You might be one of those who are abandoning Christianity; or one for whom religious beliefs are not just irrelevant, but baseless. You might be right, at least to some extent. Some traditional beliefs are not true, and the “God” of main line traditions simply does not exist. Most people don’t dare to confront their religious beliefs, opt for the status quo, or become marginalized.

Bishop John Shelby Spong says that “Christianity Reformed From its Roots – A Life Centered in God” “rightly points out that those who seek to defend Christianity’s past are also killing Christianity’s future.” I accepted the challenge of finding the One who may be recognized even by Gnostics and atheists: the Existence! Eminent philosophers and thinkers might give you an idea if this book be an insightful reading for you (links below). You may look also at excerpts at Amazon.com.

Jairo Mejia, M. Psych., Santa Clara University

http://www.mbay.net/~jmejia/Grudzen.htm
http://www.mbay.net/~jmejia/Churcher.htm

“If a country had a secular constitution, and yet 100% of the people were devoutly religious, it wouldn’t stop being a secular nation.”

Because if that many people were that religious, all it would take is one guy saying, “hey, why don’t we get rid of that whole separation of church and state thing?” and it would be done, legal or not. The thing is that we only need a few kooks in a few key places to become a theocracy.

But thankfully those kooks don’t have a ghost of a chance in a real election, so we’re okay.

I concede the legal point, but I think social attitudes play at least some part in how ’secular’ a country is.

Well, you may have a national religion, but when is it ever enforced?

Did you read the article? Head of state as head of the church, defender of “God’s laws”, 25% of schools being CofE, government prayers, clergy in the House of Lords.

Exactly which of those aren’t enforcing national religion?

A secular nation does not have to have a secular spirit. A secular nation is one which separates religion from state. America by law does this somewhat, and I did mention that it isn’t truly secular because of the large amount of religious people that break those laws. However when you compare America’s laws to England’s, how can you even begin to call England a secular nation.

Secularism has nothing to do with what people think. It has do to with how the country is run. Technically speaking, you could have 100% of the people claiming to be secularists, but that doesn’t make the country secular if they have any mention of national religion. If a country had a secular constitution, and yet 100% of the people were devoutly religious, it wouldn’t stop being a secular nation.

We, on the other hand, have groups of people who have significant influence and prominence trying to inject religion even when it’s illegal.

The worst part is that the Supreme Court is uncomfortably crowded with people who do support legislation that is based on Christianity. These are the people who decide if a law follows the Constitution, and if they say it does, it officially does until the decision’s overturned.

Fortunately, we’ve now got a majority in our government now that will stick to church-state separation just as yours surely will. So here’s hoping that it remains an implausible scenario over here as well.

I guess my point is that while the US is secular by law, it isn’t very secular in spirit; and the UK may not be secular by law, but it at least seems to be very secular in spirit.

By all means, correct me if I’m wrong. I’m not familiar with the vocal religious minorities in the UK, so I may be pretty far off, but this is the impression that I get when I look at the UK.