1980 when regular attendance stood at 11% with an average age of 37. It is predicted that by 2020, attendance will be around 4% with an average age of 56. This decline in church attendance has forced many churches to close down across the United Kingdom with the Church Of England alone being forced to close 1,500 churches between 1969 and 2002. Their fates include dereliction, demolishion and residential conversion (Steve Bruce, 2005).
Though the main political parties are secular, the formation of the Labour Party was influenced by Christian socialism and by leaders from a nonconformist background, such as Keir Hardie. On the other hand, the Church of England has sometimes been nicknamed "the Conservative Party at prayer".
Some minor parties are explicitly 'religious' in ideology: two 'Christian' parties - the Christian Party and the Christian Peoples Alliance, fielded joint candidates at the 2009 European Parliament elections and increased their share of the vote to come eighth, with 249,493 votes (1.6 percent of total votes cast), and in London, where the CPA had three councillors, the Christian parties picked up 51,336 votes (2.9 percent of the vote), up slightly from the 45,038 gained in 2004.
The Church of England is represented in the UK Parliament by 26 bishops (the Lords Spiritual) and the British monarch is a member of the church (required under Article 2 of the Treaty of Union) as well as its Supreme Governor. The Lords Spiritual have seats in the House of Lords and debate government policies affecting the whole of the United Kingdom. The Church of England also has the right to draft legislative measures (related to religious administration) through the General Synod that can then be passed into law by Parliament. The Prime Minister, regardless of personal beliefs, plays a key role in the appointment of Church of England bishops, although in July 2007 Gordon Brown proposed reforms of the Prime Minister's ability to affect Church of England appointments.
Religious Education and Collective Worship are compulsory in many state schools in England and Wales by virtue of clauses 69 and 70 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. Clause 71 of the act gives parents the right to withdraw their children from Religious Education and Collective Worship and parents should be informed of their right in accordance with guidelines published by the Department for Education; "a school should ensure parents or carers are informed of this right". The content of the religious education is decided locally by the Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education.
In England and Wales, a significant number of state funded schools are faith schools with the vast majority Christian though there are also Jewish, Muslim and Sikh faith schools. Faith schools follow the same national curriculum as state schools, though with the added ethos of the host religion. Until 1944 there was no requirement for state schools to provide religious education or worship, although most did so. The Education Act 1944 introduced a requirement for a daily act of collective worship and for religious education but did not define what was allowable under these terms. The act contained provisions to allow parents to withdraw their children from these activities and for teachers to refuse to participate. The Education Reform Act 1988 introduced a further requirement that the majority of collective worship be "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character" (Paul Avis, 2004).
In Scotland, the majority of schools are non-denominational, but separate Roman Catholic schools, with an element of control by the Roman Catholic Church, are provided within the state system. The Education (Scotland) Act 1980 imposes a statutory duty on all local authorities to provide religious education and religious observance in Scottish schools. These are currently defined by the Scottish Government's Curriculum for Excellence (2005).
Northern Ireland has a highly segregated education system. 95% of pupils attend either maintained (Catholic) schools or controlled schools, which are open to children of all faiths and none, though in practice most pupils are from the Protestant community.
Prisoners are given religious freedom and privileges while in prison. This includes access to a chaplain or religious advisor, authorized religious reading materials, ability to change faith, as well as other privileges. Several faith-based outreach programs that provide faith promoting guidance and counceling.
Every three months, the Ministry of Justice collects data, including religious affiliation, of UK prisoners and is published as the Offender Management Caseload Statistics. This data is then compiled in to reports and published in the House of Commons library. A comparison with the major surveys of UK adult individuals, the British Social Attitudes and the European Social Surveys. Religious representation is greater for prisoners serving a sentence of at least four years than for those of shorter terms.
Methodology for obtaining data is substantially different between the British Social Attitudes Survey and the Ministry of Justice reports. Prisoners provide the Ministry of Justice their religious preference/beliefs in order to receive respective religious privileges.
Conclusion
Religion in the United Kingdom has been dominated for over 1400 years by various forms of Christianity. According to some surveys, a majority of citizens still identify with Christianity, despite the fall of regular church attendance.
There are two major and state religions in Britain: the Church of England or Anglican Church and the Church of Scotland or 'Kirk'. These are Protestant Churches. The essential beliefs of Anglican church is defined by the Lambeth Quadrilateral which states four elements: the Bible, the Nicene Creed, baptism and Holy Communion. The Church of England has maintained close connections with the state and has representative bishops in the House of Lords.
The Church of Scotland accepts the doctrine of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It also has close touch with the Parlament but unlike the Church of England does not have to take orders from the gavernment. The Church was given freedom from interference in spiritual matters.
Besides these two Churches there are many minor religions in Great Britain. There are at least five of them with a substantial number of adherents in Britain. These are usually composed of either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. One is Jewish that is divided into religious groups. The largest groups are Orthodox, Sephardic Orthodox and Progressive (the Reform and Liberal branches). Others are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Muslims that are divided into different sects and traditions - modernists and traditionalists.
Britain is a multi-faith society in which everyone has the right to religious freedom. Although Britain Christian society, people are usually very tolerant towards the faiths of others and those who have no religious beliefs.
Glossary
Anglicanism – a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures.
Barbara Clementine Harris (born 12 June 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) – the first woman ordained a bishop in the Anglican Communion.
Buddhism – a religion indigenous to the Indian subcontinent that encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs, and practices largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, who is commonly known as the Buddha.
ECUSA (also officially known as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America) – a mainline Anglican Christian denomination found mainly in the United States
Hinduism – the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent, and one of its indigenous religions.
Holy Communion – a Christian sacrament or ordin
Islam –
a monotheistic and Abrahamic r
James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) – a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007until 2010.
James Keir Hardie, Sr. (15
August 1856 – 26 September 1915) – a Scottish socialistand labour
Judaism – the religion, philosophy and way of life of the Jewish people.
Mary Douglas Glasspool (born February 23, 1954) – a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America.
Neo-paganism – an umbrella term referring to a variety of contemporary religious movements, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various historical pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe.
Protestantism – one of the major divisions within Christianity.
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