Beyond Belief

A Comres survey commissioned by the BBC for Palm Sunday** does not look good for the Church of England despite a predictable effort to spin the findings.

In the survey, 51% of people surveyed identified as Christian. Half of the people surveyed said they didn’t believe in the resurrection, while only 31% of people identifying as Christian said they did. Only 17% of people thought the Bible version was literally true while 26% believed but thought the Bible shouldn’t be taken literally.

Although Christmas is now far more celebrated, the resurrection is the core tenet of Christianity and Easter is its most important festival. No resurrection, no Christianity.  To quote the Bible: Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. (John 11:25) And yet more than two thirds of Christians don’t believe that.

Sidebar: I wrote about how Jesus is not the only one claiming to be resurrected here. 

Belief and church attendance have been falling for quite some time. The figures for belief in this survey are slightly better than those in a YouGov survey from last year which found that only 46% of people identify as Christian. This was a much bigger survey and so is more likely to represent the population as a whole (nearly 12,000 as opposed to around 2,000 people). The YouGov survey also found that more people believe in ghosts than in a Creator.

  

According to the current survey, 37% of people identifying as Christian never go to Church. Another survey by the Church of England itself found that only 2% of the population go to the Church of England at Easter. The flock really has strayed far from the Good Shepherd (probably because they know he’s going to herd them off to the slaughterhouse so we can all eat our traditional Easter roast lamb and rosemary). 

The survey also looked at belief in life after death. It found that only 46% of people said they believed in it and the same number said they didn’t. If you don’t believe in an afterlife then the Church’s carrot and stick tactics are not going to work on you.

Sidebar: of those who do believe in an afterlife, 56% were women and 36% were men. I looked at why women may believe more than men in many kinds of supernatural phenomena (and non-evidence based medicines) here.

The Church is fighting a rearguard action and trying to spin the findings that 20% of the non-religious believe in some sort of life after death and that 9% of non-believers do believe that the resurrection happened.

The Bishop of Manchester, the Right Reverend David Walker,said: "This important and welcome survey proves that many British people, despite not being regular churchgoers, hold core Christian beliefs”. He describes the results as “surprisingly high levels of religious belief among those who follow no specific religion, often erroneously referred to as secularists or atheists”.

Let’s unpack this a bit. Firstly, the Church doesn’t have a monopoly in life after death belief. About a third of the people (32%) who believed in some sort of life after death believe in reincarnation, hardly a Christian doctrine.

Secondly, 9% believing in the resurrection is not a ‘surprisingly high level’ when you look more closely and see that these are people who ‘do not belong to a religious group’ according to the survey. They are not identified as non-believers or claiming to be atheist or secular, he’s just grasping at straws because any kind of belief, however small or tenuous is better than nothing.  He does deserve credit for his top skills at ignoring all the stats that don’t reflect well on the Church though. That’s quite an impressive mental contortionist act.

Thirdly, he is conflating atheists and secularists. Atheism means no belief in God whereas secularism is a political belief in the need for separation of Church and State. You can be religious and secular, as many people are.

Like a lot of Easter eggs, the Bishop’s claims are hollow and crack under the slightest pressure.

There is also dissension in the Christian ranks. Reverend Dr Lorraine Cavenagh is the acting general secretary for Modern Church, which promotes liberal Christian theology. She said "Science, but also intellectual and philosophical thought has progressed. It has a trickle-down effect on just about everybody's lives.

"So to ask an adult to believe in the resurrection the way they did when they were at Sunday school simply won't do and that's true of much of the key elements of the Christian faith."

A cynical person might say that the Church wants us all to believe like children at Sunday School do. Many of these children also believe in Santa.

Would it be mean to point out that in 2002 a survey found that a third of Church of England clergy don’t believe in the physical resurrection? That’s a bit of an own goal. It’s also unfair to people who do believe if they’re being led by people who don’t.  

These findings follow the Cadbury Easter egg fiasco where self-proclaimed vicar’s daughter Theresa May and Archbishop Sentamu got very hot under the dog collar about Cadbury’s and the National Trust dropping the word Easter from their eggs and egg hunt. I wrote about that here (short version – it’s not true).  

Does any of this really matter to most of us who are more interested in hot cross buns, chocolate eggs and maybe some roast lamb next Sunday?

The Bishop of Manchester also said: "This demonstrates how important beliefs remain across our society and hence the importance both of religious literacy and of religion having a prominent place in public discourse."

This is the crux of the matter. The Church will not give up its power and influence. It will not give up unelected bishops in the House of Lords or its tax-free benefits or state-funded Church schools and hospital chaplains or its general right to meddle in people’s lives. It wants the right to cherry-pick who gets to go to its schools, to mislead children in sex education classes and to discriminate against women and non-hetero cis men.

Church leaders are deluding themselves about the relevance of their beliefs and their jobs in a multi-cultural society. Yes, this country has a Christian heritage, religion has shaped society and history but it is not the sole influence. Societies evolve and the Church is looking increasingly like a dinosaur just before the meteors hit. Or, to add another simile, the Church is like a ferret that will not let go once its jaws have locked on.

