Religion is not reviving, it’s being forced on us

Editorial by Terry Sanderson

In so many countries in the world, religion is losing adherents. The figures show quite clearly that even in supposedly deeply devout nations, such as the USA and Italy, church attendance is falling while the numbers are rising of those declaring themselves to have no religion.

And yet there is a common theme in newspapers and some books that deny this. Our suspicions of a co-ordinated misinformation campaign are growing. A book called God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World was widely reviewed on its publication earlier this year. It tells us that “faith” has made a dramatic comeback despite previous predictions of its imminent demise.

But “faith” has not made a comeback. As every poll and survey shows, “faith” is on its death bed. What has made a comeback — or more accurately hit the headlines — is violent, regressive, reactionary religion. A few strategically placed bombs, a few hijacked planes and religion is back at the top of the political agenda. But make no mistake, religious observance remains very much a minority pursuit in most Western countries, except the USA. It would be interesting to see just how devout Muslim countries would be if religion were not enforced with an iron fist. And in some of them, for example in Syria and Egypt, the proportion of the population that is secular or liberal is much greater than generally supposed.

The idea that suddenly everyone is flocking back to religion, that we are fascinated by it, and that people are queuing up to study theology, are all untrue. But yet we still have to endure the endless claims from people like Andrew Brown at the Guardian’s Comment is Free religion blog that we have to find out about religion, respect it and discuss it endlessly.

Now, in a move that shows a quite breathtaking contempt for its readers, the New Statesman informs us that it is to establish a “Faith” blog of its own. In the announcement of this new feature, Sholto Byrnes, its editor, writes:

“Going on past correspondences, the sympathies of most New Statesman readers are with the ‘God-free’. There seems to be a widespread feeling that a magazine of the left should not only display a preference for secularism but for atheism, too: that we should take our editorial line from Richard Dawkins and agree with him that religion is, at best, as silly as believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden but is, more generally, ‘dangerous nonsense’ that devalues human life.”

He then goes on to say, in effect, that it doesn’t matter what the readers think – they’re going to have religion whether or not they want it. If they don’t like it, they’re branded “intolerant”.

Mr Byrnes then assures us: “Just as pertinently, to refuse to engage with faith would be to close one’s eyes to the reality of belief, both here, where in the last census nearly 80 per cent of the population agreed they had a religious affiliation, and abroad.”

Not only is the quoted figure incorrect, but the sentiment is wrong, too. Endlessly discussing religion feeds this erroneous idea that everyone thinks it terribly important and need to know all about the various sectarian differences that keep religions at each other’s throats.

Many will not want to spend their time learning the minutiae about religion nor engage with its theological niceties (or nastinesses). My suspicion is that many more New Statesman subscribers than the editor thinks will be voting with their credit cards, by leaving them in their pockets.

See also: Outside of faith, a rising tide of ‘nones’