Posted on 09/28/2013 4:32:01 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
The UK’s official religion is dwindling at a record speed, with the decline of the Church “approaching rock bottom,” experts warn. While Christian congregations age, most British mosques are bringing more and more young people on board.
Public mosque services attract thousands of British Muslims, but when you check out a church, there are hardly a dozen participants at Sunday morning worship, RT’s Polly Boiko reports from London.
“The decline of churches in the UK is long term, now it just happens to be approaching rock bottom. So 95 percent of people don’t attend church on an average Sunday. Christian worship is already the concern of a tiny minority of people,” Andrew Copson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association, told RT.
“I think over time even the weak cultural identity that still seems to be associated with Christianity will banish away, probably all over Europe, not just in the UK,” Copson added.
The British Muslim population has surged dramatically over the past 15 years, increasing by 75 percent. According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics, Muslims have the youngest age profile of the religious groups, with 48 percent (1.3 million) aged under 25.
Dr. Muhammad Abdul Bari, Honorary Chairman of one of the largest mosques in the UK, the East London Mosque, believes that’s because Islam’s family values are “really bonded, and families really try to nurture young people in the folds of Islam.”
He told RT that the Mosque he goes to, founded in 1910 and accommodating 7,000 worshippers for congregational prayers, has a congregation over 50 percent young people, who feel “part of the Mosque establishment” these days.
Contrary to Islam, Christianity showed the oldest age profile among the leading religious groups in 2011. And while the main reason for Christians being economically inactive was retirement, for Muslims economic inactivity was mainly because they were students, or because they were looking after the home or family.
Some argue that unlike Islam, which gives security to people, Christianity isn’t helping young Brits to survive on the violent streets of England.
In fact, the UK had a greater number of murders in 2007 than any other EU country, making it the most violent place in Europe, according to Eurostat. By comparison, there were over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 of population in the UK, and 466 violent crimes per 100,000 in America.
Latest figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimate that in the year ending March 2013 there were 8.6 million crimes in England and Wales.
“The passivity that Christianity promotes is perceived as alien and disconnected to Black youths growing up in often violent and challenging urban environments in Britain today,” the former chairman of Brixton Mosque, Abdul Haqq Baker, wrote in the Guardian. “ ‘Turning the other cheek’ invites potential ridicule and abuse, whereas resilience, strength and self-dignity evokes respect and, in some cases, fear from unwanted attention,” he said.
At some point in his life, Baker, raised as a Roman Catholic like his father, converted to Islam. Turning the other cheek has never been an option since then. The majority of young people he had interviewed converted from Christianity to Islam for similar reasons, he says.
“With my newfound faith, there existed religious guidelines that provided spiritual and behavioral codes of conduct. Role models such as Malcolm X only helped to reinforce the perception that Islam enabled the empowerment of one’s masculinity coupled with righteous and virtuous conduct as a strength, not a weakness,” the founder of Street UK, Strategy to Reach Empower and Educate Teenagers program, explained.
According to academics, the total obedience that Islam demands from its followers has made it more appealing to worshippers and converts from other religions. Islam says no to drinking, smoking, gambling, pornography, helping those who truly follow its laws and values become complete and firm in their decisions.
“Islam says NO – this is no and full stop. And people find a sense of direction in it, because their religion of origin has lost that, and not because it never had it in the first instance,” Dr. Sara Silvestri, Senior Lecturer at City University, told RT.
Demographers say that if current trends continue, Islam could eclipse Christianity as the dominant religion in the UK, in as little as a decade.
The 2011 census puts the Muslim population of the UK at around 5 percent, a total that has been boosted by around 600,000 Muslim immigrants who have arrived in the UK over the past decade. Nearly half of all Muslims were born in the UK.
US-based religious think tank the Pew Forum estimates that if the current trend continues, the Muslim population of the UK would swell to almost double within the next 20 years, totaling 5.5 million. So, by 2030 Britain may have more Muslims than Kuwait. (RT.com)
Work out your faith with fear and trembling is hard. they want a checklist.
