I've thought about going to the news or something but all that would really do, living in the bible belt, would make a lot of people hate me. Plus living in a small town, word would spread fast.

Yep. Much like Jessica Alqhuist you'd be turned on(not in that way... what awkward language) by all the Christians in your school whose Bible is supposed to make them fair, kind people and so on. They'll become more like spawns of Satan. You'll get death threats, physical and verbal retaliation and so on- it's not worth it until you've left.

This is what always happens with religion: it is meant to make people behave better, but when they get too serious about it, it ends up making them behave much, much worse. Britain is in the thick of an acrimonious, debate about secularism and religion. Religious belief and church attendance have been shrinking for decades, yet religion continues to play an important part in our national life. Prayers before council meetings may have been banned last week by a judge, and an increasing number of our city churches are put to sound secular use as indoor ski slopes or apartments. But there are still bishops in the House of Lords, prayers are said at the Cenotaph, and the communal celebrations of Christmas and Easter have yet to become completely taboo.


These are the visible signs of a still substantial power in the land, one which retains huge influence in framing our laws, regulating our behaviour, and even justifying, in a subliminal way, the actions of our governments every time they go to war. Tony Blair's religious motivation for prosecuting the invasion of Iraq was highly atypical: no other recent British prime minister has been so strongly influenced by his faith. Yet the underlying moral justification is always there: to be the Good Samaritan, to go the extra mile, to treat your neighbour as yourself; failing to help the Bosnians was our "un-finest hour" precisely because (it was said) it went against the tenets of religion.


The secularists argue that religion no longer has any business retaining such a privileged place in the commanding heights of the nation, because fewer and fewer people actually believe. Traditionalist pundits – and headline-writers – have responded vigorously. In recent days we have been told that Christianity is "on the rack"; that it has been "pushed to the margins", "assaulted" and "attacked"; that it faces a campaign to "rip it limb from limb"; and that it is time "for Christians to fight back".


What are the facts? In the 2001 census, 71 per cent ticked the Christian box. But, according to a poll published by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science this week, box-ticking was precisely what it was: half of those who say they are Christian rarely go to church, the poll found, and nearly 60 per cent admit that they do not read the Bible. The findings throw into doubt, Professor Dawkins said, the justification for such important Christian vestiges as bishops in the House of Lords and faith schools.


The structure of religious power still stands, but, as more and more believers defect, its foundations are slowly subsiding. In our comfortable land of compromise and tolerance, this process, which began with the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, might have continued indefinitely before the building actually collapsed. But the emergence of militant Islam made the whole question suddenly very urgent.


The fanaticism of the Islamists brought home a fact which our own gentle muddle goes out of its way to obscure: that all religions are intrinsically exclusive because each offers what it insists is an exclusively true account of the universe and our place in it.


There was something deeply ironical about Britain's first Muslim cabinet minister, Baroness Warsi, announcing, in the context of her trip to the Vatican this week, that "We stand side by side with the Pope in fighting for faith".


It was Prince Charles who introduced the notion that, when he became king, he would prefer to be regarded not as "defender of the faith" but "defender of faith". Yet the woolly notion that religious faith is somehow indivisible, and that all those of faith should stand united against "a rising tide of militant secularism" would find few backers in the Roman Curia. Pope Benedict XVI may have ventured into a mosque and a synagogue but it was he himself who, observing the annual inter-faith meeting in Assisi as his predecessor Pope John Paul II prayed alongside Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists, commented, "This cannot be the way". Benedict may have said kind words to Lady Warsi, but he has never had any doubt about it: Christianity in Europe is fighting for its life, not only against atheism but also against Islam.


This is why the inter-faith dialogue beloved of Lady Warsi only makes sense to people who don't think too hard about it. For a razor-sharp theologian like Pope Benedict, the common ground to be found between a religion which regards Jesus just as a prophet, and one which regards him as the Son of God, is minimal: when you get down to it, there is really not much to talk about. For the eagle-eyed zealots, from Islamists to Jehovah's Witnesses, religion is a zero-sum game. If God is on our side, by definition he cannot be on the other's, too.


But the fanaticism of the Islamists has provoked an equally intolerant and intemperate reaction from secular and other quarters, with the ban on headscarves in France and on mosque-building in Switzerland and the rabid anti-Islam rhetoric in the Netherlands; while in Britain it has produced a sudden lurch of opinion among our noisiest public intellectuals against any and all religion. All religions are wrong, goes the argument, everyone knows they are wrong, and their time has expired. As Dawkins put it at the Jaipur Literature Festival last month, faith is "a virus"; he looked forward, he said, to the "complete death of organised religion" in his lifetime.


