ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

We're an irreligious lot this side of the pond

Just as my "snarky London media types" environs probably shades mine.

It is a "lone X in a group of Y" problem, not related to being X or being Y.

but wouldn't you say that "snarky London media types" is a relatively recent development?

Not, really, no. I mean, you have to remember that my priest mum was the first non-atheist in her Britishes (atheist, freethinker Scottishes) family for about 200 years or so.

interesting!

It's my impression that "being an atheist" has been kind of common currency within the London intelligensia type for at least 50 years, probably at least a century - Britain has, by design, since a couple of bloody civil wars, been a lot less for making-an-issue of religion (or lack thereof) than the states, but my history isn't good enough to state this with any real conviction, but it's certainly the case in bohemia and academia and has been for some time.

but wouldn't you say that "snarky London media types" is a relatively recent development?

It's not just "snarky London media types" who are irreligious in the UK! I don't think I know anyone who is esp. religious - including my mother!

(i mean really. i hope that didn't read as sarcastic)

xpost

Yeah, it's funny - I mean, pretty recently I've had the experience of making a friend who is definitely arty-intellectual type but not Londoner or snarky media type - who actually said to me "OMG, I had actually forgotten there *were* people who weren't atheists" in a way that read - I couldn't tell if she was being snarky or not, but it was definitely like... ::step back::

Kate, I'm talking about conversations with Normal People, not media people. Am completely on the money WRT my own life experiences, which I am not really interested in having judged valid or otherwise - they happen, they are what they are.

Hahahahaha Tom, just because it's never happened to you doesn't mean you won't someday enjoy the spectacle of someone less educated than you who claims to be a Christian (or, worse, that America is a Christian nation) trying to 'explain' why you're misguided or Christian, really. Evangelicals of the Benny Hinn variety also use the term 'downcast' to describe people who are not into Jebus - I love it when not terribly bright people spend time feeling sorry for me for my godlessness, generally after they've sent $39.95 to Robert Schuller or someone.

Having a self-confessed believer like Tony Blair as Prime Minister was considered weird in the UK. No idea who the last openly religious PM we had before that? Possibly in the 19th century.

i do understand if (reasonable) religious people feel a bit put out with the prickliness of a large segment of the atheist population.

i dunno about it being a 'large segment of' really.

unless you'd contend that reasonable religious people by % is somehow higher than reasonable atheist people by %, which I don't know how you'd measure.

Cake or death?

admitting atheism where i am was essentially tantamount to saying "i eat babies" until prob the last 30 years or so. and still like o_O

i do understand if (reasonable) religious people feel a bit put out with the prickliness of a large segment of the atheist population lots of vocal atheists

I don't generally hand out the pricklies unless someone of faith says something really dumb or emotional-blackmaily to me about my lack of faith. My favourite response is generally 'according to your religion it's blasphemy to use God as an inducement like that. Am I worth BLASPHEMY?'

i've not been harassed recently for my atheism, but then again I don't actively advertise it either. I will say in my life I've been persecuted more by religious sects than I've ever done persecuting.

I think that much of Britain is so far the other way that pretty much admitting anything beyond "yeah, I go to Church on Christmas/Easter, for the kids, really, you understand, but I'm not *overtly* religious" is viewed on with - not so much suspicion, but some kind of "tall poppies" in reverse thing. We don't really want to be seen as too much, too emotional, extraordinary in any way, it's viewed with the same mistrust as showing off, really.

I find that it's much easier to tell white-ish lies and nod and smile than to actually engage casual acquaintances in religious conversation. I've rarely had anyone get pushy about the topic, if ever. Among friends, it's still kind of a non-issue. On the scale of intimate things that friends talk about, there are usually more interesting things than our ill-defined, non-standard religious beliefs. I have religious conversations with my very closest friends and ILX. And that's it. Apart from that, nobody asks and I don't tell.

Yes, considered all a bit "American" or "European/Catholic" (xp)

I suppose it can come up awkwardly in the office sometimes. "So, do you have any plans for Easter?" This is where I would tell a really vague lie. "I'm going to wear a suit, I think."

i don't think 'any plans for easter?' is necessarily a leading question on religion, but tthat's maybe because we get a long weekend, so 'any plans for easter' is just basically 'are you doing anything with these bonus three days hurrah'

It could be a trap, though.

