Coalition Spirituality

Caroline Wyatt has done an impressive job as the BBC's religion correspondent, and has an interesting reflection on Easter observance in the UK

Perhaps Lent is now seen by some as a secular opportunity to cleanse the body from daily abundance, if not the soul.

Yet while many of us may be able to sate our hunger for treats more often than in earlier decades, and the majority in the UK are either avowedly not religious or far less religious than in previous decades, there is a hunger that remains.

It is a hunger for some kind of meaning in life, above and beyond the materialistic.

From the growing popularity of humanism and mindfulness, of non-religious "Sunday services" or "kabbalah", and the enduring popularity of yoga, not to mention the growth of some of the non-established churches, and books such as Alain de Botton's 'Religion for Atheists', many in the west are clearly still searching for the answer to the question "why are we here?", even if they no longer believe the answer lies in organised religion.

The new organisations and individuals offering answers could perhaps be seen as the "independent retailers" in this market for higher meaning, as the former established retailers of the Christian Church in the UK lose worshippers, albeit more gradually than the steep decline of previous decades.

The founder of the 'atheist church' Sunday Assembly recently visited 3 London churches including Hillsong. I was struck by how positive he was about all three. It also sounds like he experienced God in various ways, though he wouldn't put it in those terms. 

Spiritually we have done what the party system is doing. There isn't a binary choice between Christianity and Atheism, though there are spokesmen on both sides who like to present it that way. There are 7, actually more like 77 alternative voices, and many people's spirituality is a coalition: a mixture of afterlife, fate, morality, mysticism, belonging, family traditions and prayer. The challenge for the church is how to encourage people to consider Jesus as a candidate, let alone prime minister. 

Milton Jones on faith, comedy and atheism

I stumbled across this Milton Jones interview whilst looking for something else on Youtube, like you do. A couple of interesting snippets about how he sees his faith and comedians who trash Christianity. I like what he says about the church as a gym at the end of the first clip: not a place to stay in and show off to the other members, but to get you ready to go out and do something.

David Mitchell on Faith, Atheism, & Agnosticism

A lot of sense in a short clip. Ht Cookies Days. Would be fascinating to hear Mitchell and his wife in conversation on this.

Update: written piece by Mitchell on why agnosticism makes more sense than atheism quoted here.

How To Lose Friends and Annoy People

How on earth is this 'outreach'? A billboard addressed to 'all of our atheist friends' (I guessing that totals zero, which makes it a billboard addressed to nobody), telling them they're wrong and directing them to a creationist website. 

This is only 'reaching out to atheists' in order to slap them round the head with a King James Bible. 

Ken Ham, president of AiG and the Creation Museum stated: "In a friendly way, we want to reach out to people in secularized parts of the country and share the hope we have in Christ.

This is 'friendly'? The article says that the billboards have gone up to 'engage' atheists and secularists. I think there's a typo there, it's 'r' not 'g'. It certainly annoys me. 

Does Religion Cause War?

I always figured that people were the major cause of war and conflict, but found this an interesting riposte to the standard atheist 'religion is a major cause of war' thing.

Here's a very different take. Sorry chaps, but it's hard to argue with.

God is Dead?

Black Sabbath have just released a new track which has sent #Godisdead up the top Twitter trending tags. It's a shame you can't include punctuation in a hashtag, as the full title is 'God is Dead?' That question mark makes all the difference.

Having never listened to Black Sabbath in my life (not intentionally or knowingly anyway) it was quite an experience to treat myself to 9 minutes of this. Riddled with biblical and apocalyptic imagery (I'm sure John, author of Revelation, would have been top billing at a 1st century heavy metal convention), the song concludes:

but still the voices in my head 

are telling me that God is dead

the blood pours down the rain turns red

I don’t believe that God is dead.

Sorry atheists and Nietzche fans, nothing to see here. Try this from another Sabbath track, After Forever:

Could it be you're afraid of what your friends might say 
If they knew you believe in God above? 
They should realize before they criticize 
That God is the only way to love 

32 years later, Black Sabbath are still keeping the faith, in their own peculiar way.

PS 'God' has tweeted in response "A better, more shocking title would be 'Ozzy is alive?' "

When Atheists Convert

A bit of original research, I haven't got the data sets but looks pretty accurate.

Sorry if you came here looking for something more profound........

from GraphJam, a while back now, but only just found it!

