Would Joseph Rowntree have praised or damned religion?
Reporting a recent piece of research published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Times adopts this approach:
A CHARITY set up by an ardent Christian to fight slavery and the opium trade has identified a new social evil of the 21st century - religion.
A poll by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation uncovered a widespread belief that faith - not just in its extreme form - was intolerant, irrational and used to justify persecution.
Pollsters asked 3,500 people what they considered to be the worst blights on modern society, updating a list drawn up by Rowntree, a Quaker, 104 years ago.
The responses may well have dismayed him. The researchers found that the “dominant opinion” was that religion was a “social evil”.
Would it have dismayed him or confirmed his beliefs? After all, as a Quaker, Rowntree was a non-conformist. No other faith group has done more to promote secularism worldwide than the Quakers and as a group which has been at the sharp end of organised religion in the past, they have some considerable experience of religion as a social evil.
Besides, the full report paints a more nuanced picture. Religion is only listed as the ninth “evil”, while a decline in values is listed third. If people are decoupling religion from values that can only be a good thing and I suspect Rowntree would have approved as well.
Rate this:
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...Tags: evil, joseph rowntree, quakers, religion
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:37 pm
“If people are decoupling religion from values that can only be a good thing”.
Depends which you values you mean. There has been perhaps a bit too much decoupling from some of religion’s more attractive values.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:44 am
Possibly, but the religions themselves are more to blame for that than anything else.