God is a bloke

A survey of over a thousand people in Britain says that while most people still see a place for religion in modern life, as many as 73% of Christians surveyed said they considered God to be male.

George Pitcher on the blog Faithbook at the Telegraph website reports:

A survey of 1,050 people carried out on behalf of the Movement for Reform Judaism in Britain, which speaks for around a quarter of Britain’s 266,740 Jews, found 62 per cent considered God to be male, with only 1 per cent thinking of God as female.

Christians are even more patriarchal – 73 per cent of those who classified themselves as Christian in the survey considered God to be male.

Unsurprisingly for such an alpha-male God, just under half of respondents said they thought that all religions “fundamentally discriminate on grounds of gender”, while 56 per cent thought all religions discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation.

But in a blow to secularists who claim that Britain is a post-religious society, when asked whether religion has “no place” in modern life, only 29 per cent agreed while 62 per cent disagreed.

Also:

The poll was commissioned to coincide with the launch of the MRJB’s new daily and Sabbath prayer book, or Siddur.

The prayer book removes male descriptions of God such as King, Father and Lord, in favour of “gender neutral” expressions such as Eternal One and living God.

It includes mentions of prominent women from the Old Testament for the first time in prayers such as the Amidah, the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy.

It also provides prayers for 21st century problems such as environmental and natural disasters and prayers for depression, miscarriage and the death of a child.

The new prayer book was drawn up after eight years of consultation and is the first new Reform liturgy for 30 years.

Read: The Telegraph blog “Faithbook:” God is a bloke: Official

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