Religious Atheism

Interesting take on atheism as a cultural/religous phenomenon in the New Scientist. Here's an extract from an interview with scientist and teacher Bernard Beckett, who writes fiction books based on scientific themes

....you chaired an event for Richard Dawkins and, as a result, shifted your views from atheism to agnosticism. Why the conversion?

The event sold out very quickly. The people were huge fans of Dawkins, and being amongst a group of card-carrying atheists was something I'd never experienced before.

I'd probably have called myself an atheist at the time. But normally, that means going your own way and creating your own response.

Instead, it felt more like being in church. Suddenly, there were a whole heap of people who seemed to be responding as one. To me, that reproduced some of the things I disliked about the church I was brought up in, because leaps are made from atheism to other beliefs that you are meant to have as well.

For instance, the belief that there is something negative about the influence of religion, which I don't necessarily think is true. It's a very complex sociological question that would take a lot of research, but suddenly, if you're one of us, you also have to be against religion.

At that point I feel uncomfortable. I also felt uncomfortable with the idea of wanting to convert people; to atheism in this case. It felt evangelical, and that's not my instinct at all.
There was an issue of New Scientist recently, where Marcelo Gleiser wrote about the search for the theory of everything. Gleiser believes that this is a bit of a hangover from religion.
For some people, like Dawkins, science is about beauty and meaning and truth. I'm really uncomfortable with that. I don't think science is about that at all.

Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting, it's a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.

I can't see any great evidence that humans have any ability to access anything other than the material world. Beyond that, who knows, but there's no good evidence that would take me to any particular belief. And that seems to me to me to be a more rigorous view and one I'm much more comfortable with.

This does strike a chord: just as there's a culture within church circles which contains lots of things which have nothing to do with Christianity, there also seems to be a culture around certain popularisers of atheism which goes a long way beyond science.

However, if you think that you're right and that someone who disagrees with you is wrong, then it seems a bit postmodern just to let everyone have their own point of view, and not get a bit 'evangelical'. I'm not a scientist, but if certain things are scientific facts then it's probably a good thing to teach/persuade other people of them. Ok we can be less sure about the existence or otherwise of God, but if you can only argue for a position if it's certain, how on earth do you discover whether or not it's certain in the first place...?

Being 'evangelical' about atheism logically follows from being an atheist: religion must look like a massive and self-indulgent waste of time, resources and effort, and people are much better being persuaded to do something more useful. The same impulse also follows from believing in God, though for different reasons!

But what Beckett hints at is that, as well as being a reasoned position, evangelical (or 'religious'?) atheism has also become a cultural boundary marker for a certain social/intellectual group. Heck, they've even got merchandise. The church, sadly, has reams of examples of what happens when you forget the difference between a cultural boundary marker, and a core belief. I'm even required by church law to wear some of them.

But maybe that's a feature of any ideology or intellectual movement: the beliefs have to take form within a culture, and be expressed, or else it's all purely theoretical. And once they do that, the outward form of the belief is often the first bit of it that outsiders encounter, and it becomes part of the package. Is 'evangelical' atheism bound to develop its own subculture?

Oooops

the Alpha Course site is holding an online poll on God's existence. One or two atheists appear to have got there first. Ht dizzy thinks.

Oh look. A link from the globes most popular atheist website encouraging people to tip the results. Now there's a surprise. If 'Yes' votes were 20% of the total back on Oct 14th, then at a maximum there can only have been 25,000 votes cast when that link was put up. It's now 165k. Make of that what you will. They don't seem to allow repeat voting now on the site, but it's a bit late for that.

Review: Marcus Brigstocke 'God Collar'

Comedian Marcus Brigstocke is now well into his God Collar tour, a 1 man show with 1 main topic. As a preacher who struggles to hold people's attention for 10 minutes, I'm repeatedly struck how, through the medium of comedy, we're happy to listen to ideas and arguments being developed for a couple of hours. As long as there's a regular punchline, audiences can still think. Well over 2 hours of Brigstocke on Sunday night in Yeovil was a good workout for both the mind and the diaphragm.

And Brigstocke has certainly been thinking. "I have a God-shaped hole, but none of the available deities seem to fit." Much of the routine is about reasons not to believe - religious wars ("religion and war are like Ant and Dec, you never see them apart."), misogyny, obsession with rules, and so on. But at the same time Brigstocke is very honest about his desire to believe, and his conviction that there's something more to life than just reason ("sometimes I'd rather be happy than right"). The second half is quite personal, talking about his experience of family, children and bereavement, and the encore turned into a 30 minute Q&A session with the audience, giving Brigstocke the chance to land some precise blows on global warming and Top Gear.

