Church decline

This is a window in Arnside Parish Church.

The first results of the 2021 Census show that the percentage of the adult population claiming to be Christians has fallen to 39% from about 46% ten years earlier.
The number attending church regularly is something like 7%.



This was the trigger for the fortnightly meeting of our Discussion Group which met for rwo hours this morning. One member led off on the question of whether this ongoing decline was related in any way to the state of our Standards of behaviour.

As you might imagine we covered a huge variety of topics. Clearly for the past 1,000 years the mass of the population was taught how they should behave by the Church. Those days have gone. Although many of us in the older generation have no religious beliefs we still live our lives strongly influenced by Christian morality taught to us in our youth.

We spent some time discussing whether there was a new morality persued with vigour by many of our younger people and which concentrates on concepts of anti racism and anti sexism.

This will give you a taste of our meeting. Of course we have no easy answers but it was a very satisfying and enjoyable meeting.

In two weeks time we will be discussing  “ Russia “.