НАУЧНАЯ БИБЛИОТЕКА - РЕФЕРАТЫ - Religion in Britain

Religion in Britain

Реферат по лингвострановедению

Religion in Britain

Выполнил: студентка IV курса

Пискарева Т.В.

Проверил: к.п.н., Кулагина

С.Г.

Plan

pp.

Introduction 3

The Church of England 4-10

The Other Christian Churches 10-13

Other Religions 13-18

Conclusion 19

Literature 20

Introduction

Barely 16 per cent of the adult population of Britain belongs to one

of the Christian churches, and this proportion continues to decline. Yet

the regional variation is revealing. In England only 12 per cent of the

adult population are members of a church. The further one travels from

London, however, the greater the attendance: in Wales 22 per cent, in

Scotland 36 per cent and in Northern Ireland no fewer than 75 per cent.

Today there is complete freedom of practice, regardless of religion or

sect. However, until the mid-nineteenth century, those who did not belong

to the Church of England, the official 'established' or state church, were

barred from some public offices. The established church still plays a

powerful role in national life, in spite of the relatively few people who

are active members of it.

The Church of England

There are two established or state churches in Britain: the Church of

England, or Anglican Church as it is also called, and the Church of

Scotland, or 'Kirk'. In 1533 the English king, Henry VIII, broke away from

Rome and declared himself head of the Church in England. His reason was

political: the Pope's refusal to allow him to divorce his wife, who had

failed to produce a son. Apart from this administrative break, the Church

at first remained more Catholic than Protestant. However, during the next

two centuries when religion was a vital political issue in Europe, the

Church of England became more Protestant in belief as well as organization.

Ever since 1534 the monarch has been Supreme Governor of the Church of

England. No one may take the throne who is not a member of the Church of

England. For any Protestant this would be unlikely to be a problem, since

the Church of England already includes a wide variety of Protestant belief.

However, if the monarch or the next in line to the throne decided to marry

a Roman Catholic or a divorcee, this might cause a constitutional crisis.

It has always been understood that if such a marriage went ahead, the

monarch or heir would have to give up their claim to the throne, and to

being Supreme Governor of the Church. In 1936 Edward VIII, who had only

just succeeded to the throne, abdicated in order to marry a divorcee. Today

it is more likely that the monarch or heir would marry the person he or she

loved, and would renounce the title of Supreme Governor of the Church. It

might pose a constitutional crisis, but is less likely to be one for the

Church. The senior Anglican cleric, the Archbishop of Canterbury, crowns

the monarch but if the monarch renounced Supreme Governorship of the

Church, this ceremony might be abandoned or radically changed.

As Head of the Church of England, the monarch appoints the

archbishops, bishops and deans of the Church, on the recommendation of the

Prime Minister, who might well not be an Anglican. The Prime Minister makes

a recommendation from two nominee candidates, put forward by a special

Crown Appointments Commission (composed of bishops, clergy and lay members

of the Church). All Anglican clergy must take an oath of allegiance to the

Crown, a difficult proposition for any priest who is a republican at heart.

Thus Church and Crown in England are closely entwined, with mutual bonds of

responsibility.

The most senior spiritual leaders of the Church of England are the

Archbishop of Canterbury, who is 'Primate of All England', and the

Archbishop of York, who is 'Primate of England'. They are head of the two

ecclesiastical provinces of England, Canterbury and York. Both provinces

are divided into dioceses, each under a bishop. Canterbury is the larger

province, containing 30 dioceses, while York contains only 14. The choice

of Canterbury and York is historical. Canterbury is the site of where St

Augustine reestablished the Christian church in England at the end of the

sixth century. The see of York was founded in the early seventh century by

an envoy of St Augustine to this capital of Northumbria. (The Celtic

churches which survived in Ireland and Scotland were well established two

centuries earlier.)

The senior bishops are those of London, Durham and Winchester, but

there is no guarantee of promotion according to seniority. George Carey,

for example, the present (103rd) Archbishop, was previously Bishop of Bath

and Wells, no longer considered a senior bishopric. Because of the growth

in population, some bishops are assisted by deputies assigned to a

geographical part of the diocese. These are 'suffragan' bishops. Each

diocese is composed of parishes, the basic unit of the Church's ministry.