The problem is, as (atheistical) Buddhists would understand, that actions have consequences, and that once the karmic spiral of aggression has been set in motion it becomes very hard to stop. What Professor Dawkins says in his mild, avuncular way may make perfect sense to many; but there is an edge of fanaticism to his tone horribly reminiscent of the materialist utopians who created hell on earth in many nations during the 20th century.


Of course, this being Britain, much of the secularist campaigning has been good-natured and eminently reasonable: why should believers have a lock on Radio 4's Thought for the Day when there are plenty of non-believers with ethical points to make? And the atheist bus campaign delivered a gentle shock to those who may have long-since ceased to believe but who are still in the grip of irrational fear and guilt.


But one does not escape from the logic of religion merely by ceasing to believe. As the English philosopher John Gray put it in his book Straw Dogs, secularism is the bastard child of monotheistic religion. "Unbelief is a move in a game whose rules are set by believers," he wrote. "To deny the existence of God is to accept the categories of monotheism... Atheists say they want a secular world, but a world defined by the absence of the Christians' God is still a Christian world. Secularism is like chastity, a condition defined by what it denies."


What is staggering about the secularists is their arrogance and the shortness of their memories. The materialist utopianism of the Communists and Nazis is to blame for all the worst atrocities of the past century. Dawkins may appear to make sense, but it is incredible that we should be ready to pay serious attention to a prophet whose message is the same as those whose schemes led straight to the hells of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Mao's Cultural Revolution and the Khmer Rouge.


The secularists never tire of pointing out that religious belief has led to the committing of atrocious crimes, from the Inquisition to the Irish Troubles and on to the Twin Towers. In that sense both believers and secularists are in the dock of history. But, stripped of fanaticism and self-righteousness, religious faith can do what secularism cannot: open doors on to areas of human experience – compassion, altruism, serenity, even enlightenment – which have no meaning for the secularists. The statement "there are no atheists in foxholes" may be a canard, but genuinely non-egoistical behaviour is much more likely from those for whom the ego and its grasping needs do not define ultimate reality.


Of course there are those in the secularist camp who would maintain that their own world view, with God firmly shut outside, does not exclude the higher and deeper experiences of what one has to fall back on calling "the soul". Perhaps that was what Christopher Hitchens was hinting at in one of the columns he wrote for Vanity Fair after he was diagnosed with cancer. He wrote about all the Leonard Cohen albums well-wishers were sending him, singling out for quotation one of the old groaner's most powerful songs. "If it be your will," it goes, "that I speak no more... I shall abide until I am spoken for... If it be your will that a voice be true, from this broken hill I will sing for you..."

The Church of England couldn't hope for a better enemy than Richard Dawkins. Puffed-up, self-regarding, vain, prickly and militant, he displays exactly the character traits that could do with some Christian mellowing. In fact, he's almost an advertisement against atheism. You can't help thinking that a few Sundays in the pews and the odd day volunteering in a Church-run soup kitchen might do him the power of good.

And that's not a lazy cliché; for the power of good is what the Church in this country exemplifies. It's by no means true of all religions at all times – far from it – but here and now we are extraordinarily lucky to have the established Church we have. The Church of England is broadly charitable, open, welcoming, tolerant, compassionate and undogmatic. It does a huge amount of good for a huge number of people well beyond its pews, work that goes almost entirely unreported.


It spreads the power of good to its followers too, even the inactive ones. The poll that Dawkins published last week, commissioned by the wonderfully solipsistic Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, purported to show that self-declaring Christians were anything but. Because they couldn't name the first book of the New Testament or didn't go to church every week, claimed Dawkins, they were somehow fraudulent. Yet only six per cent said they didn't believe in God. And the most heartwarming finding was that 58 per cent said, when asked what being a Christian meant to them personally, "I try to be a good person".


We could do with more good people in the world, and given that so much of modern capitalist society encourages the opposite – greed, consumerism, dog-eat-dog, self-interest – we should welcome any countervailing force. That's not to say that only religious, or Christian, people can be good. Of course not. But if the Church helps people to try to do the right thing, why should we be anything but grateful?