However, this survey is no reason for celebration. Politicians won’t do anything to secularise the country because they’re afraid of losing votes. Anglicans (Church of England) are more likely to vote Tory, for a start. This government is very good at ignoring research it doesn’t like in any area and at dismissing ‘experts’ as irrelevant. 

So the Church of England has the last laugh. Whatever surveys show, there is no prospect of change any time soon. It’s much easier to hold onto power than to gain it. Inertia, cowardice and the status quo prevail.

Happy Easter.

** Palm Sunday is the one before Easter where the Bible says Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey and people waved palm leaves at him.

The E Word

As if Theresa May didn’t have enough to deceive the British public about at the moment, now she decides to wade into the Great Easter Egg Debate. This is basically the Winterval, ’they’re cancelling Christmas’ non-story with added chocolate.

Cadbury’s and the National Trust have been running a joint egg hunt for 10 years. This year they’re calling it the Cadbury's Great British Egg Hunt instead of the Easter Egg Trail.

According to May, dropping the Easter is ‘ridiculous’. According to Archbishop Sentamu, this is ‘spitting on the grave’ of the company founder, John Cadbury, who was a Quaker.

May said: "I think the stance they have taken is absolutely ridiculous. I don't know what they are thinking about frankly. Easter's very important... It's a very important festival for the Christian faith for millions across the world." She also reminds us that she’s a vicar’s daughter.

Firstly, Cadbury is not dropping Easter from its promotions. As a spokesman point out: "A casual glance at our website will see dozens of references to Easter throughout." A ten second look at their website shows ‘Enjoy Easter fun at the National Trust’. Yes, the E Word is right there.  They also have a section called Easter Products  that says ‘Our eggstensive range is packed with perfect treats for the Easter season!’. Yes, it’s a terrible pun, but, again, the E Word is right there.

The National Trust website  says Join the Cadbury Egg Hunts this Easter. In fact, the page mentions the E Word five times.

Secondly, dear Archbishop, stop being a drama queen for one minute and you may remember that Quakers don’t even celebrate Easter because they believe every day is holy. 

Thirdly, both the Archbishop and the vicar’s daughter seem to have forgotten that there is nothing in Christian doctrine about the mass consumption of poor quality chocolate at Easter, whether it is shaped like an egg or a rabbit. These are wholly pagan relics. I wrote about the pagan originsof Easter here .

Fourthly, calling it the Great British Egg Hunt should make all the Brexiteers happy. We’ll have none of that Middle Eastern religion that was imposed on traditional British beliefs around 1500 years ago. Keep Britain’s Spring Festival British.

Fifthly, if Easter is as important as the two of them are trying to make out, how come only about 2% of people bother going to Church to celebrate what is the fundamental basis of Christianity?  And that’s according the Church of England’s own statistics. 

All of those armchair Christians really should stop their advance towards diabetes for an hour and go to their nearest church – if they even know where it is.  They may be able to sing some carols but how many Easter hymns do they know? How many gave something up for Lent? It’s not as if Cadbury and the National Trust are barricading church doors to keep people out.

Sixthly, the real story here is that Brexit could mean more expensive or smaller chocolate bars. Cadbury’s have already reduced a pack of six Creme Eggs to five with only a slight decrease in the price. A spokesman for thecompany has said that it may well have to pass on higher costs to customers by raising prices or selling smaller products for the same price. And it’s not even a British company any more, it’s owned by US company Mondelēz International. I suspect the ghost of Mr Cadbury would be far more bothered about that.

Cadbury’s are probably far less worried about what Theresa May thinks than about the fact that six out of ten of our favourite chocolate products are made by their rival Mars, including the top slot, which is taken by Maltesers.  

Finally, a vicar’s daughter and an Archbishop really should know that it’s a sin to tell a lie. They won’t be getting any eggs this year because the Easter Bunny knows if you’ve been naughty or nice. Santa sold the Bunny his list – customer data sharing gets everywhere.

2018 UPDATE

It looks like Cadbury's and The National Trust are avoiding the wrath of May and the Archbish this year by plastering the word Easter all over their joint egg hunt site.

But this isn't enough for some people.  Yes, the War on Easter brigade are back. The Sun has come up with the shock horror headline that nine in ten eggs won't have the word 'Easter' on them. One of the people they spoke to said 'Eggs signify  Jesus is risen and help tell the story. Why  not put Easter on the front of eggs?' Kind of missing the point there. Eggs, as we know, predate Christianity as part of Spring celebrations across many cultures.

If they don't like the eggs, perhaps they'd be happier with this:

It's so much easier to whine about eggs than to deal with the fact that so few people go to Church on Easter Sunday even though it is the core festival of this religion - not Christmas. Only 1.3 million attended in 2015 according to the Church of England's own data. That's only 2.3% of the population (of England - the Churches of Wales and Scotland have separate data). Too busy stuffing themselves with chocolate, probably.

I'm sticking to hot cross buns. After all, the best part of any religion is its carbs.

