Can religious beliefs and
values make society better? Most readers of this blog would probably answer yes
– but in fact you would find yourself in a minority in the UK today. Ipsos
Mori, the polling company, asked people in 23 countries worldwide the same question.
The country that had the highest number of people agreeing on the value of
religion was Saudi Arabia (92%) and the lowest was Sweden (19%). In the UK the
number was 29% - putting us at joint 17th position in the table.
I find this a fascinating statistic.
First and foremost it needs to be put side by side with the Census stat (2001)
that says over 70% of the British people are Christian. Now you and I know that
that’s a nonsense figure and has no bearing whatsoever in the real world but
some cling on to it with dear life. It is used persistently by some to justify
pushing for ‘Christian laws in a Christian country’. This stat looks very
differently, however, when stood in the light of other surveys such as this one
by Ipsos Mori, which suggests that less than a third of the population actually
think religious values would change much for the better.
It is a fascinating
statistic for a second reason, also. It tells us something very profound about
what the majority thinks about us, people of faith. It would appear that they
have seen little in us to suggest that our values could bring about an
improvement in society should they be implemented more generally. And if they
can’t see in our everyday living how our values would benefit society as a
whole, how could we ever expect them to listen to the core message that we
believe in?
Sobering doesn’t come into it, does it?
