HISTORY AND THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS IN ENGLAND TODAY

England is now a multi religious, multi cultural and multi ethnic country. In the last 50 years, England moved from a country dominated by the quasi Protestant Christian faith, with a small but active Catholic Christian minority plus an even smaller Jewish population, to a more secular country accommodating, if somewhat reluctantly and apprehensively , people from all the worlds major religions. Also in the last fifty years, leaders in the Church of England who had previously preached strict moral codes (rules of behavior in day to day life) started to endorse (or at least not restrain) a freer lifestyle made possible by scientific inventions. (The main scientific invention fuelling this cultural revolution was of course the female contraceptive pill.) The always more conservative Roman Catholic church and the newer Asian immigrants practicing the Islamic faith take a much more reserved view on newer freedoms and equalities now available to women following the advances in medical science. These more conservative faiths would point to the breakdown of the family unit, the increases in divorce and the increase in sexually transmitted disease as examples. Indeed Muslim women who before 1970 were pressing for more liberal rules for women within Islam were both repulsed and frightened by how they observed their ?Christian? female contemporaries embrace this new freedom. This killed off the liberal thoughts of this movement which resulted in the return to the stricter codes of the past as is manifested by their veils and other distinguishing and sometimes even harsher dress rules.

Over the years religious differences could have either generated interest and cultural exchange, or envy, jealousy, hatred and religious wars. Unfortunately more often than not the latter, why? What are the differences which can be so destructive? Is there a common thread which should be working as a harmonizing factor? The facts behind this debate will be discussed on this site.