The Words of the Huish Family
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The Words of the Huish Family |
Today the results of the 2011 Census of England and Wales were released. The information about religion was of particular interest to me. It's encouraging to see that the vast majority of people in this country still self-identify as religious, especially Christian. There has been an increase in people who confidently self-identify with no religion, and also a significant number of people who didn't answer the question. Is it because they weren't sure how to answer? Were the protesting at the question? Aside from this small percentage who didn't answer this question in the census, the rest of the information is quite revealing and can be quite helpful.
The areas with the highest proportion of people identifying with "no religion" are Norwich, Brighton and Hove and 3 areas in south Wales. If we take our evangelical duties seriously, these should be the regions we should seek to evangelise as urgently as possible. While I'm cautious to equate lack of religion with lack of morality and/or spiritual belief, I am alarmed that over 40% of those populations don't have a faith they feel they can relate to, and I hope that our universal, unifying faith could appeal to and serve them.
It's encouraging to see that there were a number of Unificationists who confidently wrote "Unification Church" in answer to the question of religion, as this screen capture from the film illustrates. (It's in the middle under Hindu and above Sikh; click on the image to see more clearly.)
I don't feel like we're in competition with other faiths, aiming to gain the largest congregations, but I do feel competitive about giving God's blessings to as many people as possible. I recently completed an 8-part sermon series about allowing God to bless our church more, and I regularly echoed my motivation that I want our church to be blessed so that our church can bless the rest of our communities, and our nation. And since we have the greatest blessings available to humankind, we should be greedy to receive more from God so that we can give more to our neighbours. I celebrate the other faith communities in their religious devotion, especially as they take all sorts of people of varying spiritual maturity and raise them up through their programmes of religious exercise. Perhaps there's a lot we can learn from about how to help others grow spiritually. But my belief remains that as recipients of True Parents' blessing we have the greatest realm of grace. In fact, next February we will receive the latest update, and I hope our blessed central families will all have the necessary specifications necessary to download the Foundation Day Registration Blessing. In case you're worried about your own device, please leave a comment.
I'm glad that faith is an important part of life for many in the UK and I hope that Unificationists can become an ever bigger contributor to the lives of this nation's people.