The Vicars Who Dont Believe In God Analysis

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As surprising as this sounds the idea of Christianity without God is not a new concept in religious circles. A 1999 BBC news article titled ‘The vicars who don’t believe in God’ caused a stir with in the religious community. The article explores one group in particular formally known as the ‘Sea of Faith Network (SOFN)’, informally as ‘Godless vicars’ or ‘atheist priests’ that claimed to have membership figures of around 50 vicars of its apparent 700 strong UK membership. The SOFN’s slogan is ‘Exploring and promoting religious faith as a human creation.’. The BBC article interviews a priest who explains that he used to believe in the christian interpretation of the ‘conventional God’ however over time this viewpoint altered. He explained to …show more content…

They do not agree that believe in a deity is illogical as de Botton suggests, however they concur that christianity is much more than the belief in God. However the SOFN is only a small community leading to them being mocked by more mainstream Christian. But there is a much bigger organisation namely the Nontheist Friends. Nontheist Friends are a subset of the ‘Religious Society of Friends’ more commonly known as the Quakers. Unlike the conventional Quakers who believe in a deity, Nontheist Quakers do not accept the belief ‘in a theistic understanding of God,’ However they focus on ‘realizing centered peace, simplicity, integrity, community, equality, love, happiness and social justice’ The Nontheist Quakers are an example of de Botton’s work within a Christian …show more content…

This is the same for children’s belief in God. However Christians vehemently disagree, with one Christian blog warning parents to not ‘let Atheists brainwash our children. While this may be an over exaggeration, atheism is on the rise. While the decline Christianity in the western world makes it harder and harder to remain a religious person. Religion is becoming a private matter as more and more secular thinkers mock Christian views. The American Christian news website Mercatornet explored the rise of intolerance, discrimination and hate crimes aimed at Christians across Europe and North America. The article explores how simple acts of discrimination like how in 2009 school aged children were banned from wearing crucifixes in Italian schools, can turn into hate crimes like the defacing of churches and other Christian symbols. The article claimed that these acts were causing some Christians to become private about their religion or leave the religion entirely due to the critiques and attacks of antithesis. While this seems dubious as the article lacks any statistics confirming this theory it is an interesting argument explaining why if humans are so naturally religious, a lot of these religious tendencies disappear in a

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