World religions. Рахимбергенова М.Х. - 66 стр.

Church in England is composed of four main strands: immigrants from Ireland,          synagogue members. Today the Jewish community in Britain is ageing and
working-class people in deprived areas among whom Catholic effort was con-            shrinking, on account of assimilation and a relatively low birth rate, and is in
centrated in the nineteenth century; a few upper-class families; and finally mid-     rapid decline. A survey in 1996 revealed that 44 per cent of Jewish men under
dle-class converts, for example a bishop of London and two government minis-          the age of 40 are married to or are living with a non-Jewish partner. Between 20
ters who all left the Anglican church and became Catholics over the Anglican          and 25 per cent of Jewish women in this age range also marry outside the com-
ordination of women in 1992. The senior English cleric is the Archbishop of           munity. Even so, it is the second largest Jewish community in Western Europe.
Westminster.                                                                          Two-thirds of the community live in London, with another 9,000 or so in Man-
      All the formal churches are in numerical decline. Each time there is a cen-     chester and Leeds respectively, and another 6,000 in Brighton.
sus of church attendance and membership, the numbers in almost every church                Jews returned to England in the seventeenth century, after their previous
have fallen. In 1970 there were an estimated 8,6 million practising Christians.       expulsion in the thirteenth century. At first those who returned were Sephardic,
By 1994 the figure had fallen to 6,5 million. At Christmas, the major festival,       that is, originally from Spain and Portugal, but during the last years of the nine-
perhaps 5 million will attend church, but on a normal Sunday it is barely half        teenth century and first half of the twentieth century a more substantial number
this figure. One must conclude that numerical decline will probably continue in       of Ashkenazi (Germanic and East European) Jews, fleeing persecution, arrived.
an age when people feel no apparent need for organised religion. But the de-          Ashkenazis form 70 per cent of British Jews.
cline may not be as dramatic as the figures suggest. Many church – goers have              As a result of these two separate origins, and as a result of the growth of
ceased to be regular simply because they often go away at weekends. Within            Progressive Judaism (the Reform and Liberal branches), the Jews are divided
the Church the debate is bound to continue between the modernists who wish to         into different religious groups. The largest group, approximately 120,000, are Or-
reinterpret religion according to the values of the age they live in, and conserva-   thodox and belong to the United Synagogues. They look to the Chief Rabbi of
tives who believe it is precisely the supernatural elements which attract people      Great Britain for spiritual leadership. A much smaller number of Sephardic Or-
in the age of science.                                                                thodox still recognise a different leader, the Haham. The two Progressive groups,
      On the national stage the Church has made its greatest mark in recent years     the Reform and Liberal Jews, which roughly equate with the broad church and
in the area of social justice. In 1985 the Church of England produced a report,       modernists of the Anglican Church, have no acknowledged single leader, but
Faith in the City: A Call for Action by Church and Nation, which examined in-         they do have a number of rabbis who command a following among those who
ner-city deprivation and decline, and recommended measures both by church             admire their wisdom. The Progressives account for 17 per cent of the entire
and state to reverse the trends. The Roman Catholic and Free Churches showed          community. Thirty-seven per cent of Jews claim no religious affiliation at all.
similar concern at increased social deprivation in the 1980s. Today the Church             There is also a Board of Deputies of British Jews, the lay representation of
is no longer seen as an integral part of the establishment but as possibly its most   Anglo-Jewry since 1760, to which 250 synagogues and organisations in Britain
formidable critic.                                                                    elect representatives. It speaks on behalf of British Jewry on a wide variety of
      Besides these “orthodox” churches which accept the doctrine of the Trin-        matters, but its degree of genuine representation is qualified in two ways: fewer
ity, there are others which have their own specific beliefs, and are consequently     than half of Britain’s Jews belong to the electing synagogues and organisations;
viewed as outside orthodoxy. The Mormon Church which is strong in the                 and none of the community’s more eminent members belongs to the Board. In
United States, has doubled its membership to about 200,000 in the past 20             fact many leading members of the community are often uneasy with the posi-
years. Other non-Trinitarian churches have also grown, part of an alternative         tion the Board takes on issues.
form of spirituality which has been attractive to many people since the 1960s.             As in the Christian church, the fundamentalist part of Jewry seems to grow
                                                                                      compared with other groups, especially among the young, and causes similar
                                Other religions                                       discomfort for those who do not share its certainties and legal observances. The
     Apart from Christianity, there are at least five other religions with a sub-     most obvious concentrations of orthodox Jews, who are distinguishable by their
stantial number of adherents in Britain. These are usually composed of either         dress, are in the north London suburbs of Golders Green and Stamford Hill.
immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.                                               There are also more recently established religious groups: Hindus, Sikhs,
     The oldest is the Jewish community, which now numbers barely 300,000,            Buddhists and Muslims. The most important of these, not only on account of its
of whom fewer than half ever attend synagogue and only 80 000 are actual              size, is the Muslim community. There are 1,5 million Muslims and over 1,000

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