The Independent on Sunday yesterday included a mention of the Faith in their Easter Special: I believe…

Every week in The Independent on Sunday, a public figure talks about their beliefs, but for Easter we asked the great and the good one question: do you believe in God?

By Peter Stanford
Published: 16 April 2006
Every year church-going statistics for the mainstream denominations fall further, and predictions abound that the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of “the Sea of Faith” first prophesied by Matthew Arnold in “Dover Beach” in 1867 is finally complete.

Yet there is another, quieter story to be told - of the many people who are seeking spiritual enlightenment, not in designated houses of God but in their heads and hearts, working with the denominational baggage of their childhood, but also picking without prejudice through the various holy books and traditions to find a bespoke credo, tailor-made to their needs.

Will Young and Noel Edmonds are among those who have recently outed themselves as “religious”, in the broadest of senses. Dermot O’Leary has revealed he says his prayers each night and goes to Mass but dismisses much of the official teaching of the Roman Catholic church of his upbringing. Rock star Nick Cave writes lyrics suffused by Old Testament imagery and spiritual hunger, and the director Rebecca Miller, daughter of the religious arch-sceptic Arthur Miller, described herself at the launch of her new film The Ballad of Jack and Rose as spiritual but “in a theological limbo because I haven’t found a dogma I feel I can belong to”.

We are witnessing not the death of religion but rather the privatisation of faith. The institutional churches, with their catechisms and rule books, their faults and hypocrisies, may no longer hold such widespread appeal as once they did, but the search for a greater purpose and pattern to life than what can be bought in shops or proved under a laboratory microscope continues unabated. As it always has. Providing an answer to that yearning for there to be something more, something other, is fundamental to the human condition and is arguably why organised religion grew up in the first place.

Once faith was characterised in our secular and scientific age as something for the elderly when they began to worry about the approach of death. The heads bowed before the altars were all grey. But today, inside and outside the denominations, there is a new generation of younger souls on a private spiritual pilgrimage. They are unafraid to break the taboo that has existed since the 1960s and own up to being interested in religion as something more than a sociological dinosaur. And they are unafraid too of the stereotype that says being openly religious is simply uncool.

Omid Djalili, probably the UK’s best known Bah?’?, was amongst ‘the great and the good’ who spoke about his faith:

‘You have to contribute to an advancing civilisation’

Omid Djalili, comedian, Baha’i

One of the major messages of the Baha’i faith is religious unity.

You practise your faith in a very personal way, but with two purposes: to understand yourself and to contribute to an ever-advancing civilisation. This means you strive for excellence, which really appeals to me - I try to be the funniest comedian I can possibly be. Everything you do has a bearing - the Baha’i writings indicate that when you die you’ll move to another plane of existence but that your identity will stay intact.

Baha’u'llah left us an enormous amount of writings, which we read from each morning and evening, as well as saying prayers. Well, I sometimes go for weeks without, but then I realise how beneficial it feels.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, media, religious freedom, UK Baha’i Review

Technorati Tags: Independent on Sunday

What better to do on a holiday than to spend the day with Alex & Charlie, Ethan & Emily, and to take them to Brixworth Country Park, where they could eat ice cream and have fun in the children’s play area.

Emily and Ethan ran around like mad things in the children’s play area. Even so, they still had lots of energy and we went off to this pond to look for frogs.

And then we walked past the lake and back to the car.

Technorati Tags: children, family, Northamptonshire, UK

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