It's an excellent show, if you can cope with a few crude bits. Along the way there is a pop at everyone from IPhone users to Nestle. Brigstocke is nothing if not even handed, from Muslims - "bags are for things, not people, grow up!" - to atheists "you're not cleverer than everybody else", there's something to annoy just about everyone. He points out the weirdness of agnostics who haven't really given the massive question of God any thought, and gives a superb summary of the difference between Protestants and Catholics.

There was plenty of challenging material. Noahs Ark, that famous childrens story, provided the lead in to a discussion of how many people in the Bible get killed by God. As for the rainbow as a reminder to God not to destroy the earth "if there's one thing worse than a murderous deity, it's a scatterbrained murderous deity." This is one Christians have wrestled with for centuries, ever since Marcion carved up the Bible in the second century to leave out the nasty bits.

More positively, Brigstocke spoke about 'Goodbye' (= 'God be with you') being a 'beautiful' thing, and how things like children and death are times when the God-shaped hole is more obvious. Talking of the death of his grandfather, and his best friend, Brigstocke muses on how comforting the idea of an afterlife would be, and then reminds us that this is exactly the same idea behind 9/11. Coincidentally, the comfort of an (imaginary?) afterlife is also at the root of Ricky Gervais's plot in The Invention of Lying.

Lots of other good stuff, I'm tempted to quote lots of the jokes but that would spoil it for anyone who might be tempted to catch him. I'd recommend it. It made me laugh, made me think, and makes me glad that the man behind We Are History is still going. The fact he's prepared to ruthlessly skewer Richard Dawkins probably helped! He'd done his homework on the local area too - which might have something to do with the fact he went to school in Bruton. On the downside, some pretty crude sexual references, and I'm not entirely sure that a bloke who habitually exposed himself to others is anything to admire.

As a Christian, I felt he was pretty fair about Christianity, with one or two exceptions, and most of his jokes about it were ones I wished I'd thought of first ("Christians are more obessed about gays than gays are"). He talked of having Christian friends and plenty of conversations with them, and I could believe it. This is the kind of atheist I'd be happy to have a pint with. Intelligent, fair, honest, questioning.

Ricky Gervais on God etc.

5 minute interview with Ricky Gervais here, connected to his film 'The Invention of Lying'. The film is about a society where no-one can lie (like Liar Liar in negative), and Gervais's character tells the first lie. He goes on to invent a Man in the Sky - the film is an atheist polemic as well as a comedy. Hoping to catch it next week - anyone seen it?

Interesting what he says about God, heaven etc. - "I wish there was a God" "Do you think there is a possibility that there is a God" "No." ....."I think there's a logical, a biological explanation for everything."

That Theos Research on Social Class and Faith/Atheism

Since Church Mouse noted the latest Theos press release on social class and atheism, some other people have been picking up on it. Hold on a sec'.

The full research is here - it's actually a subset of their bigger piece of work on Faith and Darwin earlier this year. The figures on atheism and education are....

(first number is the count, percentage is the proportion of people with that qualification level)
"I believe in God but have not always done so"
Graduate degree or above 43 (10%)
Bachelors degree 14 (7%)
AS/A level 28 (9%)
GCSE or equiv. 30 (6%)
BTEC 2 (6%)
NVQ 9 (7%)
No quals 12 (5%)

"I used to believe in God but no longer do so"
graduate degree or above 34 (8%)
Bachelors degree 25 (12%)
AS/A level 21 (6%)
GCSE or equiv. 37 (8%)
BTEC 1 (3%)
NVQ 14 (11%)
No quals 25 (9%)

here was the Theos conclusion
converts to atheism are disproportionately drawn from groups with no educational qualifications whereas converts to theism are disproportionately drawn from higher socio-economic grades and from people with a masters degree or higher.

now I've got into trouble before on this blog for talking about stats as though I was an expert, and getting it wrong (ish). But I'm not really sure you can draw any firm conclusions from numbers this small. And if you take Bachelors degrees along with graduate degrees, there's actually no difference between the 2 questions at all for the 'most educated'.

