Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Here are the questions; what is the answer?

A little while back I went to a lecture by Professor Linda Woodhead at Lancaster Priory about the future of the Church of England. She was at an early stage in looking at the results of a survey of views and attitudes of people and the relation of that to their belief background.

Linda has now put a Powerpoint presentation online which she shared with the Faith in Research 2013 conference. You can download it here. There is no accompanying text at this location, but here's a quick first reflection.

1) The gap between the declared positions of churches on issues and the prevailing attitudes of their members is striking. Attitudes of Anglicans and Catholics to same-sex marriage was very interesting in the present climate.

2) When asked what was negative about the C of E in society, younger people said it was bigoted; older (over 60s) said it was stuffy and out of touch. My generation tended towards saying it was hypocritical.

3) It was striking how little church (or faith group) was an influence on people's attitudes at all.

It would be interesting to see a text of her presentation, and I'm still taking in what it all means. Interesting stuff.

2 comments:

Sue Penfold said...

I was at the conference, and it was powerful stuff. Young people find the church 'ethically unacceptable'. Is there a future for us?

Philip Blundell said...

I to was at the talk and I agree with the findings I would say yes the is a future for us and a big opportunity for us to take the living word forward going to be hard but that because we have let it slip all guilty in that