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Christmas could be cancelled by British government

Christmas could be cancelled by a bill being put forward by the Labour government, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales have said, reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com.

In a letter to MPs, Monsignor Andrew Summersgill, general secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, said that Harriet Harmon’s Equality Bill will have a "chilling effect" on local councils, town halls and other organizations clamping down on Christmas festivities for fear of offending people of other religions.

The Equality Bill combines all previous equality legislation in the U.K., and includes a range of new provisions.

"Under existing legislation," Summersgill wrote, "we have seen the development of a risk-averse culture with outcomes as ridiculous as reports of a local authority instructing tenants to take down Christmas lights in case they might offend Muslim neighbours, or of authorities removing the word Christmas out of cultural sensitivity to everyone except Christians.

"If this bill is serious about equality, everything possible must be done to avoid it having a chilling effect on religious expression and practice."

The Christian Institute, Britain’s leading Christian political lobby group, has listed incidents where public displays of Christianity at Christmas have already come under attack. Councils around Britain are removing all references to the name "Christmas" from their 2009 events. Birmingham City Council has changed the name of this year’s light-switching-on event to the generic "Winterval." Last November an attempt by Oxford City Council to drop Christmas from the title of the city’s celebrations was condemned by both residents and religious leaders.

The Christian Institute complained about the bill, saying that councils "are already over-zealous in applying equality laws." The bill, they said, "will make this worse."

In fact, some of the Labour government’s closest advisors have already urged it to abolish public displays of a Christian origin at Christmas. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which has shaped many Labour party policies, said in 2007 that Christmas "should be downgraded to help race relations."

The equality legislation leads only to the law favoring aggrieved minority lobby groups over the existing Christian culture, the Christian Institute says. The group pointed to the closure and forced secularization of several of Britain’s Catholic adoption agencies under similar legislation, the Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs) of the 2007 Equality Act.

Under the SORs, they said, "the rights of children have been trumped by the rights of homosexual adults. Any agency which refuses to do homosexual adoptions becomes a target for closure."

Report from the Christian Telegraph 

BRITAIN IS ONE OF THE LEAST RELIGIOUS NATIONS IN EUROPE

Britain is one of the least religious nations in Europe, according to a major survey by the European Union to be published next month, reports Jeremy Reynalds, correspondent for ASSIST News Service.

Writing for Britain’s Daily Telegraph, Lois Rogers said that according to the study, only 12 per cent of Britons feel they “belong” to a church, compared with 52 per cent in France.

It also found that the UK has one of the highest rates of “fuzzy faith,” or people who have an abstract belief in God and a poorly defined loyalty to Christian traditions.

The Telegraph reported that the study, conducted as part of the influential EU-funded European Social Survey, will be seen as an indicator of a shift in attitudes and values.

Professor David Voas, of Manchester University’s Institute for Social Change, who led the project, said the UK was involved in what he called a “long process of disestablishment,” with Christianity gradually being written out of laws and political institutions.

“Christian faith will soon have no role among our traditional establishments or lawmakers,” the Telegraph reported he said. “It remains to be seen for example, how much longer bishops will be allowed to sit in the House of Lords.”

The Telegraph said he added, “Fuzzy faith is a staging post on the road to non-religion. Adults still have childhood memories of being taken to church, and they maintain a nostalgic affection for Christianity but that is dying out. They still go along with the some kind of religious identity but they’re not passing it on to the next generation, and people who aren’t raised in a religion don’t generally start one as adults.”

However, Professor Linda Woodhead, of Lancaster University, who is leading a long-term £8.5 million government research program on the role of religion in society, disputed Voas’ conclusions.

“Just because you’re not religious, it doesn’t mean you’re not spiritual or moral,” the Telegraph reported she said. “A lot of people simply don’t want to take the whole package of religion on board.”

The Telegraph reported that the study, to be published in the European Sociological Review next month, not only charts the declining interest in religion of successive generations, it also concludes that there is no evidence to support the idea that interest in religion resurfaces as people age.

The Telegraph said that while “new wave” religions like Scientology, Kaballah or the Moonie faith, have received considerable media coverage because of their association with Tom Cruise, Madonna and other celebrities, the number of followers remains tiny.

The survey, which questioned more than 30,000 people in 22 countries, found only five nations – Slovenia, Sweden, Norway, Holland and Belgium – reported lower levels of church membership than Britain.

The Telegraph said some observers have argued that the Anglican church ought to do more to retain the “fuzzy faithful,” and draw the uncommitted back into the pews.

Report from the Christian Telegraph