2021 Update:  Here we go again. As if getting through the pandemic wasn't hard enough. The Express is braying:  Political correctness gone mad! Words 'Easter, egg' dropped from seasonal chocolate treats.

It's not about spurning Jesus but, according to Allyson Stewart-Allen, chief exec of International Marketing Partners for Galaxy, "In the multi-cultural society that the UK now is it may be that the majority of target customers do not celebrate Easter and therefore being able to offer that product as a gift for non-Christians is a domestic opportunity for the manufacturers".

Nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with money. Cadbury's are still using the E word on their packaging.

I'm disappointed the Express didn't talk about Cancel Culture although 'multi-cultural' probably had a fair few of its readership frothing at the mouth.

I'm thinking about having a Terry's Dark Chocolate Orange for a change this year because I'm that much of a rebel.

Easter - The Remix

Hallelujah! He is risen! But who has?

Gods who die and come back again are standard issue in the ancient world. The symbolize the way the earth 'dies' in the winter and is 'reborn' in the spring, or the way 'dead' seeds go into the earth to be regenerated as next year's crops. There was also an element of sacrificial magic with the sacred king's blood fertilizing the earth, prefiguring the Christian's obsession with sacrificial blood. For early agrarian societies, this cycle was the focus of their lives.

The Christian myth is a cut and paste of far more ancient myths, or a 're-imagining' as Hollywood likes to say.

To look at just a couple, Herakles/Hercules died and rose again, then ascended to Heaven to be with his father. There was darkness when he died (an eclipse) and his followers used the phrase 'he is risen', which reappears in the Bible at Mark 16:6 without so much as a credit. Herakles died at the spring equinox too. I looked at the very many similarities between Herakles and Jesus here.

Osiris was another jack-in-the-box god who died and regenerated. He was also known as The Resurrection and the Life and The Good Shepherd. His followers took communion, eating his flesh in the form of wheat cakes.

Even a woman got in on the act: Persephone went into the underworld and returned each spring.

Nothing unique about the resurrection, then. Other Easter symbols are stolen too (or perhaps they're an 'homage').

The cross was a pre-Christian symbol representing the Tree of Life or the World Tree. It also appears in ancient Egyptian symbolism, among others. The Celtic cross combines the cross and a circle, an ancient yoni (female) symbol.

In Norse mythology, Odin hung on Yggdrassil, the World Tree, as a sacrifice. Hanging 'between heaven and earth' was all part of the day job for a god in the ancient world. Scarecrows are a relic of this hanging man. From divine symbol to bird-scarer and horror-movie staple is a bit of a come-down.

Early Christians had no cross and some even considered it a relic of pagan times. Its adoption came in handy for the Mediaeval Church who, never slow to miss a business opportunity, made a fortune selling splinters from it. It must have been a damn big cross given the number of splinters (and nails) it produced.

The Easter festival was named for the Saxon fertility goddess Eostre, a form of Astarte who dates back to Neolithic times in the Middle East. Her sacred month was Eastre-monath (the moon of Eostre). Incidentally, her name became the root of the word oestrogen. This is now disputed by some but the jury is still out. The Easter bunny was originally the moon-hare, sacred to the goddess in both eastern and western traditions. Hares were long associated with pagan beliefs, witchcraft and shape-shifting so the hare was softened into the much fluffier bunny.

UPDATE
As a good skeptic, I have to say that I have now learnt that the Eostre belief is a misconception based on no good evidence as we learn here and here:

'The idea that Eostre was the goddess of spring or fertility or dawn or whatever it might be is all later speculation, largely originating in nineteenth-century scholarship; the suggestion that she was associated with symbols such as eggs, hares or rabbits is similarly very recent. The Anglo-Saxons may well have had some kind of spring festival which gave its name to Easter, but we know nothing about what customs or practices that might have involved. People who say otherwise are speculating, with a greater or lesser degree of plausibility.'

'So where do the tales come from? The answer is found in the recent history of modern self-identified paganism'.

It's not comfortable to be wrong but that's how we learn. Anyway, to continue:

Zoroastrians celebrated their solar new year at the spring equinox and gave each other coloured eggs, usually red. Christian co-opted the redness as the blood of Christ. In some traditions, the hare laid the eggs.

In recent times, the job of dying and being resurrected has been taken over by Doctor Who. Even though Easter is the foundation stone of the Christian Church and England is still allegedly a Christian country, when David Tennant died and was resurrected as Matt Smith in 2010, eight million people watched. According to the latest figures from the Church of England, fewer than 1.5 million went to church at Easter.

But without Easter there would be no carb-based joy. Hot cross buns, Easter eggs and my personal favourite, Easter biscuits - although they've become hard to find. In 1210, under the interdict of Pope Innocent III, King John's candidate for Archbishop of Canterbury, John De Gray, decreed that during Lent hot cross buns were classified as fish, and could therefore be eaten during fasting and abstinence. And we get two Bank Holidays which the more secular French do not. So, if nothing else, thank you gentle Jesus for giving us (another) reason for feeling superior to the French.