Each parish has a vicar, or sometimes a team of vicars, if it includes more

than one church.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is head of the Anglican 'Communion'. This

Communion is composed of the various independent churches which have grown

out of the Church of England in various parts of the world. In fact England

accounts for only two of the 28 provinces of the Anglican Church. In

theory, about 40 per cent of the English might say they were members of the

Church of England. Far fewer ever actually attend church and only one

million regularly attend, a drop of over 13 per cent since 1988. It is also

a small proportion of the 70 million active Anglicans worldwide. More

Nigerians, for example, than English are regular attenders of the Anglican

Church. Within the worldwide Anglican Communion are some famous people, for

example Desmond Tutu, head of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation

Commission and once Archbishop of Cape Town. It is said that most of the

'ruling establishment' of Washington belong to the Episcopal Church, the

Anglican Church of the United States. The Scottish Episcopal Church, the

Church in Wales and the Church of Ireland are members of the Anglican

Communion but are not 'established' churches and have memberships of not

more than about 100,000 each.

Once in every 10 years the Archbishop of Canterbury invites all the

bishops of the Anglican Communion to a conference at Lambeth in London to

exchange views and debate issues of concern. Rather like the Commonwealth

Conference, the Lambeth Conference provides an opportunity for the sister

churches from every continent to meet and share their different concerns

and perspectives.

The Church of England is frequently considered to be a 'broad' church

because it includes a wide variety of belief and practice. Traditionally

there have been two poles in membership, the Evangelicals and the Anglo-

Catholics. The Evangelicals, who have become proportionately stronger in

recent years, give greater emphasis to basing all faith and practice on the

Bible. There are over one million British evangelicals of different

Protestant churches belonging to an umbrella group, the Evangelical

Alliance. The Anglo-Catholics give greater weight to Church tradition and

Catholic practices, and do not feel the same level of disagreement as many

Evangelicals concerning the teaching and practices of the Roman Catholic

Church. There is an uneasy relationship between the two wings of the

Church, which sometimes breaks into open hostility.

Yet most Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics are united in their deeper

dislike of the liberal theologians within the Church of England. These have

challenged the literal validity of several beliefs of the Church, and have

argued that reinterpretation must constantly take place, partly as a result

of recent biblical scholarship, but also because they maintain that

theological understanding changes as society itself changes and develops

over the years. In that sense, one can divide the Church of England in a

different way, into conservatives and modernists. It is estimated that 80

per cent of the Church of England are of evangelical persuasion, and the

balance is divided almost equally between Anglo-Catholics and liberals.

However, a large number of church-goers either feel no particular

loyalty to any of these traditions, or feel more comfortable somewhere

between these poles. Since most bishops are theologians, the liberals are

more strongly represented among the bishops than sheer numbers in church

membership justifies.

The Church of England is above all things a church of compromise. It

is, in the words of one journalist, 'a Church where there has traditionally

been space on the pew for heretics and unbelievers, doubters and sceptics'.

It takes a long view and distrusts zealous theological or ideological

certainty. It prefers to live with disagreements of belief rather than

apply authoritarian decisions. It fudges issues where it can, to keep its

broad body of believers together. Most of its members are happy with the

arrangement. In that sense the Church of England is profoundly typical of

the English character. It distrusts the rigid logic of a particular

tradition of theology and prefers the illogical but practical atmosphere of

'live and let live' within a broader church climate. Consequently there is

always a concern to ensure that all wings of the Church are represented

among the bishops, and that those appointed as archbishops shall be neither

too controversial in their theology, nor too committed to one particular

wing of the Church as to be unacceptable to others.

The Church is governed by its bishops. In that sense it is a

hierarchical organization. Nevertheless its regulating and legislative body

is the General Synod, made up of three 'Houses', the House of Bishops (53

diocesan and suffragan bishops), the House of Clergy (259 representatives

of the clergy) and the House of Laity (258 representatives of lay members

of the Church). The General Synod meets twice yearly with two functions:

(1) to consider matters concerning the Church of England, and to take any

necessary steps for its effective operation; (2) to consider and express

its opinion on any matters of religious or public interest. In order to

reach agreement on any issue, General Synod requires a majority in each

House, in the words of one religious commentator, 'a clumsy and largely

ineffective cross between a parliament and a democracy. It is a typical

Anglican compromise.'

