to think that Christians do not want equal treatment, they want their views to be given a privileged in public life.

[seeker]

and that the discrimination that some Christians claim they are suggering is actually just the withdrawing of that privileged position, and the levelling of the playing fiels for people of faith and people without faith.

So totally butting in.... but THAT is a user name from my past... the one above me.. LucySnowe... just happens to be from one of the best books ever written....

Anyway...

I don't feel that discriminated against? Disagreed with... ranted at sometimes? But I am free to practice my faith, which many other christians in other countries are not. So can't complain.

LucyGoose Oh D.C., one place I do not miss - it's such a magnet for every and all crazy or maybe the power makes them crazy .

There is a lot more talk about religion in the US, but I guess to me it was loud noise but little effect. I could live my day to day life and avoid it easily or if not, things from other faiths are more readily were included alongside the Christian 'norm' just for the sake of seeming open. My Uber-Christian and white Ohio city where I grew up still included a large menorah and kinara in the mall, and TV included a lot more festivals and things included together. It's just taken as fact there that there are people of other religions and they should be included and represented. US's children's TV particularly makes a good push at trying to include everyone, whereas here children's TV is the domain of Christianity, with TV presenters treating it as the norm for everyone.

The Christian norm is quieter in the UK, but it seems to underpin everything more, there is far less avoiding it, and things seem to only be included alongside begrudgingly if at all. It just seems to be everywhere, and other groups have very little representation and are treated as the 'other' rather than part of British society. Where I am, there is one street, away from the city centre, where other groups can put up lights for Eid and Diwali, and a few years back they were told to change them because they didn't include Christmas even though the entire city centre is covered in Christmas lights with no representation of anyone else.

I don't understand why any questioning of Christianity and its position in society is called "Christian-bashing"? I have been accused of this by several posted on this thread, but none of them will actually tell me what I have said that is offensive, despite repeated requests. I can only conclude that any challenge or question, however politely phrased, is "bashing". Which seems to imply that the faith's position of privilege is even more deeply entrenched than I though it was!

I think the accusations of 'christian-bashing' seeker, rather illustrate your point. i.e that accusations of discrimination towards the majority religion are borne out of no longer being in an unassailable position in society, rather than anything more rational or substantial. That said, I think there are probably far more people who don't believe that christianity is being 'bashed'.... in most situations, it's the vocal minority that has a disproportionate share of the air-time.

It's those Christian Voice fuckers mostly.

And as Mrs says (another nice username) when you compare the 'discrimination' they claim Christians are suffering from in the UK and the US with the REAL thing undergone by Christians elsewhere, for example (very sadly) in Iraq at the moment, the whole thing is laughable.

The issue with the British Airways employee wearing a cross was not "Christian-bashing." The rules stated employees could not wear jewellery. She wanted an exception to be made for her cross. Special pleading.

I quite like the idea of saying "Mo-fucking-hammed on a bike." I'll start saying it in the interests of equality, perhaps. And "Zeus on a bike". And "Horus, Isis and Osiris on a bike."

"Buddha on a unicycle"

"Allah on a stick"

To quote Marcus Brigstock - "Don't worry - I've done this before!"

Darwin on legs not flippers!
Krishna on a (higher) Plane!

Marcus Brigstocke seems to be more interested at the moment in not being dismissive of religion, with his God Collar book published this summer: he was speaking on radio a couple of weeks ago, saying how he was interested in the "god-shaped hole" his show mentions, and not so much an atheist any more.

The thing is, Dandy Dan - you don't have to be an atheist to want fairness and equality. And a secular state.

People of faith seem to think that everyone who wants secular schools, disestablishment, no role for any religion in the making of law and public policy and no special exceptions in the law for believers must by definition be an atheist. It's simply not true.

"The thing is - ..." - ?

I have never posted that you have to be an atheist to want x, y, or z, or a secular state. I have not asked you to reveal your own belief system or made any assumptions about it.

I mentioned Brigstocke because his name used here would imply he was a severe critic of religion (and yes, he had delivered stand-up critiquing certain things in previous years), whereas actually at the moment, he seems to be in a genuinely friendly open and exploratory mood about the whole issue.

No. I quoted him because he challenges all religions equally. In the way that people say nobody does. I have no idea about his faith position. He could be ano ordained priest for all I know or care. But he does not hold with upholding and protecting sacred cows. Or the extremists which give all faiths a bad name.

But I do want those things, seeker, because the current situation actually favours a tiny minority - the shrinking C of E - and does nothing for the rest of us, atheists, Jews, RCs, Moslems - in fact, it wrongfoots us all.

Interestingly though 86% of people in the UK use churches for some purpose each year - whether it's going to church, weddings, funerals, baptisms, events etc. It's not a tiny minority who encounter our faith and our history, it's a vast majority. I'm very pro equal rights and would personally like to see representatives of all major faiths in the House of Lords, but I am mindful that this is by history and majority a Christian culture we live in.

If I were living in a Jewish state, I wouldn't expect my faith to ever take precedence over theirs. But I'd like to be able to worship and enjoy my own faith in a respectful way. Same for those who have a different faith or belief system in this country.

Millions "encounter" the characters of Charles Dickens, but that doesn't mean they are stupid enough to believe they are real people.

Interesting seeker. I'm a Christian and I can see the downside to all the cultural engrained Christianity. It does make the religion seem very old (fashioned), literary, dull. I'm far from being clappy happy (as MIL calls it), cos I love the BCP and Evensong. But I think it can seem more boring than it is :-)

I would love for other belief systems to be given as much as prominence, personally. I think it is getting better, in that Muslim and Jewish leaders are getting more esconced as spokespeople and as Islam becomes a bigger part of the UK.

Millions don't encounter the characters of Charles Dickens in their own lives though, or experience a deep awareness of the presence of Mr Pickwick. The bible, as a collection of accounts and books, was written by people who were writing down their experiences of something very real to them (as real as it is to Jews and Christians today); they were not deliberately fictionalising for posterity's entertainment.

If anything, some theists would probably say they encounter the 'author' of the world, a real author and a real world.

But 86% of people don't use the church because they have necessarily have a faith. Attending weddings and funerals would attract the same people if they were held in a registry office or a crematorium. A lot of people like myself visit churches because of the architecture and history. What is the actual % of attendance of regular worshippers/believers out of interest?

Some Christians claim that they know God through the Bible, and that the Bible is the proof of God. The Bible supposedly "proves" itself. Of course it's not entirely fictional - but, like any holy text, it is subjective, and full of extremely interestingly debatable data, half-truths, legends, myths, hagiography, metaphors and translation issues. To take the Bible on its own merits without challenging the content from other sources is narrow-minded in the extreme.

63% of the population think of themselves as Christians, 29% attend church, 15% at least once a month. Two thirds of the population agree that the country should retain its Christian culture. All recent research done to good standards according to the Guardian newspaper on Sat 11 Sep 2010. Not small numbers really.

For every statistic there is a conflicting one.

Interesting, unquietdad.

63% of the population consider themselves "culturally Christian" That's a very different thing. 15% attending church at least once a month doesn;t sound like a particularly large group to me. More than that probably go swimming at leas once a month - we don;t have swimming coaches in the House of Lords!

considering how ruddy indecipherable and irrelevant many church services are, and how inaccessible for vast numbers of people, I'd say 15% is quite a big number of especially determined people

(PS I work within the churches to try to resolve some of the considerable access issues)