UNCERTAINTY IN URUGUAY

From The Living Church-

In a quiet corner of South America, far removed from the splendor of Machu Picchu or the excitement of Rio de Janeiro, you can find a small, committed group of Anglicans who deeply love their church. The Anglicans of Uruguay, the small coastal country nestled between Argentina and Brazil, also fear for the future of their church: numbers have continued to decline, the parishioners are growing older, and the outside culture has not expressed taste for church.

While the worldwide nature of the Anglican Communion is often a subject of discussion, Uruguay’s Anglicans may not come to mind frequently to northern Episcopalians and Anglicans. The Iglesia Anglicana del Uruguay made headlines in 2010, when, based on its desire to ordain women to the priesthood, it voted to leave the Province of the Southern Cone and join Brazil. The rest of the province said no. Trouble also erupted after the election of Canadian-born Michael Pollesel as bishop in early 2012; the province’s House of Bishops refused to ratify the election. In 2012, the Anglican Consultative Council declined Uruguay’s request to leave the Southern Cone. However, with the ratification of Pollesel’s election in 2013, and a local option for women’s ordination granted in 2015, Uruguay’s Anglicans have slipped away from the headlines and likely toward the back of Northern minds.

More here-

http://htl.li/YFJE30eNgtf

The rationalist way of death

From The New Humanist (UK)

Rationalists and secularists in the old plain style were very clear about death and dying, or at least they tried to be. “It’s just a nothing,” they would say: “the lights go out and then the curtain falls.” I won’t exist after I die, but then I didn’t exist before I was born, so what’s the big deal? It’s going to happen anyway, so just get over it. We are only forked animals after all, and when the time comes you should give my body to medical science, or burn it and use it as fertiliser; or why not eat it, if you’re hungry, or feed it to the pigs? And for goodness sake, don’t worry about how I died – whether peacefully or in pain – and don’t speculate about my last thoughts, my last sentiments or my last words. Why attach more importance to my dying moments than to any other part of my life? As for the business of seeing the body and saying goodbye, and the trouble and expense of coffins and flowers and funerals: what are they but relics of morbid superstitions that we should have got rid of centuries ago? So no fuss, please: the world belongs to youth and the future, not death and the past: go ahead and have a party if you must, with plenty to drink, but no speeches, nothing maudlin, no tears, nothing that might silence the laughter of children. And I beg you, no memorials of any kind: no stones, no plaques, no shrines, no park benches, no tree-plantings, no dedications: let the memory of who I was die with me.

More here-

https://newhumanist.org.uk/4155/the-rationalist-way-of-death

Losing my religion? Secular Brits now outnumber Christians, but Islam & Hinduism growing

From England-

Britain has reached new heights of secularization, with almost half of Britons now identifying as non-religious, a new study reveals.

According to ‘The “No Religion” Population of Britain’ report by Stephen Bullivant, professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, non-religious people, known as ‘nones’, account for 48.6 percent of Britain’s population.

Although there has been an overall trend towards secularization in Britain, the figures also show record numbers of people from non-Christian faiths, such as Islam and Hinduism.

The number of British people identifying as Christian dropped from 55 percent to 43 percent between 1983 and 2015. By contrast, non-Christian believers such as Muslims and Hindus quadrupled.

“The rise of the non-religious is arguably the story of British religious history over the past half-century or so,” Bullivant said.

More here-

https://www.rt.com/uk/388409-secularization-religion-islam-christians/

Like other old institutions, England’s state religion uses artful adaptation

From The Economist-

THE TIMING may have been a little provocative but some of the proposals are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Britain's National Secular Society, a lobby group whose declared aim is to end religious privilege, chose the Christmas season to issue a wide-ranging report on the public role of faith. It comes with a long list of suggestions for curbing what it regards as the unfair advantages now enjoyed by organisations and office-holders devoted to religion.

The need to affirm secular values is "particularly urgent" today, the report argues, because growing faiths, including Islam, are likely to claim privileges similar to those already enjoyed by the historically powerful, but numerically declining, Church of England. In education, for example, demands for new faith schools are given legitimacy by the fact that the Anglican church is already involved in the teaching of more than 1m English children. 

More here-

http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2016/12/slouching-towards-secularism

Britain ‘has become less Christian’

From The Church Times-

THREE in four people believe that the UK has become less of a Christian country over the past five years, a new poll has suggested.

Seventy-three per cent of those questioned said that they agreed that Britain had lost some part of its Christian heritage and culture since 2010. Just 15 per cent disagreed.

The poll was commissioned by Christian Concern at the end of March. It found that people were more split on whether Britain's Christian heritage still mattered.

Forty-seven per cent said that it continued to bring benefits to the country; 32 per cent (including one fifth of those who identified as Christians) said that the UK's Christian heritage was "largely outdated".

More here-

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/10-april/news/uk/britain-has-become-less-christian

Christians In Britain 'Forced To Hide Their Beliefs', Dominic Grieve Says

From Huffington UK-

Christians in Britain are being forced to hide their beliefs and exclude themselves from public life because of efforts by "an aggressive form of securlarism" to "push faith out of the public sphere," the former attorney general has said.

Dominic Grieve, who lost his post in the July reshuffle, said the "sanitisation" would "lead to people of faith excluding themselves from the public space and being excluded".

Mr Grieve, who is a practising Anglican, said Christianity could be a “powerful force for good” but said that Christians should not be “intimidated” or “excluded”.