Aggressive secularists and atheists love pointing to the horrors that have been done in the name of religion, from the Inquisition to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. But they are strangely silent on the horrors perpetrated by atheist regimes, such as those of Stalin and Mao. It is militancy, not religion, that is bad. And you can be as militantly atheist as militantly Christian or Muslim.


The great thing about the Church of England is that it couldn't be less militant. If anything, people criticise it for being too meek and mild. Personally I prefer a Church that is forgiving and undogmatic, that is prepared to move – albeit a generation behind the rest of society – with the times. I like a Church that accepts women as priests (and soon, I hope, bishops), and that doesn't tell us that contraception is a sin. I look forward to one that comes to terms with homosexuality.


Most attractively, though, the Church of England sees its job as ministering not just to its own flock. All over the country, if you bother to look, you will find Church-run groups that help children excluded from school, the homeless, refugees, the elderly, the sick, disaffected teenagers, the poor. There is no expectation that the beneficiaries be Christian. On top of that, the Church Urban Fund has helped to finance more than 3,000 local bodies that try to tackle poverty and the problems it brings. A former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, once said, "The Church is the only organisation that exists for its non-members". It is precisely because the Church is established that it feels a duty to serve the whole nation.


The Church is the largest voluntary organisation in the country, the epitome of the Big Society. And in many rural villages and deprived parts of the inner cities, it is the only institution left. The pubs, the post offices, the shops, the schools, the banks have closed. But most of the churches and their priests remain. Social workers, teachers and doctors may commute into impoverished areas, but the vicar is often the only professional still living in the parish he or she serves. You don't get more in touch than that.


Church of England schools take Catholics, Muslims, Hindus and sometimes those of no faith too. They achieve some of the best results in the country, and their ethos is so good that when David Blunkett was Education Secretary, he said he wished he could bottle it.


It might seem anachronistic that 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords. But that adds a welcome element of altruism to the upper house. You might not always agree with the bishops – I didn't over the benefit cap – but it is still good to have people there who believe it is their job to stand up for the weakest, most vulnerable in our society.


Rightly, leaders of other religions have also been ennobled, such as the Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks. But this is still predominantly a Christian country, so Christianity is not disproportionately represented. In Dawkins' poll, 54 per cent called themselves Christian, more than 10 times as many as the next most popular religion, Islam, at just 4 per cent.





If our Church were so medieval and entrenched in the state that, to take an example, it insisted that abortion be illegal or, to take another, that pop music be banned, women prevented from driving and girls excluded from education, then I would be the first to campaign for disestablishment. But the Church of England isn't at all like that, and we should instead celebrate its benign influence. As the Queen said last week, "the Church has helped to build a better society – more and more in active co-operation for the common good with those of other faiths".


It has certainly been "occasionally misunderstood" and "commonly under-appreciated". More radically, though, she claimed that the duty of the established Church was to protect the free practice of all faiths and none. That is a noble calling, and one that can be met only by a Church that doesn't disparage unbelievers or those of other denominations or religions. The Church of England is rare among religious institutions in exhibiting this tolerance and free thinking.


"Gently and assuredly", said the Queen, the Church has created such an environment in this country. I like those adverbs. Yes, the C of E can be bumbling and take an inordinate time to resolve its internal disputes. But it is kind and generous even to those who don't agree with its teachings. And that's more than can be said of Richard Dawkins.

Yet another stupid article on the Independent, fortunately yet again being shot down by the sane people in the comments section on there. This time it's entitled - rather stupidly(again) - "You don't have to believe in God to cherish the Church."



Another piece of crap like this and I'll openly complain to the editor(s) at the Independent. The majority of their audience are against stupid, ignorant religious institutions as shown by the comments, so why are idiotic articles like this constantly popping up?

What's even more worrying though is that the people who wrote these two articles are clearly incapable of thinking critically. It would take any decent debater under 2 minutes to address the numerous flaws within this article, it's not difficult.

The Church of England couldn't hope for a better enemy than Richard Dawkins. Puffed-up, self-regarding, vain, prickly and militant, he displays exactly the character traits that could do with some Christian mellowing. In fact, he's almost an advertisement against atheism. You can't help thinking that a few Sundays in the pews and the odd day volunteering in a Church-run soup kitchen might do him the power of good.

