Statistics for Secularists and Humanists: Some Gentle Reminders
Just tweaking the nose of the “religion in the UK has been in inexorable and historically inevitable decline for 50 years and is on its deathbed” merchants…
- Membership of National Secular Society in 2007: Around 7,000. Source and explanation.
- Growth in membership of the Church of England in London Diocese (i.e., North of the River) between 1990 and 2006: 24,000 (from 45,000 to 69,000). Source.
Notes
- The National Secular Society do not (as far as I am aware and I’ve looked at several) publish membership figures in their annual reports.
- The Church of England publishes detailed figures every year.
- I usually use the Church of England as an example as that is the body I know best.
Categories: Humanism / Secularism, Knockabout
Why would anyone join the NSS? Surely if you are apathetic to religion you can’t be arsed to join a society saying so? What an odd thing to do. What do they talk about? How they don’t believe in something that doesn’t exist? What a strange premise for a society.
Chesterton had much to say on that. They predict Christianity is on its last legs but it never dies. Truth can’t.
I believe I’m right in saying that Issac Newton calculated that the Second Coming would have to be in the 2100s because, at the rate that Christianity was declining, there’d only be one left.
xD.
Like Garbo said, why would anyone who is non-religious actually bother to join a group saying that they don’t believe?
With Christianity, the faith may not be declining, but the religion is.
>With Christianity, the faith may not be declining, but the religion is.
Interesting distinction.