There are numerous causes but some are:
1. The feminist notion that when a man pursues a woman, inwardly in fact his motive is something akin to RAPE.
2. An afrocentric, hip-hop notion that marriage is for “suckaz”.
3. The equality of values idea that rendering value judgements (like “hey, that’s a sin, so it’s not OK...”) is brash and outdated — “there are many shades of grey”.
4. The success of the homosexual community in turning The Church into a de-facto refuge for gay people wanting a steady paycheck with little need for technical skills and high contact with the unsuspecting public.
My guess would be stupidity.......
re: decline in church attendance in the uk
we were in St Martin’s in the Fields for several weeks in a row in june, the church was well attended but most of the parishioners appeared to be visitors to london like us.
Well Da!
Satan running rampant in the streets, Islam rises, Christianity slides.
Pope Francis says “create a mess, get out into the streets”. Spread the message of Truth.
It’s war, and we will win, with much suffering(love).
It could be that Jesus has been beat out of the C of E, so there’s no real reason to join it. Non-biblical “Christian” churches are losing people all over the world.
“it has left Christianity so far behind that it is barely recognizable. Women priests. Gay marriages. Abortion.”
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Much the same with the Episcopal church in America.
The gays have taken over.
The Anglican church in America, however, became a home for disenchanted Episcopalians.
I have not been there in over 12 years so I do not know what is happening in the US church.
We left the Episcopal church here in America in 1992 or so, when we figured out that it was Theology by Committee Vote every few years. We crossed the Tiber in 2005 and have never looked back. Amazing, the theology never changes to mirror society. So refreshing.
Christianity, as the Bible lays it out, doesn’t exist in Britain. The pablum and apostasy that parishioners are fed in the UK (and elsewhere) are no competition for the zealotry of Islam. Young people raised on a diet of pot-modern secularism are without bearings, purpose or value. Islam, while harsh and draconian, gives them a framework of meaning and eternal perspective. True Christianity offers the cross and God is given the glory. The contrast and consequences are profound and eternal.
Welcome Home!
Moving flat out towards socialism post world war two has brought this on England. They reap what they have sewn.
thanks Mrs. Don-o. This doesn’t surprise, given the number of non-British ethnic yoots in Britain.
More than a quarter of young adults in Britain ‘do not trust Muslims’ because of terror attacks
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3071806/posts
Not surprised myself.
It is because of the need for structure.
“We left the Episcopal church here in America in 1992”
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I do not remember the year in the 90s that I bailed out, but I had been the senior warden of the oldest Episcopal church, est. 1832, in west Tennessee.
I started limited attendance of the RC church while living in Slovakia.
Here in the Philippines, the RC church rules, with every town having huge churches that are hundreds of years old.
The one that we attend, and where my child was baptized, is as large as any that I have been in.
Bingo.
Structure. Strictness. Boundaries.
Easy.
Deceptively easy.
I always thought that would be a good country to bail out to, if things got unlivable in the USA.
Churches no longer believe in what they say they believe. Truth is truth or all is lost.
I stand on the Word.
“I always thought that would be a good country to bail out to, if things got unlivable in the USA.”
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Well, it is all in attitude. This is a third world country, and one has to adjust to the way of life.
Having moved here for good in Jan. 2009, I have adjusted to the facts of Philippine life.
While this is paradise for a single man, of any age, I almost never see a western woman/couples here. That is not to say that they would not like it here. I think central and NW South America have the new paradise locations for married Americans.
I suggest getting on the Emailing list of InternationaLiving.com and EscapeFromAmerica.com
Feel free to FRmail me with any questions.
Why young Brits turn from Christianity to Islam
72 virgins vs an angel playing a harp..that’s a no brainer..
STICKIN YER CAN UP IN THE AIR 5X A DAY CAN BE FUN?
Islam is Satan’s religion... So it stands to reason that a nation of Godlessness will be attracted to the things of Satan.
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