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WHY A STAGGERING 93% OF US WILL SKIP CHURCH TODAY

Christmas Day is not about going to church for 93 per cent of Brits

Friday December 25,2009

By Julia White for Express.co.uk

Comment Speech Bubble Have your say(7)

CHRISTMAS has lost its religious significance in Britain according to an exclusive Express.co.uk poll which reveals only seven per cent of people will be attending church today.

A massive 93 per cent of Brits are spending Christmas Day eating turkey, drinking champagne and opening presents - but not going to church.

And a mere 11 per cent had the intention of attending Midnight Mass last night on Christmas Eve, according to the survey.

This compares with an overwhelming 86 per cent of people who said they sent Christmas cards.

If you’re not going to church on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day then why are you celebrating Christmas?

Daily Express columnist Ann Widdecombe

And it also comes as a stark contrast to the 47 per cent of Express.co.uk users who told us they would be going to church.

Daily Express columnist Ann Widdecombe told Express.co.uk: “If you’re not going to church on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day then why are you celebrating Christmas?  

“What does Christmas mean if you are not going to church?”

Young people are even less likely to attend church over the festive period than older people, the study by Opinion Matters revealed.

A huge 87 per cent of 16-24-year-olds are opting out, compared with only 72 per cent of over 55s.

Ms Widdecombe told Express.co.uk political correctness is the reason for the low attendance figures.

She said: “Political correctness is surpressing Christianity. You can no longer say what you think because you be accused of offending other faiths.   

“Christmas lights have to be called ‘winter lights’ instead and that is having an impact on younger generations and schools.”

Of those surveyed, 52 per cent said they were Christian, 39 per cent said they did not follow a religion and nine per cent said they followed another religion.

Women are more likely to attend church over Christmas than men, with only 11 per cent of men said they would spend the holy day there, compared with 14 per cent of women.

Rector Thomas Holme told Express.co.uk low numbers of church attendance are down to secularisation.

He said: “The country has become much more secular.

“’When am I going to church?’ is still very much down on the list of thoughts at Christmas.

“I am not encouraged by the future of the church and organised religion – it is in decline.”

A poll of Express.co.uk readers showed that healthy 47 per cent - compared with seven per cent in the country as a whole - would be going to church on Christmas Day.

One user posted on our Have Your Say message board: "I have always attended Midnight mass and until last year sang in the choir. For me Christmas has always started with the midnight service."

But others said the day had a very different meaning.

One said: "My Christmas is spending time with the family and making their Christmas magical just as my parents made mine when I was a child."

While another poster went further, saying: "The only church I will visit this Christmas is the Church Inn for a drink."

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

CHURCH

25.12.09, 3:32pm

God help us Broen and co won't

• Posted by: johnheppell • Report Comment

THE TRUTH DESTROYS RELIGION.

25.12.09, 2:17pm

No getting away from it religion in the West is disappearing like a puddle of water on a hot summers day.

Science has and is dismantling the myths and the clap trap. Religion only ever came about to explain the unexplainable.

It is no accident religion is failing in educated societies, and thriving in third world, why do the Taliban destroy schools, the lads have cottoned on: control needs an ignorant flock to be truly successful.

Then there are the suicide bombers that are promised two dozen virgins if they blow themselves up taking innocent people with them, what kind of god do they worship?

Following that train of thought where are they going to find that many virgins from in this day and age, unless they are complete mingers, haaaahhaaaaa that would be ironic.

• Posted by: DukeVonCarpet • Report Comment

DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING NEVER STOPS.

25.12.09, 2:13pm

Those that realised some thing at 11 knew nothing at 11 except what had been told to them by adults. Before 11 they were ten and 9 hardly able to read. When I was 11 many encyclopaedias and teachers mouthed various truths that recent science and archaeology has either confirmed or proven wrong. For instance many still believe that the Zygote is how all forms of life look and still appears in Evolutionary books. Though long ago acknowledges as yet another fraud as was Piltdown man and the fact that the Coelacanth was the first fish to walk on land. Yet people still mouth these things as fact because they heard it once and have not kept up with recent developments .

My children could read Readers Digest stories and report them to me from the age of eight and they did this every day. It took time for them to develop. Though well read and studied all qualified as Lawyers Accountants etc, they still only know a fraction of what I know from 56 years of study and lecturing. Christ was only Baptised at the age of 30. So to say you realised something at 11 means some biased person told you something that you believed and have still not checked up on. Incidentally isn’t that is how most get into their beliefs.

LET ME ASK THOSE PEOPLE WHO SAY THE BIBLE IS RUBBISH THE FOLLOWING:

• How did we know about Diffusion of Light and Gravity that Sir Isaac Newton Discovered?

• That there are rivers at the bottom of the sea known and written about a thousands of years ago, yet our civilization only discovered that fact in 1960 when Jacques Cousteau went down in the Bathescape Treist to the bottom of the Atlantic and reported fresh water rivers down there that made the Amazon look like a trickle ?

• Where did we find out about the number of stars, roundness of the earth when the World said it was flat?

• That the seas were deep with huge valleys when the world thought they were shallow and sandy bottomed?

• Quarantine for sick people only rediscovered during the middle ages

• That there were ocean currents that until we found them it took us many months and many deaths on our ships to get to America?

• That the ancient Kingdoms of Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre plus many other civilizations were there?

• The Hydrological cycle clearly laid out thousands of years ago long before we discovered it. These are but a few examples but there are hundreds more.

• Where did Naustrodamus a Jew get many of his long term prophecies from?

• Where is the future History of the world written in great detail that a cursory study of History will confirm.

Where is all this information written for all to see but few actually read because they believe the lies of others who want and have power over them. Remember the Catholic Church killed anyone who touched or read the Bible and called them heretics. Whole cities of protestants/heretics throughout Europe/Christendom were wiped out by this powerful church who controlled the kings of Europe by what was found to be a fake “ THE GIFT OF CONSTANTINE”. It was a parchment written in Gold that gave the Pope power over the Kings of Europe until it was revealed as a fraud. This church has still not repented of all this killing through the Kings and their minions that amounts to tens of millions murdered.

The Bible is a source that has all of the above and hundreds of other facts put there by a loving Heavenly father to confound the critics. In This way he gives you freedom and knowledge from Priests, Popes and Kings.

• Posted by: Insite • Report Comment

RELIGION

25.12.09, 1:15pm

I died from a cardiac arrest some 19 years ago, Iwas very lucky that I had just been taken to hospital and they revived me-I am still here!!! Prior to this I had attend church services,but have not been since. I can still see the total blackness and hear the silence I experienced. I decided that religion,what ever faith was passed down to us by people with the gift of the gab many many years ago-I wont name them. We are just a breed of animal, I wonder who lions,tigers ect pray to?

• Posted by: noeu • Report Comment

STAGGERING ... I HOPE TO BE !

25.12.09, 10:58am

Lots of us non church goers realised at about the age of 11 that all religions are based in primitive superstition. Not having a rational explanation for something is not sufficient reason to invent one. As for 'Christmas', Northern tribes were celebrating the passing of mid-winters day with a few days of rest and feasting long before the so called immaculate conception.

• Posted by: Hughie1 • Report Comment

THE FOOL SAYS THERE IS NO GOD

25.12.09, 6:32am

1 Kings ch.8 V.7
And the Lord said to Samuel: Hearken to the voice of the people in all that they say to thee. For they have not rejected thee, but me, that I should not reign over them.

Jeremias 4. 22

For my foolish people have not known me: they are foolish and senseless children: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.

We forsake our God at our peril.

• Posted by: Lagenda • Report Comment