According to a well-known American Rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, Britain has become, “one of the most godless societies on earth”.
Mega churches in the States attract thousands of worshippers, whilst in the UK even Church of England affiliation dropped from 40% of the population in 1983 to 23% in 2009, with the continuing mergers of parishes. Rabbi Boteach ascribes this partly to the country's “highly centralized religious structure.”
America has no centralised church, no official religion and the churches have to be entrepreneurial and innovative. From the piety of the pilgrims to the faith-based values of many of the country's leaders, the country’s foundation and development was largely fuelled by religious fervor.
Despite her past in leading the world in many moral areas like the abolition of the slave trade, “Britain – once the most advanced nation on earth, which gave the world parliamentary democracy and its inimitable centers of higher learning – is today more famous for exporting reality shows like Big Brother andProject Catwalk.”
And while there are many factors in this decline, Rabbi Boteach argues that “the new, militant atheism that is becoming characteristic of Britain is a key reason. Atheism is a philosophy of nihilism in which nothing is sacred and all is an accident. While it has some brief, flashy moments, life is purposeless and meaningless. There is no soul to illuminate and no spirit to enliven.”
“It just goes to show how important it is to keep one's faith. Were Britain to rediscover its own, it might rediscover a lost sense of mission and a once-glorious sense of purpose.”
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