Quarter of Christians do not believe in the resurrection
Nearly one in four Christians in Britain does not believe in the resurrection of Jesus, a poll has claimed.
Fewer than one-in-three accept word-for-word the Easter story with another 41 per cent saying that some sections should not be taken literally. But the BBC local radio poll found 23 per cent do not believe in the resurrection at all.
Among Christians who regularly go to church, 57 per cent completely accept the story of Jesus but five per cent do not.
Nine per cent of non- religious people believe in the resurrection but one per cent believe it literally.
The survey of more than 2,000 people conducted by ComRes also found that 46 per cent of the public in general believe in some form of life after death, including a fifth of nonreligious people.
The Bishop of Manchester, the Right Reverend David Walker, said: “This important and welcome survey proves that many British people… hold core Christian beliefs.”
In a new ComRes poll commissioned by the BBC, 23 per cent of those who call themselves Christians say they do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus. The total surveyed – including non-believers – was split exactly 50-50 on whether there is a life after death.
I am glad ComRes did not question me, because I would have wasted their time um-ing and ah-ing. As a lifelong, churchgoing Christian, I say the creed – sometimes the Nicene Creed; in this season of Lent, the Apostles’ – every Sunday. It states that Jesus rose from the dead, and expresses belief in (as the Apostles’ Creed puts it) “the resurrection of the body [which means of all bodies on judgment day, not just that of Jesus 2,000 years ago] and the life everlasting”.
As a believer, I have no difficulty in assenting to these things as essential aspects of the faith to which I belong, but it does not follow that I regard them as normal statements of fact. Indeed, the only such statement in the entire creed is that Jesus was “crucified under Pontius Pilate”. (Even this claim is bitterly contested by Muslims, who see it as the first and greatest example of fake news.) All the rest is theological.
So if you ask me whether I “really” think there is an afterlife, I will be a bit evasive. The nearest I can come to a truthful answer is that I find the afterlife completely unimaginable, but I accept it as part of the logic of Christ’s redemption of the world, in which I do believe.
Similarly, I do believe – with occasional doubts – that Jesus “really” did rise from the dead, but I often come across fellow churchgoers who don’t believe this as a historical fact. I would not dare to say that this makes them bad Christians. After all, if we could all be perfectly confident what we mean by what we say then faith would be no more complicated than one’s bank statement.
This week, on Good Friday, we shall be reminded that when Pilate asked Jesus: “What is truth?” he “went out again” without waiting for an answer.
His is a question that cannot be settled over an entire human life, let alone in a 15-minute phone call for an opinion poll. It is said that Ivanka Trump’s tweets about the death of children from Assad’s gas attacks drove forward her father’s military reaction, and that Mr Trump acted because of the photographs of the atrocities he saw.
I suspect these are exaggerations. Even this president works – rightly – under severe constraints. He cannot order military attacks on a whim. But it raises a question for all of us. Should atrocity reporting – especially films and pictures – trigger action in a way that “mere” facts don’t?
Normal human beings naturally respond with sympathy when vividly shown the suffering of others, and it would be a worse world if they didn’t. After all, the fundamental reason we wish to stop gas attacks is because they are wrong. Pictures of their effects can remind us of their wrongness.
Equally, however, a picture of a child in pain does not in itself prove anything bad. Doctors and surgeons sometimes have to cause such pain to do their work properly: a picture of a child screaming under their ministrations could easily be obtained, but if it were taken as proof of cruelty that would be the end of decent medical treatment.
Even true photographs of an atrocity – which is almost certainly what we are dealing with in the Syrian case – do not tell you what the right policy response is.
Being the father of twins, I found this attack particularly distressing, but my personal reaction should surely make no difference – even if I were president of the United States. The atrocities would not have been less atrocious if they had not involved twins, or if no one had photographed them.
To think otherwise is to encourage every propagandist in the world to photoshop bogus atrocities, and to condemn every unphotogenic victim to neglect. Why did John Platt take the case of the daughter he removed from school for a Disney World holiday so high? Most parents sometimes want to take their children out, and some grumble if refused; but few invoke “rights”. Mr Platt blames “the state’” but in fact it is a question of the school.
A school is an institution. It has to think of everyone it teaches, and if it considers that the preferences of one parent damages the interests of all, no law must force it to give in to him. You could not give children a decent education any other way.
A footnote to the case is that the child’s parents are estranged. The child’s mother had already taken the girl out of school for a separate holiday, although the school had refused permission and she had not consulted her husband. Was the case more a marital quarrel than a point of principle?
Another footnote is that Mr Platt was fined, at first instance, only £60 for removing his daughter. That must be much less than his discount on the holiday price made possible by its term-time date.
Nearly 20,000 people were taken to court for similar offences in 2015. The fine will have to rise a lot before such parents make a loss on their misbehaviour.