Perhaps he was, and if so, I apologise for being snippy.
I don’t see why this impossible. There have certainly been sects which called themselves Christian which deny the divinity of Jesus. I certainly know people that attempt to follow many of the Christian teachings without buying any of the supernatural bits.
Could you name one that ever had a congregation larger than the front room of its pastor’s house?
It’s interesting that it seems like being Christian is becoming rather like being Jewish in a way. You can identify as an “atheist Christian”, just as you can identify as a atheist Jew. It’s just a tradition, it probably means you celebrate christmas with a tree and presents.
My (very atheist) flatmate’s hand hovered over Christian when we were filling out the census and it was discussed at great length. Can’t now remember what he went for…
I would actually say they don’t even believe this in order to identify as Christian. They might just identify with the background and nothing else. Maybe they celebrate christmas in some way, maybe they’re saying they’re not Muslim. It could, to some people, be nothing other than an acknowledgement of their heritage. I think that was certainly the case for my flatmate.
@Gracer: I was thinking of making that comparison too. I’m certainly not going to stop celebrating Christmas just because I don’t believe in God, and not believing in God doesn’t change the fact that I was Christened and that I know the Bible far better than any other religion. Religion is culture as well as belief.
I’m somewhat surprised Dawkins seemed not to remember the full original title of On the Origin of Species. The title is really clunky - “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” - and it was later shortened to just on the Origin of Species, but he had to know it was a ‘gotcha’ question and should have given the title it first had, rather than paraphrasing it.
One nitpick: For point 2, here’s what the survey came up with:
Q25. Which of the following BEST describes your view about Jesus? Please read out
the letter for your answer.
%
A. Jesus is the Son of God, the Saviour of mankind 44
B. Jesus was a man who gave us a role model for how to live 32
C. Jesus was just a man 13
D. I do not believe Jesus really existed 4
None of these 1
Don’t know 4
Prefer not to say 3
Only 44% said that they actually believed Jesus was the son of God. So, somewhat less than the average Christian.
People who choose to participate in a MORI poll on Christianity are also, I’d say, somewhat more likely to be believers than those who don’t take part. Even then, 50% of the respondents said, in question 54, that they do not consider themselves to be religious. 50% of people who are willing to complete a survey about Christianity having already identified themselves as Christians then said they don’t consider themselves religious.
(Well, apart from one respondent whose religion was entered by someone else and they disagree with it).
The Origin of Species is not a Holy Book and nor is Darwin a prophet.
Indeed. This is clearly difficult for some people to get to grips with but what the Brits in the thread are saying is true. C of E is more like a club that you get thrown into at birth. People are baptised and therefore C of E is their religion, but this does not necessarily mean that they believe in the ins and outs of the religion. Hell, the running joke is that half the priests don’t either, it is all just an excuse to have a lot of tea and sandwiches.
British thinking:
I am baptised => I am C of E
I am C of E =/=> I believe in God
It gets even weirder here in Sweden as people routinely get Confirmed in the Swedish Church even though they don’t believe in God, it is just something that one does, despite the whole point of Confirmation being you confirming the statements that your Parents made on your behalf when you were Baptised. It is just a cultural thing that you do.
amanset - now that the Swedish church is disestablished from the state do all citizens automatically get enrolled into it? My understanding was that when it was the established church you were at birth but could be asked to be removed at any later date, and I wondered if that was the same now.
amanset puts it very well.
Another data point for those who are confused.
I was baptised, my wife was baptised, both of our children have been baptised, we got married in a C of E church. We have been godparents several times. In each case, all of those people involved were atheist. Me, my wife and our children and the parents of our godchildren as well.
The vicars involved knew this and don’t bat an eyelid. We say the mumbo-jumbo words and don’t bat an eyelid. We don’t believe in god and have pretty much no opinion on Jesus one way or the other, no-one cares.
