Secular bigotry

• National Secular Society's 'seasonal message'
• Ekklesia's excellent analysis of it
• Church Mouse blog: And a miserable Christmas to you too

What the National Secular Society doesn't seem to realise is that the rise of religiosity is very different from previous such resurgences, as it's much more about individual spirituality and building community and being compassionate than the bigotry which is actually increasingly the preserve of a noisy few. For example: Stonewall did a survey recently and found that most Christians were far more tolerant of gays and lesbians than the doctrines of their churches would suggest. Needless to say this received almost no coverage in the mainstream media, whereas Lilian Ladele etc got loads of coverage.

Research has shown that most people think in terms of "occult" concepts like reincarnation and karma, rather than traditional Christian ones like salvation. Much of the renewed interest in religion and spirituality has gone into non-Christian practices, and even Christians do stuff like yoga and meditation and crystals.

contamination of data?

For anyone who is wondering whether me posting my reflective research diary on a blog will skew my data, I am pretty sure that it won't, because none of the five interviewees I have chosen actually reads my blogs, and this blog is not publicised anywhere (though it can be found via my Blogger profile). If I was going to interview a lot more people on this topic, I'd probably put this on Livejournal and restrict it to a smaller audience.

Once people have been interviewed, I may well direct them to this blog if they express an interest in finding out more about the subject of the research.