It's tough out there for any religion these days. Heck, even the Jedi Knights are having a tough time recruiting. In searching for a subject to write about today, I encountered this:
The people of England and Wales may be turning their backs on religion in their droves, with 14 million now saying they have no faith, but the remaining believers appear to be showing greater diversity of belief than ever before. Asked what religion they were, 6,242 answered Heavy Metal, 1,893 said they were Satanists and 650 said they were New Age.
At the last census in 2001 there was a campaign to encourage people to answer the question with Jedi, and around 330,000 did so. But the force is apparently on the wane according to Tuesday's figures with 176,632 describing themselves as Jedi Knights.
Even so, the grouping, named after the fictional good guys in the Star Wars films, remains the biggest single category after the leading faiths of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Judaism.
It ranked higher than followers of other established religions, including Rastafarians (just 7,906 in England and Wales), Jains (20,288) and Baha'i (5,021).
Pagans ranked highly with 56,620 adherents, while 11,766 identified their religion as Wicca and 4,189 said they were druids. All of them scored more highly than Scientology, the church whose figurehead member is the Hollywood star Tom Cruise. Despite building high street branches and a major London HQ, only 2,418 people said they followed the belief system. A total of 29,267 people described their "religion" as atheist while slightly more, 32,382, said they were agnostic.
So, there you have it. People are turning to none of the above much more quickly than anything else.
We are all quite blessed that God is patient with his children. Of this, the Bible says in Hosea, "The people of Israel are going to live a long time stripped of security and protection, without religion and comfort, godless and prayerless. But in time they’ll come back, these Israelites, come back looking for their God and their David-King. They’ll come back chastened to reverence before God and his good gifts, ready for the End of the story of his love."
God is waiting for us all to return to Him. We simply have to hope, for the sake of many others, that He remains patient.
1 comment:
I have a hard time believing that people who have actually encountered Jesus would reject him(though I guess they might). I therefore assume they haven't really encountered Him but have probably been presented with a sham Jesus or one concealed or made unrecognizable by "religion." Just a thought.
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