This has been particularly true in the two areas of greatest

controversy within the Church since the mid-1980s: the ordination of women

and of homosexuals (and the acceptance of homosexuals already in the

priesthood). In both cases the modernists are ranged against the

conservatives. After a long and often contentious debate, the Church

finally accepted the ordination of women in 1992, and the first were

ordained in 1994, long after the practice had been adopted in other parts

of the Anglican Communion. Some 200 clergy, fewer than expected, chose to

leave the Church of England rather than accept women priests. They were

almost all Anglo-Catholic. While great passion was aroused among some

clergy and lay people on this issue, the large majority of church-goers did

not feel strongly enough, either way, to force a decision. It is unlikely

that any woman will become a bishop for some years. Having accepted women

priests, a fresh controversy arose over the question of homosexuality with,

if anything, even greater vehemence. This time the contest is primarily

between modernists and evangelicals, but the essence of the debate is the

same: biblical and traditional values versus contemporary social ones. The

director general of the Evangelical Alliance claims that 'a vast number of

churches stand by 2,000 years of biblical analysis which concludes that

homosexual sex is outside the will and purpose of God'. The modernists

argue that it is ludicrous to pick one out of many culturally specific

prohibitions in the Old Testament, and that a judgmental posture excludes

Christians who quite sincerely have a different sexual orientation and

perspective from heterosexuals. Modernists say the church should listen and

learn from them. It is a controversy likely to persist well into the twenty-

first century.

The Church of England was traditionally identified with the ruling

establishment and with authority, but it has been distancing itself over

the past 25 years or so, and may eventually disengage from the state.

'Disestablishment', as this is known, becomes a topic for discussion each

time the Church and state clash over some issue. Since 1979 the Church has

been ready to criticize aspects of official social policy.

Nevertheless, the Church of England remains overwhelmingly

conventional and middle class in its social composition, having been mainly

middle and upper class in character since the Industrial Revolution. Most

working-class people in England and Wales who are religious belong to the

nonconformist or 'Free' Churches, while others have joined the Catholic

Church in the past 140 years.

Because of its position, the Anglican Church has inherited a great

legacy of ancient cathedrals and parish churches. It is caught between the

value of these magnificent buildings as places of worship, and the enormous

cost of their upkeep. The state provides about 10 per cent of the cost of

maintaining the fabric of historic churches.

The other Christian churches

The Free or nonconformist churches are distinguished by having no

bishops, or 'episcopacy', and they all admit both women and men to their

ministry. The main ones today are: the Methodist Union (400,000 full adult

members); the Baptists (150,000); the United Reformed Church (110,000) and

the Salvation Army (50,000). These all tend towards strong evangelicalism.

In the case of the Methodists and Baptists, there are also smaller splinter

groups. In addition there are a considerable number of smaller sects. Most

of these churches are, like the Anglicans, in numerical decline.

In Scotland the Church, or Kirk, vehemently rejected the idea of

bishops, following a more Calvinist Protestant tradition. Its churches are

plain. There is no altar, only a table, and the emphasis is on the pulpit,

where the Gospel is preached. The Kirk is more democratic than the Anglican

Church. Although each kirk is assigned a minister, it also elects its own

'elders'. The minister and one of these elders represent the kirk at the

regional presbytery. Each of the 46 presbyteries of Scotland elects two

commissioners to represent it at the principal governing body of the

Church, the General Assembly. Each year the commissioners meet in the

General Assembly, and elect a Moderator to chair the General Assembly for

that year. Unlike the Church of England, the Church of Scotland is subject

neither to the Crown nor to Parliament, and takes pride in its independence

from state authority, for which it fought in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries. In keeping with its democratic nature, it admits women as well

as men to the ministry.

