FOX News is doing a series of reports this week looking at religious practices in Europe. In this video its correspondent homed in on Holland, saying:
It used to be a Christian country, but you would never know it from the scenes on the street, nor the policies coming out of Parliament.
He then spoke to Catholic Church spokesman, the geeky Jan-Willem de Wits, who said:
One of the most pious states in the world has become one of the most secularised.
The Fox report comes hard on the heels of a prediction by a long-serving Church of England bishop that the Church of England will cease to exist within a generation.
According to this report, the Right Reverend Paul Richardson said declining church attendance and the rise in multiculturalism meant that “Christian Britain is dead”.
The Church is rapidly declining, with attendances at its services in freefall, a proposal on the table at the next General Synod meeting to cut the number of bishops, and huge holes in its finances due to the economic downturn and a lack of congregants to donate to the collection plate.
Richardson said that the Church had lost more than one in ten of its regular worshippers between 1996 and 2006, with a fall from more than one million to 880,000.
At this rate it is hard to see the church surviving for more than 30 years though few of its leaders are prepared to face that possibility.
While seven in ten people described themselves as “Christian” in the last census, the fall in church marriages and baptisms confirmed that the census could not be taken as a true guide to the situation. Britain was no longer a Christian nation.
The number of babies being baptised has fallen from 609 in every 1,000 at the start of the twentieth century to only 128 in 2006/07 and church marriages have also dropped.
Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, commented:
Bishop Richardson says that the Church should start the process of disestablishment before politicians get there first. We couldn’t agree more. In fact, the only real prospect that the Anglican Church has of surviving is to free itself from the state’s shackles. Its claim to speak for everyone in the country – including Muslims and non-believers – ring more hollow every time it is uttered. It is time for the Church and state to go their separate ways.
Hat tip: William Harwood
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
July 9th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Religion is not dead in Holland. Adoration of the Zombie may well be in decline but the Moon-worshippers are certainly doing their bit to keep idiocy alive and kicking.
July 9th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Dead right, Remigius. That was a sloppy headline, and I've changed it.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
The sooner the better. This from Paul Tully, Secretary of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, ""It's time for the Voluntary Euthanasia Society –
now repackaged as Dignity in Dying – to drop its parliamentary campaign, a
campaign which is offensive to very many people who live with, or care for
those with, disability or terminal illness." He,with religious support won the day in the vote in the unelected House of Lords, against protecting carers who return from the UK after their relatives have been helped to die in countries where this is legal. The complacent triumphalism nauseates.
Not content with pursuing his own views he must force it on the rest of us, including atheists. What about a patient with motor neurone disease: the brain remains intact, the muscles weaken and the patient slowly and agonisingly suffocates. Added to this horror is the fear of the carer of being prosecuted and the worry of the patient that his loving carer will be arrested on return to the UK.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Actually, this article reminded of a report I once saw on xtianity in Europe:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJKOwLIjdcg&eu…” target=”_blank”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJKOwLIjdcg&eu…
Seriously fucking hilarious. Especially the comment that starts at around 3:42. Knock yourselves out.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Good to know they're losing. Bad to realise, as in Broga's post, that they are bad losers and it's taking a long time to defeat them.
The big irony here is that America is striving to be more European all the time, as in debates over health care reform, electing leaders who can read and write, etc.
As for the CofE, shouldn't it be turned into a proper charitable trust for the maintenance of old buildings? It's almost there anyway.
July 10th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Good post Tim and I'm going to volunteer myself to make all those new babies!
July 10th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
A new analysis of why there are national differences in religiosity: http://bhascience.blogspot.com.....y-some-c...
July 10th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
SACRE scares me… if the CofE is in terminal decline, should it have pride of place and the loudest voice in deciding what morals and 'dispositions' children studying in state run, non-religious schools should be taught?
have a look at http://www.birmingham-asc.org.uk/index.php
July 10th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Just out of interest, exactly what happens to the infrastructure of a religion if it no longer has any followers? What happens to the leaders?
Say catholicism just… dies. Say literally no one attends the churches any more. What does the Pope do?
Even if you acknowledge that it wouldn't happen overnight, and that the church would have to gradually downsize over time, there has to be a point where supporting the pope simply isn't an option. What do they do?
July 10th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
This report is completely litigious, to make a connection between the "right to die" laws and a drop in church attendance is simply a cop out for this particular moron accepting that a lot of northern Europe sways quite to the left. Sure the graph may be linear, but so is one between a rise in illegal downloading and a decrease in panda reproduction.
The drop in attendance is clearly about questioning religion, something a lot of people now do in Europe, as opposed to the military style religious life some Americans lead. This ended in Europe, specifically the U.K. and France at the end of the sixties.
The CofE is a completely different kettle of fish. They've relied on the state for too long, helping them open schools and through funding shortfalls. Its time for England to set them free, into the wild, with all the other sub-sub-sub religions.
July 10th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
The way the story is told, we're all gay in Holland, spending most of our time in our 'coffee-shops' getting stoned, killing every baby with a slight cold and waiting for a pill to commit mass-suicide. Let me assure the readers who've never been here that's not like that at all. And we may be hypocrites about lots of stuff, we also tend to be more practical or open about certain aspects of life. BTW, it's very hard to become a legal gun-owner here, if that balances things a bit.
July 11th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I am Dutch, living in Amsterdam and the Fox-reporter is lying about a lot but in particular the Dutch marriage laws. On 0.35 he said "…gay marriage is also legal, as are marriages with more than two people". In The Netherlands a marriage between more than two people NEVER occurred. It is illegal by Dutch laws and it's rejected by the people.
It is a straight lie what this reporter is saying and it shows very clearly how FOX News (Fair and ballanced,…moehahahah) tries to manipulate and indoctrinate the audience, displaying our country as a Sodom and Gomorra. People who have visited The Netherlands and see it with their own eyes often react surpriced cause of the big difference between what the knew and what the experienced themselves. FOX News should be ashamed of themselves.
(pardon my poor grammatics, English is not my native language)
July 11th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Your point is well made, Dostinus. The Fox report was scurrilous, and an absolute disgrace to journalism.