Is "Eating chocolate" considered an acceptable response?

xpost yea "any plans for easter?" isn't quite the same as "so how do you plan on worshipping our Lord this weekend? That is unless you're a disgusting savage who won't be doing that..."

we get a long weekend

We do?

http://www.unscrewingtheinscrutable.com/images/atheisttrap.jpg

Easter isn't a federal holiday here. There's no long weekend and if you have a job where yr scheduled to work on Easter Sunday, for instance, yr employer doesn't have to ask for volunteers and/or pay extra. Have always found that confusing, considering...America.

Yeah, it's really hard for me (admittedly as a Britisher) to imagine anyone asking "what are you doing for Easter?" and it not being followed by the casual terms of "are you going anywhere nice?" as would be asked of any other bank holiday weekend.

(Lone exception being my mum, who will go into great detail about some amazing new surplice she's ordered from the South African Orphans Association Of Making Glittery Things For Priests For Charity and fussing about how much bread and wine to consecrate because her church will be filled with people who just come for Easter and don't actually come up and receive communion, and she doesn't want to have to end up drinking the remains of the wine herself because you can't throw it away once it's been blessed, but she doesn't drink, so half a chalice of wine will have her waltzing down the aisles and unable to remember the blessing and she's afraid she'll be all "Go in peace to love and serve the owl and the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful sea green boat... wah-hey!" which would be the talk of the Episcopalian community for years to come, etc. etc. etc.)

Obviously the response would be tailored to the coworker. People I work with every day, tell them about dinner plans. The receptionist on a floor you don't work on, be vague.

However, because I feel the need to be vague about my religiosity does not fill me with the righteous desire to stand up for atheist's rights or anything. I just want to not be bothered.

LOOOOOOL Kate, I did not know that the priest had to drink the leftover wine due to consecration issues. Could she not use it in a pasta sauce later?

Good lord, no!

We're Episcopalian, we believe in Consubstantiation!

The fundamental "substance" of the body and blood of Christ are present alongside the substance of the bread and wine, which remain present. Thou shalt not make a pasta sauce of The Lord! Fie!

Did the Lord not say, "Keep tossing this pasta with my blood in remembrance of me, maybe with a little olive oil and parm"?

you kind of implied yr mum was a deist upthread? is that not true, or is she just buying into the ceremony without the beliefs?

I don't share anything with coworkers. If they ask me how the lunch I just ate tasted, I say "what lunch" and deny ever having eaten.

*I'm* a deist. I don't know what my mum actually believes with regards to the substance of the sacrament. I'm just quoting the stuff I was taught in Sunday School with the consubstantiation stuff, which was a way of keeping both high church ex catholics and raving Protestants from killing each other over theology during the infancy of the Anglican church.

We do?

― kenan, Friday, September 10, 2010 2:43 PM

sorry, 'we' do

Actually, I should really ask my mum to bring over my old high school religion textbooks, because we had a really good one on Anglican theology which I'd like to re-read, because this stuff obviously interests me. Or indeed, if she found any better ones at Yale.

Easter isn't a federal holiday here.

Which, it weirds me out that in spite of this, "Good Friday" is one of the days on which the US securities markets are closed.

Part of what is frustrating about the new fundamentalism in the US is their assumption that this is what Christians have always been like. It's probably impossible for us to understand how, say, 10th century Christians understood their faith (finally got around to reading Veyne's 'Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths', which was awesome, though mostly for it's questions rather than it's answers).

It's not surprising, then, that they also think that Islamic fundamentalism is what Islam was always about rather than an odd 20th Century offshoot.

Like I said earlier, I live in the Bible Belt, work mostly for low-income blacks and Latinos, and draw fundamentalists like flies. At least at work I can tell them that my agency forbids me to talk about religion (not true, but they don't know any different).

xp THAT is a very interesting point.

omg we have a church hi 5

I'm all for starting the ILTMI Church of St. Deeper. Should we start it in Illinois or Florida?

Let's just say it's a state of mind that we carry around with us. And tell no one about.

Darn, I was looking forward to seeing what the steeple looked like.

would look like, I should say.

These are some mighty temporal concerns for this particular thread.

don't know why, as proposer, the church wouldn't be based in connaught tbh