Among all these Protestant churches, but particularly among the larger

English ones, there has been a recent important development called the

'house church' movement. This began in the 1970s and has a membership of

roughly 90,000, although attendance is far higher. This movement is a

network of autonomous 'churches' of usually not more than 100 members in

each. These churches meet, usually in groups of 15 or 20, in members’ homes

for worship and prayer meetings. Most of those joining such groups are in

the 20-40 year-old age range and belong to the professional middle classes

- solicitors, doctors and so forth - who have felt frustrated with the more

ponderous style of the larger churches. They try to recapture what they

imagine was the vitality of the early church. But it is doubtful how long

these house churches will last. If they are anything like some of the

revivalist sects of the nineteenth century, they in their turn will lose

their vitality, and discontented members may return to the churches which

their predecessors left, or drift away from the Christian church

altogether.

The Protestant churches of Britain undoubtedly owe part of the revival

taking place in some evangelical churches to the vitality of the West

Indian churches. West Indian immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s were not

welcomed into Anglican churches, and many decided to form their own

churches. Their music and informal joyfulness of worship spread quickly in

evangelical circles. As Philip Mohabir, a West Indian, describes:

Congregations that would have been cold, dull and boring, would now

sing to guitar music, clap their hands, and even play tambourines. Those

were things that only West Indian churches did... . Now people would raise

their hands in the air and clap and even dance. English, white, evangelical

Christians dancing and clapping their hands, praising God. That in itself

is a miracle we West Indian Christians never thought would happen.

The Roman Catholic Church only returned to Britain in 1850. During the

preceding 300 years the few Catholic families, which refused to accept the

new Church, were popularly viewed as less than wholeheartedly English. The

English Protestant prejudice that to be Catholic is to be not quite wholly

English only really disappeared in the 1960s.

The Roman Catholic Church grew rapidly after 1850, particularly among

the industrial working class. By the mid-1980s it had about 5.7 million

members, of whom 1.4 million were regular attenders. By the mid-1990s this

had fallen to 1.1 million attenders, a decline of over 17 per cent.

Alongside growing secularism in society, many have left the Catholic Church

because of its authoritarian conservatism, particularly in the field of

sexual mores. It is estimated that attendance will barely exceed 600,000 by

the year 2005. The Catholic Church in England is composed of four main

strands: immigrants from Ireland; working-class people in deprived areas

among whom Catholic effort was concentrated in the nineteenth century; a

few upper-class families; and finally middle-class converts, for example a

bishop of London and two government ministers who all left the Anglican

church and became Catholics over the Anglican ordination of women in 1992.

The senior English cleric is the Archbishop of Westminster.

All the formal churches are in numerical decline. Each time there is a

census of church attendance and membership, the numbers in almost every

church have fallen. In 1970 there were an estimated 8.6 million practising

Christians. By 1994 the figure had fallen to 6.5 million. At Christmas, the

major festival, perhaps 5 million will attend church, but on a normal

Sunday it is barely half this figure. One must conclude that numerical

decline will probably continue in an age when people feel no apparent need

for organized religion. But the decline may not be as dramatic as the

figures suggest. Many church-goers have ceased to be regular simply because

they often go away at weekends. Within the Church the debate is bound to

continue between the modernists who wish to reinterpret religion according

to the values of the age they live in, and conservatives who believe it is

precisely the supernatural elements, which attract people in the age of

science.

On the national stage the Church has made its greatest mark in recent

years in the area of social justice. In 1985 the Church of England produced

a report, Faith in the City: A Call for Action by Church and Nation, which

examined inner-city deprivation and decline, and recommended measures both

by church and state to reverse the trends. The Roman Catholic and Free

Churches showed similar concern at increased social deprivation in the

1980s. Today the Church is no longer seen as an integral part of the

establishment but as possibly its most formidable critic.

Besides these 'orthodox' churches which accept the doctrine of the

Trinity, there are others which have their own specific beliefs, and are

consequently viewed as outside orthodoxy. The Mormon Church which is strong

in the United States, has doubled its membership to about 200,000 in the

past 20 years. Other non-Trinitarian churches have also grown, part of an

alternative form of spirituality which has been attractive to many people

since the 1960s.

