Religion: Christianity in England

England brought her religious complexion out into the sunlight last week when the preliminary results of two questionnaires were announced. The ponderous “lower middle class,” which historians delight in calling the backbone of the nation, voted 75% solidly for Christianity in the London Daily News poll. But the suave sophisticates, the dreamy litterateurs who read the Nation and Athenaeum (London weekly) leaned toward atheism, agnosticism.

Late returns on the Nation and Athenaeum’s poll:

1) Do you believe in a personal God? Yes, 537; No, 736.

2) Do you believe in the divinity of Christ? Yes, 474; No, 819.

3) Do you believe in any form of Christianity? Yes, 666; No, 595.

4) Do you believe in personal immortality? Yes, 578; No, 646.

5) Do you regard the Bible inspired in a sense in which literature of your own country could not be said to be inspired? Yes, 377; No, 918.

In the London Daily News poll, which had thus far brought in 14,043 replies: 71% believe in a personal God, 72% in personal immortality, 75% in some form of Christianity, 63% regard the Bible as inspired, 71% voluntarily attend religious services regularly, although only 38% accept the Biblical story of creation as historical.

Said the Daily News editorially:

“These answers justify the belief that the creed of the ordinary middle-class Englishman is still what might be described as ‘common sense’ Christianity and has not yet been much affected by the spread of agnosticism.”