Thanks for this Brendan! I love finding an article the title of which is a statement that I agree with 100%, and which makes a point I have been trying to get across to people for 50 years.
The country that I always use to make this point is the UK. Growing up here in the 50s and 60s, my lived experience was Church of England hymns, prayers, and Bible readings every day of the school week, an experienced shared with every English child who attended a state-funded school back then. I think that turned a lot of future parents into non-believers. Today, only about 5–10% of Brits attend religious services weekly. For the CoE it’s way lower (1–2%).
Personally-speaking, I grew up in Hearsall Baptist Church, Coventry, a non-Anglican “free church” that was so theologically liberal, one minister encouraged me to explore my adolescent interest in Eastern religion. That minister was Russell Aldwinckle, the late professor of theology at McMaster Divinity College. I went on to get my BA in comparative religion at the University of Leeds and then study philosophy of religion as a postgraduate teaching assistant at McMaster. To this day I remain unchristened, unbaptized, and agnostic.
Thanks for this Brendan! I love finding an article the title of which is a statement that I agree with 100%, and which makes a point I have been trying to get across to people for 50 years.
The country that I always use to make this point is the UK. Growing up here in the 50s and 60s, my lived experience was Church of England hymns, prayers, and Bible readings every day of the school week, an experienced shared with every English child who attended a state-funded school back then. I think that turned a lot of future parents into non-believers. Today, only about 5–10% of Brits attend religious services weekly. For the CoE it’s way lower (1–2%).
Personally-speaking, I grew up in Hearsall Baptist Church, Coventry, a non-Anglican “free church” that was so theologically liberal, one minister encouraged me to explore my adolescent interest in Eastern religion. That minister was Russell Aldwinckle, the late professor of theology at McMaster Divinity College. I went on to get my BA in comparative religion at the University of Leeds and then study philosophy of religion as a postgraduate teaching assistant at McMaster. To this day I remain unchristened, unbaptized, and agnostic.
Exactly.
They will have only themselves to blame as young red state children grow up to associate religion with incompetent and malicious government.