Other religions

Apart from Christianity, there are at least five other religions with

a substantial number of adherents in Britain. These are usually composed of

either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.

The oldest is the Jewish community, which now numbers barely 300,000,

of whom fewer than half ever attend synagogue and only 80,000 are actual

synagogue members. Today the Jewish community in Britain is ageing and

shrinking, on account of assimilation and a relatively low birth rate, and

is in rapid decline. A survey in 1996 revealed that 44 per cent of Jewish

men under the age of 40 are married to or are living with a non-Jewish

partner.

Between 20 and 25 per cent of Jewish women in this age range also

marry outside the community. Even so, it is the second largest Jewish

community in Western Europe. Two-thirds of the community live in London,

with another 9,000 or so in Manchester and Leeds respectively, and another

6,000 in Brighton.

Jews returned to England in the seventeenth century, after their

previous expulsion in the thirteenth century. At first those who returned,

were Sephardic, that is, originally from Spain and Portugal, but during the

last years of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth

century a more substantial number of Ashkenazi (Germanic and East European)

Jews, fleeing persecution, arrived. Ashkenazis form 70 per cent of British

Jews.

As a result of these two separate origins, and as a result of the

growth of Progressive Judaism (the Reform and Liberal branches), the Jews

are divided into different religious groups. The largest group,

approximately 120,000, are Orthodox and belong to the United Synagogues.

They look to the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain for spiritual leadership. A

much smaller number of Sephardic Orthodox still recognize a different

leader, the Haham. The two Progressive groups, the Reform and Liberal Jews,

which roughly equate with the broad church and modernists of the Anglican

Church, have no acknowledged single leader, but they do have a number of

rabbis who command a following among those who admire their wisdom. The

Progressives account for 17 per cent of the entire community. Thirty-seven

per cent of Jews claim no religious affiliation at all.

There is also a Board of Deputies of British Jews, the lay

representation of Anglo-Jewry since 1760, to which 250 synagogues and

organizations in Britain elect representatives. It speaks on behalf of

British Jewry on a wide variety of matters, but its degree of genuine

representation is qualified in two ways: fewer than half of Britain's Jews

belong to the electing synagogues and organizations; and none of the

community's more eminent members belongs to the Board. In fact many leading

members of the community are often uneasy with the position the Board takes

on issues.

As in the Christian church, the fundamentalist part of Jewry seems to

grow compared with other groups, especially among the young, and causes

similar discomfort for those who do not share its certainties and legal

observances. The most obvious concentrations of orthodox Jews, who are

distinguishable by their dress, are in the north London suburbs of Golders

Green and Stamford Hill.

There are also more recently established religious groups: Hindus,

Sikhs, Buddhists and Muslims. The most important of these, not only on

account of its size, is the Muslim community. There are 1.5 million Muslims

and over 1,000 mosques and prayer centres, of which the most important (in

all Western Europe) is the London Central Mosque at Regent's Park. There

are probably 900,000 Muslims who regularly attend these mosques. Most are

of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, but there are also an increasing number

of British converts. Apart from London, there are sizeable Muslim

communities in Liverpool, Manchester, Leicester, Birmingham, Bradford,

Cardiff, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Islam gives coherence and a sense of

community to people of different ethnic origins. It also gives Britain

informal lines of communication with several Muslim countries.

During the past quarter century, since large numbers of Muslims

arrived in Britain, there has been a tension between those Muslims who

sought an accommodation between Islam and Western secular society, one

might call them modernists, and those who have wanted to uphold traditional

Islamic values even when these directly conflicted with secular social

values. The tension has been made worse by the racism Asian Muslims feel in

British society. Until 1989 it might be said that those Muslims who were

relatively successful economically and socially were the prevailing example

of how Muslims could live successfully in the West. However, in 1988 many

Muslims were deeply offended by the publication of Salman Rushdie's book

The Satanic Verses, which they considered to be blasphemous.

Many Muslims were offended by the reaction they saw from the rest of

society and from government. The blasphemy law, mainly on account of its

age, only applied to Christianity, so they were unable to prosecute

Rushdie. But perhaps what they found most offensive was the patronising

attitude of non-Muslim liberals, who lectured them on the values of a

democratic society in a way which was dismissive of Muslim identity and

feeling. Muslims found themselves in conflict with those who had previously

been perceived as their friends, those of the secular left who had

championed immigrant rights and most strongly opposed racism.

