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Word study. comprehension. Follow-up. Religion in Britain. Pre-reading task. Religion and politics
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WORD STUDY
I. Look up the following words in the English-English dictionary and give their definitions.
Puja
Rosary
Garb
Muezzins
Salat
Saffron
II. Find the synonyms to the words from the text:
Loyalty
To inculcate
Attachment to
To disperse
Clear, bright
Honesty, scrupulousness
Religious
III. Match these words from the text with their meanings
| 1. Parishioner 2. To profess 3. To congregate 4. Sermons 5. Clergy 6. Atheist 7. Agnostic 8. To summon | a)To gather into a mass or crowd b) To call together c) To declare one’s belief in d) A person who lives in a parish (and especially one who goes to church there) e) A religious talk in church f) The group of people who are priests g) A person who does not believe that God exists h) A person who believes that you cannot know whether God exists or not |
IV. Translate from English into Russian:
1. A priest will apply a spot of red or yellow pigment, the tilak, to the foreheads of the believers.
2. In Protestant lands, chapels and churches abound, and on Sunday parishioners usually put on their best clothes and congregate to sing hymns and hear sermons.
3. Ancient temples with the serene Buddha on display are evidence of the antiquity of the Buddhist faith.
4. Is it reasonable to assume that the religion imposed at one’s birth is necessarily the whole truth?
5. Therefore, understanding one another's viewpoint can lead to more meaningful communication and conversation between people of different faiths. Perhaps, too, it may dissipate some of the hatred in the world that is based on religious differences.
V. Join the words to make word combinations:
1. To profess a) minds
2. To implant b) religion
3. To dissipate c) some principles
4. Devotion to d) hatred
5. Adherence to e) a sermon
6) To hear f) a certain faith
7) To summon g) the faithful
COMPREHENSION
I. Answer the following questions:
- What are some manifestations of the world’s various religions?
- How are atheists different from agnostics?
- Do you think that atheists have no principles, devotions in their lives?
- Why are there so many religions in the world?
- Ca n religion be a reason for hatred and fight?
- What can be done to prevent people from hating each other on the religious basis?
- Does religion make an impact on the modern world?
- What factors usually determine a person’s religion?
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FOLLOW-UP
I. Speak about religion in your country.
II. Are there any conflicts in Belarus on the religious basis?
RELIGION IN BRITAIN
PRE-READING TASK
I. What do you know about religion in Great Britain? What role does it play in their life?
II. Who is the head of the English Church?
III. Are there any religious conflicts in the country?
The vast majority of people in Britain do not regularly attend religious services. Many do so only a few times in their lives. Most people's everyday language is no longer, as it was in previous centuries, enriched by their knowledge of the Bible and the English Book of Common Prayer. It is significant that the most familiar and well-loved English translation of the Bible, known as the King James Bible, was written in the early seventeenth century and that no later translation has achieved similar status.
It therefore seems that most people in Britain cannot strictly be described as religious. However, this does not mean that they have no religious or spiritual beliefs or inclinations. Surveys have suggested that nearly three-quarters of the population believe in God and between a third and a half believe in concepts such as life after death, heaven and bell (and that half or more of the population believe in astrology, parapsychology, ghosts and clairvoyance). In addition, a majority approve of the fact that religious instruction at state schools is compulsory.
Furthermore, almost nobody objects to the fact that the Queen is ‘by the grace of God’, or the fact that she, like all previous British monarchs, was crowned by a religious figure (the Archbishop of Canterbury) in a church (Westminster Abbey) and that the British national anthem (God Save Our Queen) invokes God's help in protecting her.
The general picture, as with so many aspects of British life, is of a general tolerance and passive approval of the status quo. The majority attitude towards organized religion is rather similar to that towards the monarchy. Just as there is no serious republican movement in the country, so there is no widespread anti-clericalism, and just as there is no royalist movement either, so most people are not active participants in organized religion, but they seem to be glad it is there!
Religion and politics
Freedom of religious belief and worship (and also the freedom to be a non-believer) is taken for granted in modern Britain. With the notable exception of Northern Ireland, a person's religion has almost no political significance. There are no important 'Christian' or anti-clerical political parties. Except perhaps for Muslims, there is no recognizable political pressure group in the country which is based on a particular religious ideology. To describe oneself as 'Catholic' or 'Church of England' or 'Methodist' or any other recognized label is to indicate one's personal beliefs but not the way one votes.
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The religious conflicts of the past and their close relationship with politics have left only a few traces in modern times, and the most important of these are institutional rather than political:
the fact that the monarch cannot, by law, be a Catholic; the fact that the twenty-six senior bishops in one particular church (the Church of England) are members of the House of Lords (where they are known as the 'Lords Spiritual'); the fact that the government has the right of veto on the choice of these bishops; the fact that the ultimate authority for this same church is the British Parliament. These facts point to a curious anomaly. Despite the atmosphere of tolerance and the separation of religion and politics, it is in Britain that we find the last two cases in Europe of' ‘established' churches, that is churches which are, by law, the official religion of a country. These cases are the Church of Scotland and the Church of England. The monarch is the official head of both, and the religious leader of the latter, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is appointed by the government.
However, the privileged position of the Church of England (also known as the Anglican Church) is not, in modern times, a political issue. Nobody feels that they are discriminated against if they do not belong to it. In any case, the Anglican Church, rather like the BBC has shown itself to be effectively independent of government and there is general approval of this independence. In fact, there is a modern politics-and-religion debate, but now it is the other way around. That is, while it is accepted that politics should stay out of religion, it is a point of debate as to whether religion should stay out of politics. The Anglican Church used to be half-jokingly described as 'the Conservative party at prayer'. This reputation was partly the result of history and partly the result of the fact that most of its clergy and regular followers were from the higher ranks of society.
However, during the 1980s and early 1990s it was common for the Church to publicly condemn the widening gap between rich and poor in British society. Its leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, repeatedly spoke out against this trend, implying that the
Conservative government was largely to blame for it — despite comments from government ministers that politics should be left to the politicians. The Archbishop also angered some Conservative Anglicans when, at the end of the Falklands/Malvinas War in 1982, he did not give thanks to God for a British victory. Instead, he prayed for the victims of the war on both sides.
In 1994 the Catholic Church in Britain published a report which criticized the Conservative government. Since the general outlook of Britain's other conventional Christian denominations has always been anti-Conservative, it appears that all the country's major Christian churches are now politically broadly left of centre. [2, p121-123]
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