Category: Religion

Some say that our first Christian visitors landed in Britain in the year 37. Certainly the religion was being practised long before the missionary St. Augustine arrived from Italy in 597. He was sent by the Pope in a time when Europe was experiencing one disaster after another, prompting him to make a big push for conversion. For Britain he selected a senior Benedictine monk called Augustine to head an Italian monastic task force.

They arrived in Kent and acquired a piece of land at Canterbury on which they built two monasteries. One became Canterbury Cathedral and the other St. Augustine’s Abbey, where Augustine was buried seven years later. They found the inhabitants worshipping many gods, including Jesus. Augustine did not speak the language but, with advice and guidance from the Pope, he started to persuade people, including the king of Kent, to concentrate solely on the one Christian god.

After his death, worship of the other gods resurfaced, until the Norman Conquest of 1066. Nevertheless, St. Augustine is remembered not only as the first Archbishop of Canterbury but as the first missionary to stamp a Christian identity onto Britain.

(Image of ruins of St. Augustine’s Abbey: Arjen Bax at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Quakers (or the ‘Religious Society of Friends’) were one of the breakaway religious groups which formed during the 11-year British republic in the mid-17th century. These groups had esoteric names such as the Ranters, the Diggers and the Seekers, but it was the simple, peace-loving, self-empowering ethos of the Quakers that caught on. By 1700 there were 60,000 members, or ‘Friends’.

The idea of their founder, George Fox (1624-91) from Leicestershire, was that people should live each day aware of their own “inner light” of God and not have to rely on priests, church buildings, doctrines or rituals to tell them how to travel on their spiritual path. Although they began as an offshoot of Christianity, the Bible is not the only book from which they take inspiration.

The Quakers have been at the inception of many of our social justice reforms. They profess a non-violent and non-resistant stance and see everyone as equal. Indeed, they were probably the first religious group in the UK to give equal rights to women. Their ‘meetings’ are not led or scripted and can be totally given over to silent meditation. There are estimated to be 15,000 Quakers in the UK today.

(Image: Evelyn Simak at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

In Christian Britain the followers of the Jewish religion, or Judaism, have historically had a mixed welcome. They see Jesus Christ (who would have been Jewish) as nothing more than a preacher and their holy text is the first five books of the Old Testament, from which a list of over 600 commandments has been derived.

Jewish merchants and bankers from western Europe did not arrive until after the Norman Conquest of 1066. However, further bad feeling was generated by their money-lending activities and their apparent wealth. This culminated in a massacre in 1190 of all Jews then living in York. By 1290 the Jewish population had been expelled from the country and it was not until almost four centuries later that they were allowed to return. It is said that this was partly because some Christians thought that a Jewish presence was a prerequisite for the second coming of Christ.

The Jews Relief Act of 1858 gave those professing the Jewish religion all the rights of British subjects. Since then there have been arrivals from eastern Europe ~ during and after WW2, for instance. There are around 260,000 followers of Judaism in the UK. The largest community is in London, with others in Manchester and Gateshead.

(Image: David Dixon at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The ancient Druids were priests and judges in Britain and Ireland in the centuries before Christianity was disseminated. They did not leave any written records, so our meagre knowledge of them comes mainly from folklore, and from the Romans and Greeks, who claimed that they carried out human sacrifices. The Romans massacred the last group of Druids on the Welsh island of Anglesey.

Modern-day Druidism, or Druidry, started as a cultural revival in Britain in the 18th century. In 2010 it was officially recognised as a religion, although it could more aptly be described as a “spiritual path“.  There are estimated to be between 20,000 and 40,000 committed followers, with many thousands more being interested enough to buy books and search for online information on the subject.

There are many ways to practise Druidry, but essentially it is recognising and celebrating humanity’s connection with all of Nature. There are eight important dates on the Druidic calendar, the most famous of which are the Summer and Winter Solstices, since these are marked by gatherings at ancient stone circles and henges such as Stonehenge in Wiltshire.

(Image of Druids at Stonehenge: sandyraidy at Wikimedia Commons / CC0)

In past centuries the Catholic Church played a large part in Britain’s politics, warfare, monarchy and everyday life. It was seen as being the opposite to Protestantism, but today these two parts of Christianity reside more harmoniously together. The head of the Catholic hierarchy is the Pope, who lives in the independent city-state of the Vatican, landlocked by Italy.