Here are the findings on class:

I believe in God now but have not always done so
AB 44 (8%)
C1 49 (8%)
C2 28 (7%)
DE 36 (7%)

I used to believe in God but no longer do so
AB 42 (8%)
C1 49 (8%)
C2 32 (7%)
DE 49 (10%)

The only significant difference here is in the DE grouping, but I'd be reluctant to based headlines and detailed analysis on the results of 13 people. My feeling is that the press release over-eggs the findings, but I'm happy to be corrected by people who know what they're talking about. If your sample size is roughly 400, what's the margin of error?

Sunday Brain Food

An interview in the monthly review with Terry Eagleton, about religion, atheism, culture, and lots of other things. Covers lots of ground, good stuff.

Normblog responds to the Eagleton interview, kicking off a whole discussion about whether religion is basically about believing certain doctrines, or is more 'performative' - based on action (which expressed doctrine). Stumbling and Mumbling argues that perhaps faith is more like getting into a piece of music, and here's Norms response to that.

Couple of posts at Heresy Corner, one on Richard Dawkins at the Libdem conference, the other on Back to Church Sunday and comments by bishops about supermarket queues. (ht Thinking Anglicans). Ann Droid posts a Facebook discussion about blasphemy, offence and Christian values in a secular society.

I am Christian, hear me roar wonders if John Calvin is to blame for capitalism.

Ben Myers notes the 'Jesus, All About Life' advertising campaign in Australia. Not being an Aussie, I've no way of knowing how culturally appropriate this is, or whether it's come across better or worse than Back to Church Sunday, but Ben doesn't seem to be impressed.

Beyond Relevance has a good meditation on the Princess and the Pea: Many church leaders will tell you that they do not have problems with the non-Christians, its the finicky church people that keep them wound in a knot. (spotted this a bit late, but it's still worth a look)

Thinking out Loud takes us behind the scenes at King David's worship committee.

Girlpreacha has a nice version of the 10 Commandments translated for 7-11 year olds.

Steve Borthwick has unearthed a copy of the Daily Mail from AD 33

Putting People off Jesus

Example 1: good day at Greenbelt for atheist reporter thrown by last minute preach.

Example 2: avoiding the evangelists in the Big Apple

though every cloud has a silver lining. (HT Steve Tilley)

Mistaken ideas atheists have about Christians

In the interests of constructive debate, I'm working with Steve Borthwick on some cross-posts to help atheists and Christians understand each other better, so that we can do slightly better than taking the mickey out of each other. We'd both like to address the misconceptions that 'the other side' have about atheists/Christians.

I asked my Twitter crowd for 'things Christians would like atheists to know' and have had the following responses so far:

"we don't check our brains in at the door when we meet together as church"
"The vast majority of us are not biblical literalists or creationists"
"we share as many doubts and as much faith as each other"
"That we're not all brainwashed, right-wing anti-Darwinian idiots. Oh, and some of us used to be militant atheists too."
"we use our brains. We like stuff like science & art too. We're not closed shop we try best to love even those we disagree with."

there's a common thread emerging here....

Please add your own in the comments or via Twitter.

The responses will help me put a post together for Steve's blog, and he'll be posting here to give my (mainly Christian) readership a better handle on atheism. But start here if you can't wait until then, excellent post.

(by sheer coincidence, if you believe in that sort of thing, Slipstream is focusing on the 'new atheism' this month, with various book extracts to read, and an interview with Peter Williams, author of 'A Sceptics Guide to Atheism.

See also this on Maggi Dawn, which is partly the reason I'm doing the cross post. Not all atheists are 'new atheists' and not all Christians are creationists)

It Raineth Upon....

Somerset is a snapshot of English religion at the moment. And it's been raining on all of them:

- The 'atheist summer camp' at Bruton, with 24 children attending. I hadn't picked up that it was an American 'ministry' extending its reach to the UK. Less press coverage is being given to the thousands of children and young people on CPAS Ventures and Falcon camps - if you count Soul Survivor there's roughly 30,000. If 24 is a 'big following' (the Times) then I wait to see what adjectives are used of the Christian camps. To its credit, the Times has a couple of pieces on Christian summer camps too. (note to commentors: no rubbish about 'brainwashing' please, that's what happens in places like North Korea, please don't cheapen the term by applying to these camps, whichever sort it is you don't like).

