Monday, April 28, 2014

The Post Christian Era

I think Merton was on this same page ...


Rowan Williams: 'I think we’re a lot less secular than the most optimistic members of the British Humanist Association would think'. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod


Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, has declared that Britain is no longer a nation of believers and that it has entered a "post-Christian" era.

Entering a debate triggered by David Cameron's declaration before Easter that Britain should be "more confident about our status as a Christian country" and "more evangelical" about faith, Williams said that Britain was "post-Christian", but not "non-Christian".

Speaking in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Williams – now Lord Williams of Oystermouth – said it was important to "pick your way quite carefully" in the debate about the nation's relationship with Christianity.

"If I say that this is a post-Christian nation, that doesn't mean necessarily non-Christian. It means the cultural memory is still quite strongly Christian. And in some ways, the cultural presence is still quite strongly Christian. But it is post-Christian in the sense that habitual practice for most of the population is not taken for granted.

"A Christian nation can sound like a nation of committed believers, and we are not that. Equally, we are not a nation of dedicated secularists. I think we're a lot less secular than the most optimistic members of the British Humanist Association would think."

Professor Jim Al-Khalili, president of the British Humanist Association, was one of more than 50 public figures who signed a letter to the Daily Telegraph criticising Cameron's comments about Britain being a Christian country. They said that, apart from in a "narrow constitutional sense", there was no evidence to justify labelling Britain as a Christian state and that to assert otherwise ran the risk of fostering "alienation and division".

In his interview, when pressed for a yes/no response to the question about whether Britain was a Christian country, Williams replied: "A Christian country as a nation of believers? No. A Christian country in the sense of still being very much saturated by this vision of the world and shaped by it? Yes."

He also said that, in the future, awareness of Christianity might decline. "Given that we have a younger generation who now know less about this legacy ... there may be a further shrinkage of awareness and commitment."

But this could also lead to people discovering Christianity afresh, he said. "The other side is that people then rediscover Christianity with a certain freshness, because it's not 'the boring old stuff that we learnt at school and have come to despise'. I see signs of that, talking to youngsters ... in school visits. There is a curiosity about Christianity."

10 comments:

  1. Please find an essay and website which describes precisely what is wrong with conventional Christian religiosity
    www.dabase.org/up-1-1.htm
    An essay on the doubt-mind that mis-informs every minute fraction of todays humanly created "world" - from a book about non-dual Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta
    www.beezone.com/AdiDa/nirvanasara/chapter1.html
    Plus this radical critique of the much hyped Western mind in both its secular and so called religious forms.
    www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/there_is_a_way_EDIT.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. perhaps one should rediscover themselves

    Blessings _____________________________

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. is that possible to do by yourself? just wondering. seems to me that anything that I try to do by myself is fraught with my own delusions and I end up just down another dead end.

      Delete
  3. Anonymous, Merton was as absorbed as one could be in a religion for over 25 years. What have you read of Mertons? Just curious.

    ReplyDelete
  4. alas Beth 2Cents

    i is not for me to give out any kind of advice
    but i have been trapped by your just wondering
    perhaps you are trying to hard and just discard
    the delusions , even dead ends can be interesting -

    Blessings

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yep. you're right, even trying to be on the "right" road is a wrong road.
      wrong roads are ok too. maybe delusions too.

      Delete
    2. 2Cents ______________________________

      Follow the yellow brick road
      the rainbows are blooming Amen !

      Blessings _________ _____________________

      Delete
    3. "Wrong" roads sometimes lead to "right" roads. In the end, however, there are no "wrong" or "right" roads. If our hearts are open, we will find out that we seek is there all the time. In the words of Merton:

      "We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make it itself known to us."

      Delete