https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/44b9d476-b741-3d7b-b2ce-15afdfd76604/ss_with-christianity-in-decline%2C.html8/23/16
With Christianity in Decline, Britain Sees Rise of Humanist ‘Pastors’London (CNSNews.com) – With participation in traditional faiths at near-record lows, Britain is seeing the rise of what humanists describe as “pastors” for the non-religious.
Last month the University of Westminster in London broke new ground by appointing its first official secular advisor for students.
The move followed efforts by the British Humanist Association since 2014 to train more than 100 volunteers to go into schools, hospitals and prisons in order to provide counseling support for those who don’t believe in a deity.
Early this year hospitals run by Britain’s National Health Service in Leicester also saw their first humanist appointed to the local chaplaincy team.
Government guidelines published in 2015 obligate medical trusts in England to provide pastoral support on an equal basis to those who are atheists as well as the religious.
This month, the landmark British Social Attitudes Survey showed that decline in religious belief in Britain has plateaued out but is still near its historic low point.
The survey, which has been run since 1983 and surveys roughly 3,000 British residents on a range of social-related issues, said that that 48 percent reported having “no religion.”
Ian Simpson, a senior researcher at NatCen, the social research firm that runs the survey, said that if anything this showed a small rebound for Christianity and other religions in the United Kingdom.
“The proportion of people saying they have no religion peaked at 51 percent in 2009 and has plateaued since then,” he said. “It appears that the steady decline of religion in Britain has come to a halt, at least for now.”
In the first year of the survey, only 31 percent of respondents described themselves as non-religious.
With nearly half of the population now describing themselves as not having a belief in God of gods, the British Humanist Association (BHA) says those people need a “listening ear” during difficult times in their lives, much in the same way that the religious have.
“Religious chaplains work to support people at some of life’s most trying times, or in moments of emotional difficulty or moral uncertainty,” said BHA chief executive Andrew Copson. “For a very long time, non-religious people haven’t been able to benefit in that same way from having a non-judgmental person to speak to who shares their outlook on the world.”
The association said it has also trained and accredited more than 300 people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to lead humanist-themed ceremonies for occasions such as weddings and funerals.
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