- a few miles to the West it's New Wine at the moment, and tweeters have noticed the rain and mud, along with lots of other, better things. Thousands are there for worship, teaching and fun, and along with Soul Survivor NW pretty much takes over the Bath and West Showground for the whole of the summer holidays. For a flavour, the evening talks will be live on Hope FM next week (2-8th Aug)

- further along the Mendips, a witch has just been selected for Wookey Hole (local cave/tourist attraction) out of 50,000 applicants. The original 'witch' is a rock formation in the cave, but the Hole trades quite heavily on 'the witch of Wookey Hole' as a marketing snare. Some of the applicants were clearly practicing witches, rather than just folk wanting to dress up in black and cackle. Bizarrely, the job is supposed to give people an idea of what the caves were like in the Dark Ages. Erm, exactly the same, but without spotlights and handrails?

- just up the hill from Wookey Hole, the Big Green Gathering (an outdoor Green Festival, bit like a smaller Glastonbury with less music and more eco stuff) has been cancelled following some shenanigans with the police. It would have had a healing field, sweat lodge and assorted New Age stuff, along with a few of the Christians who've developed forms of prayer and outreach for New Age contexts.

- Back down from the Mendips is Wells Cathedral, which next week will be hosting a memorial service for Harry Patch, the last surviving WW1 veteran who died recently. Over 1000 are expected to attend.

So, what's the rain? Is it God's judgement on the atheists and the witches, or a trial to prove the faith of the Christians? Is it a succesful deluge to wash away some New Age claptrap, or a suitable sign of mourning to mark the passing of a generation?

Or is it just rain?

'Killing God', Youth and Faith

There must be a word for surveys which are commissioned to provide headlines for a newly launched product. The latest one is a survey of 1000 teenagers attitudes to faith, commissioned by Penguin, for the launch (tomorrow) of a new book for teenagers, subtly titled 'Killing God'.

Church Mouse and A Better Hope have commented on the findings, which include:

• 66 per cent of teens do not believe a deity exists
• 50 per cent have never prayed
• 16 per cent have never been to church.
• Teenagers rated family, friends, money, music and even reality TV shows above faith.
• 59 per cent of children believed religion has had a negative influence on the world
• 60 per cent only go to church for a wedding or christening
• Only 30 per cent of teenagers think there is an afterlife…
• … while 10 per cent believe in reincarnation
• 47 per cent said organised religion had no place in the world
• 60 per cent don’t believe Religious Studies should be compulsory in schools
• 91 per cent agreed they should treat others the way they wished to be treated themselves

Other links:
reviews of the book here and here.
Derren Brown blog
Telegraph, including responses from the CofE and British Humanist Association.
this link has some of the author's reasons for writing the book.

I'm saddened, but not massively surprised by the findings. It would be interesting to know what else they didn't think should be compulsory in schools, for comparison. I don't know many teenagers that love dressing up for someone else's party, so if their main exposure to God is attending other people's weddings and baptisms, then you can hardly blame them for not being in the Almighty's fan club. As with the wider population, events laid on by the institution in church buildings aren't that relevant, the best vehicle for the message of Jesus is a community living it out in the real world.

Whether we have the time to do that with all the other items on the agenda is a moot point.

Update: 'inspiration' for the title might have come from Philip Pullman?

Comedians on God 4: Marcus Brigstocke

Probably my favourite of the 4, I don't remotely buy what he says about religions not being interested in truth, but unfortunately that's how some of our more high profile adherents come across.



"withouth the audience to prop it up, both Heat magazine and religious fundamentalism would go away."

However....

There are a lot of easy targets and caricatures in all this comic material. The science and faith issue comes up again and again, without recognising that for a lot of people, scientists included, there is no conflict between them. I also imagine that Brigstocke would want to raise any children of his own with particular values and ways of life, so how he can deny the same things to believing parents doesn't really add up.

I've posted these videos because, though sometimes they're uncomfortable, the best way to engage with atheists is to, um, listen to what they're saying. Sorry if that sounds like egg-sucking class for grandma, but it's quite surprising how often we miss that step out.

Follow the 'comedians on God' tag for the other 3

Comedians on God 3: Eddie Izzard

Izzard does loads of stuff about Christianity, God, and Bible stories in his live shows. Like Gervais, he cites the Genesis account as one of the reasons for him rejecting faith as illogical. However, this is the only clip I can find without lots of swearing....



3 of 4. Follow the Comedians on God tag for the other clips

Comedians on God 2: Ricky Gervais on becoming an atheist

"I wish there was a God, it'd be great"



As it happens Comment is Free is running a series on agnosticism/atheism this week, new article each day.

2 of 4, follow the 'Comedians on God' tag for the others.