Catholic doctrines date back to very different times but are firmly held, so it can be extremely challenging to incorporate them into modern life. For instance, Catholic priests must be male and celibate. Around 8% of the British population is Catholic, a percentage boosted by recent immigration from Europe. Another 6% were brought up in Catholic households but chose to leave the religion when adult.

The Holy Communion is one of the main rituals in the Catholic church. A small wafer made of wheat flour and water is placed on the tongue to represent ingesting Christ’s body, and a sip of red wine is given to symbolise drinking Christ’s blood. Worship of “the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost”, Mary and a slew of saints and martyrs replaced the adoration of multiple Pagan gods in the previous polytheistic religion of the Roman Empire.

(Image: pixabay.com)

The Baptist Church emerged in England in the early 1600s. It spread to Scotland and Wales in the 1860s as well as overseas, and there are now millions of Baptists across the world. In Britain, there are 120,000 church members in 2,000 churches.

Baptists are Christians who originally separated from the Church of England as they had different views on certain matters ~ the baptism of babies, for instance. The Bible does not say that this is necessary and so a Baptist believer will only be baptised once they are old enough to know exactly what it signifies. The baptism itself is also a full immersion into the water rather than just a sprinkling.

Baptists place great store in helping the poor and needy, so their missionary work involves community projects such as running food banks, mother-and-toddler groups and arts activities for those with mental health issues.

(Image: Nigel Chadwick at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

There are 135,000 Jehovah’s Witneses in the UK and most people will have encountered at least two of them, as they are well-known for going door-to-door in pairs, something they are obliged to do in order to carry out their missionary work.

They adhere strictly to the English translation of the Bible and interpret it as a warning against participating in secular life. For example, they do not:

• accept blood transfusions
• celebrate birthdays, Christmas or Easter
• vote in elections
• drink alcohol
• join the Armed Services

and they are discouraged from attending university and seeking high-pressure jobs, as this would clash with their ‘Witnessing’. Their lives are devoted to God and converting as many non-believers as possible before the New Kingdom arrives.

(Image: Bill Henderson at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Church of England (CofE) is the ‘Established’ church of England. This means that its head is the monarch ~ the ‘Defender of the Faith’ ~ and it plays a role in state occasions. Nevertheless, in current surveys only 14% of the population give their religion as CofE. Of those, just over 700,000 regularly attend CofE church services. However, the Christmas service is a different matter altogether, with increasing numbers of people seeing it as part of the festive fun!

The formation of the CofE by King Henry VIII (1491-1547) in 1534 was the Brexit of its day, as it was the breaking away from the Pope as head of the Europe-wide church. In fact, Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was excommunicated by the Pope in 1570, which put an end to her attempt to maintain the elements of Catholicism in CofE matters. Nevertheless, there are CofE churches today whose services are “in the Catholic tradition”, while, at the other end of the spectrum, other CofE churches opt for a modern style with no formal robes, no choir and a sermon tailored to topics of interest.

(Top image of interior of Derby Cathedral: Michael D Beckwith at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

The Methodist Church in Britain evolved out of the discussions between a small group of Oxford University students in the 1730s. Of these, John Wesley (1703-91) from Lincolnshire had the greatest influence on the future path of Methodism. A few years after his death, the Methodists finally broke away from the Church of England in 1795.

Wesley was a Church of England minister and expected his followers to continue to attend CofE churches, but also join small study groups, or ‘classes’, to read the Bible methodically and deeply. He appealed to the public through his open-air preaching, advocating that God’s grace was for everyone, not just the upper classes. This message gained followers from the working-class poor and tied in with socialist politics.

Wesley, who preached daily all over the country, saying “The world is my parish”, was the head of the Methodists ~ called ‘the President’ ~ until his death, but nowadays there is a different one each year. In recent times there has been talk of the Methodists re-joining the Church of England in the face of numbers dropping to around 200,000. In contrast, its exportation to the USA after 1776 has proved to be a huge success, with 8,600,000 members at present.

(Image: Jaggery at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)