And that's not a lazy cliché; for the power of good is what the Church in this country exemplifies. It's by no means true of all religions at all times – far from it – but here and now we are extraordinarily lucky to have the established Church we have. The Church of England is broadly charitable, open, welcoming, tolerant, compassionate and undogmatic. It does a huge amount of good for a huge number of people well beyond its pews, work that goes almost entirely unreported.

It spreads the power of good to its followers too, even the inactive ones. The poll that Dawkins published last week, commissioned by the wonderfully solipsistic Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, purported to show that self-declaring Christians were anything but. Because they couldn't name the first book of the New Testament or didn't go to church every week, claimed Dawkins, they were somehow fraudulent. Yet only six per cent said they didn't believe in God. And the most heartwarming finding was that 58 per cent said, when asked what being a Christian meant to them personally, "I try to be a good person".

We could do with more good people in the world, and given that so much of modern capitalist society encourages the opposite – greed, consumerism, dog-eat-dog, self-interest – we should welcome any countervailing force. That's not to say that only religious, or Christian, people can be good. Of course not. But if the Church helps people to try to do the right thing, why should we be anything but grateful?

Aggressive secularists and atheists

love pointing to the horrors that have been done in the name of religion, from the Inquisition to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. But they are strangely silent on the horrors perpetrated by atheist regimes, such as those of Stalin and Mao.

It is militancy, not religion, that is bad. And you can be as militantly atheist as militantly Christian or Muslim.

The great thing about the Church of England is that it couldn't be less militant. If anything, people criticise it for being too meek and mild. Personally I prefer a Church that is forgiving and undogmatic, that is prepared to move – albeit a generation behind the rest of society – with the times. I like a Church that accepts women as priests (and soon, I hope, bishops), and that doesn't tell us that contraception is a sin. I look forward to one that comes to terms with homosexuality.

Most attractively, though, the Church of England sees its job as ministering not just to its own flock. All over the country, if you bother to look, you will find Church-run groups that help children excluded from school, the homeless, refugees, the elderly, the sick, disaffected teenagers, the poor.

There is no expectation that the beneficiaries be Christian. On top of that, the Church Urban Fund has helped to finance more than 3,000 local bodies that try to tackle poverty and the problems it brings. A former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, once said, "The Church is the only organisation that exists for its non-members". It is precisely because the Church is established that it feels a duty to serve the whole nation.

The Church is the largest voluntary organisation in the country, the epitome of the Big Society. And in many rural villages and deprived parts of the inner cities, it is the only institution left. The pubs, the post offices, the shops, the schools, the banks have closed. But most of the churches and their priests remain. Social workers, teachers and doctors may commute into impoverished areas, but the vicar is often the only professional still living in the parish he or she serves. You don't get more in touch than that.

Church of England schools take Catholics, Muslims, Hindus and sometimes those of no faith too. They achieve some of the best results in the country, and their ethos is so good that when David Blunkett was Education Secretary, he said he wished he could bottle it.

It might seem anachronistic that 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords. But that adds a welcome element of altruism to the upper house. You might not always agree with the bishops – I didn't over the benefit cap – but it is still good to have people there who believe it is their job to stand up for the weakest, most vulnerable in our society.

Rightly, leaders of other religions have also been ennobled, such as the Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks. But this is still predominantly a Christian country, so Christianity is not disproportionately represented. In Dawkins' poll, 54 per cent called themselves Christian, more than 10 times as many as the next most popular religion, Islam, at just 4 per cent.

If our Church were so medieval and entrenched in the state that, to take an example, it insisted that abortion be illegal or, to take another, that pop music be banned, women prevented from driving and girls excluded from education, then I would be the first to campaign for disestablishment.

But the Church of England isn't at all like that, and we should instead celebrate its benign influence. As the Queen said last week, "the Church has helped to build a better society – more and more in active co-operation for the common good with those of other faiths".

It has certainly been "occasionally misunderstood" and "commonly under-appreciated". More radically, though, she claimed that the duty of the established Church was to protect the free practice of all faiths and none. That is a noble calling, and one that can be met only by a Church that doesn't disparage unbelievers or those of other denominations or religions. The Church of England is rare among religious institutions in exhibiting this tolerance and free thinking.

"Gently and assuredly", said the Queen, the Church has created such an environment in this country. I like those adverbs. Yes, the C of E can be bumbling and take an inordinate time to resolve its internal disputes. But it is kind and generous even to those who don't agree with its teachings. And that's more than can be said of Richard Dawkins.