After the Rushdie affair other external factors also stimulated a

Muslim revival, including the Gulf War (1991) and also the suffering of

Bosnian Muslims (1994-6).

Within the British Muslim community as a whole, which like Jewish and

Christian communities, is divided into different sects and traditions,

modernists lost influence to traditionalist leaders. Mosque attendance

increased and religious observance became an outward symbol of Muslim

assertion. In 1985 only about 20 per cent of Muslims were actually

religiously observant. By 1995 that figure had risen to about 50 per cent.

Yet the Islam of young British Muslims is different from that of their

parents. It is less grounded in the culture of the countries from which

their parents came. Young Muslims come from several different ethnic

origins but they all share their religion and their British culture and

education.

This is leading to a 'Britain-specific' form of Islam. As a result, in

the words of one religious affairs journalist, 'For every child who drifts

into the moral relativism of contemporary Western values, another returns

home with a belief in a revitalised form of Islam. Many parents find the

second just as difficult to come to terms with as the first.'

British Islam is sufficiently vibrant that a Muslim paper, Q-News, now

appears regularly. One of its editors is a woman, Fozia Bora, itself a

statement on the relatively liberal culture of British Islam. Indeed, a new

sense of self-confidence emerged out of the initial feeling of alienation

over The Satanic Verses. It is partly self-assertion against anti-Islamic

prejudice, but it is also the comfort felt in a relatively tolerant

environment. Fozia Bora believes that 'Britain is a good place be Muslim.

There is a tradition of religious and intellectual freedom.' In the opinion

of Dr Zaki Badawi, one of Britain's foremost Muslims, 'Britain is the best

place in the world to be a Muslim – most Muslim states are tyrannies and

things are harder elsewhere in Europe.'

Anti-Islamic feeling, however, remains a factor in racial tensions in

Britain. In the words of the Runnymede Trust, which concerns itself with

race relations, 'Islamophobic discourse, sometimes blatant but frequently

subtle and coded, is part of the fabric of everyday life in modern Britain,

in much the same way that anti-Semitic discourse was taken for granted

earlier this century.'

There are other areas of Muslim frustration. Some want Muslim family

law to be recognised within British law, a measure which would allow Muslim

communities in Britain to follow an entirely separate lifestyle governed by

their own laws. Others want state-supported Muslim schools, where children,

particularly girls, may receive a specifically Muslim education in a

stricter moral atmosphere than exists in secular state schools. The state

already provides such funding for Anglican, Catholic and Jewish schools

within the state system. It was only in 1997 that the first Muslim school

obtained financial support from the state.

Smaller communities include about 450,000 Sikhs who mainly originate

in the Indian Punjab. They live mainly in London, Manchester and

Birmingham. There are over 200 gurdwaras or temples in Britain. There are

about 320,000 Hindus living mainly in Leicester, London and Manchester.

There are about 150 mandirs in which Hindus worship, the largest, in

Neasden, north-west London, is also the largest outside India.

Conclusion

From this report we can see that there are two established or state

churches in Britain: the Church of England, or Anglican Church as it is

also called, and the Church of Scotland, or 'Kirk'.

Besides these 'orthodox' churches which accept the doctrine of the

Trinity, there are others which have their own specific beliefs, and are

consequently viewed as outside orthodoxy.

Apart from Christianity, there are at least five other religions with

a substantial number of adherents in Britain. These are usually composed of

either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.

Outsiders sometimes see possible tensions between one religion and

another. They are less aware of the often greater tensions within each

religion or sect between conservatives and liberals. In many religious

groups there is a conservative wing which has little time for, or interest

in, other religions and which disapproves of its own liberal co-

religionists. By contrast, these liberals usually welcome dialogue and warm

relations between religions, and enjoy the rich pluralism of a multi-faith

society. But regardless of viewpoint, most people in Britain whether

religious or not, consider the matter of faith to be a private and personal

matter.

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