A lot of people do this and it isn’t a big deal. The other UK members can back this up. It is purely a cultural hangover and though we didn’t self-identify as “christian” on the census, I can well imagine many others of our ilk did. But a lot would be doing it through habit rather than conviction. The results of this poll bear this out.
Yep. I’ve been comfortably atheist for ten years, and my fiancee is a very, very chilled-out, non-denominational Christian. We’re getting married in September in a C of E ceremony. Simply because it’s cheaper than a non-religious marriage.
I asked the priest his position on a nonbeliever being a participant in the ceremony and he simply shrugged and said it’s a matter of conscience, as long as you respect those who do take it seriously.
I’ve known this to cause quite the lively argument amongst British atheists. My nominally atheist ex husband thought children should be baptised “just in case”. I said that showed his atheism was only skin deep, scratch the surface and you’d find the altar boy underneath. A couple that I know were split on whether to accept the role of godparents to a practising Christian couple’s child. One wouldn’t do it because they felt it was wrong to profess something they did not believe, the other accepted the role after the Mum explained why she had been chosen. She, the child’s mother, said she loved and respected her friend and wanted her to have a place in her child’s life.
A congregation that doesn’t believe that Jesus is literally God? Sure.
Certain Gnostic sects and the Ebionites would probably apply as well. As well as a very large number of Unitarian Universalists.
My understanding is that they do not. You are right about the automatic and then asking to be removed. The crazy thing is that there is an automatic “church tax”, something like 1% of your income, if you are a member of one of the religions. Many people didn’t believe in God but never filled in the forms to leave the Church, so they still paid 1% of their income to the Church.
It’s debatable whether Jehova’s witnesses are in fact Christians. Their doctrine and theology is so separate from the other branches of Christianity I’d go as far as to call it a separate religion (like Mormons).
But are they truly Scostmen?
At some point you are begging the question if a group that follows the teachings of Jesus Christ, however they interpret them, cannot rightly call themselves Christians. That’s the same line of thinking that leads to some Evangelicals claiming that Catholics are not Christians.
I personally know many people who call themselves Christians, believe in the existence of God, but don’t ascribe divinity to Jesus or believe in a literal resurrection of the body. If the data in the OP is correct then a majority of the CoE believes something similar.
And it’s not that anyone is criticizing British Christians, it’s just that over here in the US, it’s seen as shocking that only about half of Brits would self-identify as Christian. We Americans can’t even imagine that.
Then what piles the extra shock on top, is that of those self-identified British Christians, only half of those even accept the basic tenets of Christianity. To most Americans, if you don’t actually believe that Jesus was the son of God and died to save humanity of its sins, then you’re not what we would call a Christian. So this poll is telling us that only about a quarter of Brits are what we would call “Christians.” That’s unimaginable here.
75 to 80% of Americans literally believe that Jesus was the son of God and his death has absolved us of our sins. If you admit, over here, to NOT believing these things, then you’re automatically in the out-group.
And we Brits, by and large, don’t understand why you take all this religious shit so seriously. Religion just isn’t part of our lives, even if we’re religious. It doesn’t inform our politics, it doesn’t play any real core community role, hardly anyone goes to church. We just don’t think about it that much. It’s really not important.
From this side of the pond, when the republican primaries are running, it looks like you’ve all gone insane. The people haraguing us in the street, who we give a wide berth to, carefully avoiding eye-contact suspecting they are mentally ill, appear to be running for President and are being taken seriously.
Just to be clear: despite all the talk on this thread about the Church of England, the survey covered anyone who would have indicated their religion as “Christian”. This includes Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, and whatever other denomination you might think of.
As a nominally-Methodist-raised atheist myself, I can attest that the actual denomination of the church you never go to is largely irrelevant.
My way of looking at it is that they’re not saying they are Christian, they are saying they are C of E. Unfortunately due to the wording of the poll this means they have to say they are Christian.
To most C of E is a cultural thing, not a religious thing.
True. I’m blabbing about C of E here, yet I was raised Catholic.