Dawkins' survey and what is a real Christian?

Drawing on my previous blog post about Dawkins' recept poll, here's my item for the April parish magazine.

From the Rectory

The militant atheist Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (UK) commissioned a poll, the results of which hit the headlines earlier this year. The research was in response to debates around the Census: whether or not it should ask people about their religion and what we should make of the results. Campaigning atheists like Professor Dawkins don’t like the fact that in the 2001 Census, 72% of people called themselves Christians. In England and Wales 390,127 people described their religion as Jedi (of Star Wars-fame), but that’s another story!

The Dawkins research wanted to show that most of those who call themselves Christian in this country don’t know much about the faith they profess and don’t practice it in the ways you might expect. For example, 49% of those who called themselves Christians hadn’t been to church (except maybe for weddings or funerals) in the last year. That’s no great news, perhaps. Let me say that whether or not you think of yourself as a Christian, you’re always very welcome at any of our services! Let’s do our bit to change that particular statistic!

Interestingly, 48% of people calling themselves Christian either believed at least to some extent in reincarnation or said they weren’t sure about it, while 42% showed a similar openness to astrology. 36% of “Christians” were “not sure” or even less convinced about the existence of heaven. Only 35% of “Christians” could pick out the first book of the New Testament from a short multiple-guess list. Answers on a postcard! Clearly the church has its work cut out. In our parishes We want to provide lots of opportunities for people to investigate the Christian faith and think about what it means to them. Our forthcoming Identity Course, details of which are on page *** would be a great way to do that.

Perhaps the most important question in the Dawkins research is “what does being a Christian mean to you personally?” If you think of yourself as a Christian it would be great to think about that. The top answer was “I try to be a good person” (58%) and if respondents could only choose one thing, that answer still won, with 40% singling that out as the key thing. Of course it’s good to try to be a good person: Christians should do that! But I have to say I think that’s a very limited definition of what a Christian is. After all, many people of other faiths and none would say that they try to be good people. It seems to me that, being a Christian has to be defined by a relationship with Christ – the clue is in the title. If I’d been asked what being a Christian means to me I’d have ticked “I believe in the teachings of Jesus” and “I have accepted Jesus as my Lord and Saviour”, perhaps amongst other things, and if I could only pick one answer I would have gone for that second one. I’d say that’s what a real Christian is: someone who trusts in Jesus as Saviour and Lord.  

I think being a Christian is very much about admitting that we are not really good people. We all sin “through negligence, through weakness and through our own deliberate fault”, as our service book says. We need Jesus not only to show us how to try be good people and to help us to do so, but above all to rescue us from the consequences of failing to be the people that, in our better moments, we’d like to be.