More here-

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/24/christians-in-britain-hiding-beliefs_n_5704227.html

School assemblies offer a chance for children to learn that the British values of which we hear so much have their root in the teachings of the Bible

From The Telegraph-

There can be few things in life less harmful than the gentle Christian values learnt by children during school assemblies. It is remarkable, therefore, to hear an Anglican bishop arguing that the collective worship in them should be watered down. The Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev John Pritchard, is the Church of England’s head of education, yet he argues that the traditional assembly should be replaced with non-denominational “spiritual reflection” or silence, which he thinks would better suit the secular age. His explanation that “we would be on much safer ground” if that were the case is likely to make hearts sink all over the land.

Before making such a fundamental change, it is worth asking: is there something wrong which needs to be fixed? For example, are parents unhappy that their children are being exposed in the assembly room to Christian themes such as loving your neighbour and forgiveness? Do they object to regular collective worship “mainly of a broadly Christian character”, which is a legal requirement following the 1944 Education Act?

More here-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10951404/Thoughts-for-the-day.html

God's way smarter than Sinatra's, says Jensen

From Australia-

THE popularity of I Did It My Way as a funeral song shows a ''vulgar egotism'' exists in society, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, says.

In his last presidential speech before retirement, Dr Jensen said society's shift towards ''deadly individualism'' had been driven by material wealth and technological mastery.
The cost of individualism, and the shift to self-love, had consequences for the quality of our community, family life and how we treat death. That was evident in the choice of ''our swan song of this generation'', Frank Sinatra's classic I Did It My Way, Dr Jensen said in his speech, titled ''Last Words''.

''It seems that we do not need each other as once we did. Nor do we need God. To think that a person is so proud of the phrase 'I did it my way' that they would use it as a summary of their life's achievement reveals an astounding moral ineptitude, a sort of vulgar egotism.''

Read more:

 http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/gods-way-smarter-than-sinatras-says-jensen-20121008-279nb.html#ixzz28nbObYXz

Religion for Everyone

From The Wall Street Journal (several weeks ago)

One of the losses that modern society feels most keenly is the loss of a sense of community. We tend to imagine that there once existed a degree of neighborliness that has been replaced by ruthless anonymity, by the pursuit of contact with one another primarily for individualistic ends: for financial gain, social advancement or romantic love.

In attempting to understand what has eroded our sense of community, historians have assigned an important role to the privatization of religious belief that occurred in Europe and the U.S. in the 19th century. They have suggested that we began to disregard our neighbors at around the same time that we ceased to honor our gods as a community.

his raises two questions: How did religion once enhance the spirit of community? More practically, can secular society ever recover that spirit without returning to the theological principles that were entwined with it? I, for one, believe that it is possible to reclaim our sense of community—and that we can do so, moreover, without having to build upon a religious foundation.

Insofar as modern society ever promises us access to a community, it is one centered on the worship of professional success. We sense that we are brushing up against its gates when the first question we are asked at a party is "What do you do?," our answer to which will determine whether we are warmly welcomed or conclusively abandoned.

More here-

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204883304577221603720817864.html

Pope hits out at 'radical secularism'

From USA Today-

Pope Benedict XVI says Roman Catholics in the U.S. need to understand the "grave threats" to their faith posed by what he calls radical secularism in the political and cultural arenas.

He addressed visiting U.S. bishops Thursday and used the same language in warning that attempts are being made to erode their religious freedom.

Benedict did not explicitly mention it, but the bishops have complained their religious freedom is eroding in the face of growing acceptance of gay marriage and attempts to marginalize faith. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has recently formed a committee on protecting religious liberty and hired attorneys and a lobbyist to work on the issue.

The pope said many of the bishops have complained about attempts to deny conscientious objection with regard to cooperation in "intrinsically evil practices." U.S. church leaders have been pressing for a broader religious exception to part of President Obama's health care overhaul that mandates private insurers pay for contraception. The Obama administration has not yet made a decision on the policy and the timing is uncertain.

More here-

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-01-19/catholic-pope-secularism-politics/52682816/1

What have the noughties done for God?

From the BBC

Standing in the little parish church in Thwaite in Suffolk you get a sense of the challenge facing religion in the noughties, or at least the established orthodox religion - Anglican Christianity - that has dominated England for 500 years.

For all of those five centuries the church of St George was the spiritual home of the people of this small settlement, amid fields of wheat and barley on the flat lands of East Anglia.
But last year it was declared redundant, like more than 200 other Anglican churches in England during the noughties.

Public scepticism

Other denominations have closed even more churches and chapels.
The decline in Christian influence goes much further than dwindling Sunday congregations.
A stern secularism has marked public life during the last decade, with legislation protecting minorities such as gay people against discrimination, which some Christians say undermines their freedom to practice - and even preach - a gospel that considers active homosexuality sinful.

A government that famously did not "do God", introduced civil partnerships and abolished the law against blasphemy. It seemed to reflect a new public scepticism about the influence of organized religion.

Producer Stuart Denman and I spoke to the social commentator Simon Jenkins, an atheist who has nevertheless written one of the leading books about the country's best church buildings.
Simon Jenkins says people are ready to question religious beliefs.

"People are now saying 'I want the law to answer to me. I don't want to be told by a hierarchy, by a religious ruler, what I can believe, how I can behave'. Those days are over."

More here-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8190640.stm