By
Charles C. W. Cooke
The
Telegraph reports:
Christianity could be
facing a catastrophic collapse in Britain according to official figures
suggesting it is declining 50 per cent faster than previously thought.
A new analysis of the
2011 census shows that a decade of mass immigration helped mask the scale of
decline in Christian affiliation among the British-born population – while
driving a dramatic increase in Islam, particularly among the young.
It suggests that only
a minority of people will describe themselves as Christians within the next
decade, for first time.
Meanwhile almost one
in 10 under 25s in Britain is now a Muslim.
Many
historians hold that, along with many of the Protestant areas of Western
Europe, the British “lost their religion” after the First World War. After
1918, Church attendance dropped consistently (except for during the Second
World War) and Durkheim’s notion that Christianity was “superior” was
shattered, not only by the horrors of total war but by the sight of those
“superior” Christians killing each other on an industrial scale.
Nevertheless,
the country still remained nominally “Christian.” Whether or not the majority
of the British people actually believed in God or not after 1918, they remained
more than likely to regard themselves as being “Christian,” internalizing the
values taught by the established church. This, it appears, is changing
– and quickly:
Initial results from
the 2011 census published last year showed that the total number of people in
England and Wales who described themselves as Christian fell by 4.1 million – a
decline of 10 per cent.
But new analysis from
the Office for National Statistics shows that that figure was bolstered by 1.2
million foreign-born Christians, including Polish Catholics and evangelicals
from countries such as Nigeria.
They disclosed that
there were in fact 5.3 million fewer British-born people describing themselves
as Christians, a decline of 15 per cent in just a decade.
At the same time the
number of Muslims in England and Wales surged by 75 per cent – boosted by
almost 600,000 more foreign born followers of the Islamic faith.
Any
Brit who dared suggest that the importation of so many immigrants into a
tiny, crowded island — into a country whose constitution and stability are
ultimately reposed in the liberal traditions of the parent culture — would
inexorably change things was, during the Blair years at least, dismissed as a
“racist.” Any Brit who argued that a multi-ethnic society is all fine and dandy
but that a multi-cultural society is a recipe for segregation and
collapse was flatly ignored. Anybody who suggested that immigration from
areas of the world spectacularly different to Britain should be limited
was accused of intolerance. Indeed at times, merely mentioning the
word “immigration” was enough to invite a stern look and the attendant
suggestion that it was somehow beyond the pale for the people of a nation to assert
that they might control who joins their society. To suggest that they
might as a matter of general policy privilege those areas of the world
full of people who are more like the natives was “profiling.”
Now,
as the deleterious consequences of uncontrolled immigration in Britain become
apparent to the British, those who willfully allowed it to spin out of
control have been forced to
apologize and their critics have been allowed to speak again.
Even Left-leaning Think Tank “Demos,” which was closely involved with the Blair
government’s disastrous immigration policy, told Russia Today last week that,
“We do have an
integration problem. The“changing ethnic composition” of the British capital is
causing a large exodus of ethnic white out of the city, he added. Goodhart
went on to say that the problem of integration was not confined to Great
Britain and is prevalent all around the EU despite attempts to eradicate
segregation.
This,
as anybody paying attention could have told him, was utterly predictable. Of course
there is a material difference between a country’s importing people with the
same religious, political, cultural, and legal assumptions as the native
population and a country’s importing people who lack those shared assumptions —
especially when the government of that country dismisses calls for assimilation
(and warnings that it is not happening) as cultural imperialism.
Back
on the Telegraph:
Keith Porteous Wood,
executive director of the National Secular Society, said the long-term
reduction of Christianity, particularly among young people, was now
“unstoppable”.
“In another 20 years
there are going to be more active Muslims than there are churchgoers,” he said.
There’ll
always be an England. Right?
The
rest here.
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