Alister McGrath’s book "Dawkins’ God - Genes, Memes and the Meaning of life" is worth reading, even if you haven’t (like myself) read much of Dawkins. McGrath’s training, interestingly, was in chemistry and the natural sciences before he took up theology. Dawkins and McGrath are based in Oxford, and when I was there this summer, a whole section of Blackwells bookshop was promoting (at a discount) McGrath’s book!

Maybe it’s my ignorance about how statistical surveys work, but I felt Gregory Paul’s analysis was making some huge assumptions, and not giving me much of an insight into the complex nature of Christianity in America in particular, and the relationship of ‘faith’ (he tends to use the phrases ‘religious ’ or ‘theistic societies’ or something similar - which raises yet further questions) to the world or society it inhabits. But then I always was allergic to mathematics and statistical surveys. I also had a look at the tpmcafe website Makaden was referring to, and the paper by George Monbiot, mentioned above.

The main assumption Paul seems to be making is that there is a ‘correlation’ between the ‘religiosity’ of a society and the (negative) moral practice of that society according to certain indicators (the ones he has chosen to investigate) - at least in the western world, and the US in particular. Interesting as this is, I question the kinds of conclusions he seems to think can be drawn from this kind of approach by contrasting it with the benefits of Christianity has brought to society and the world in general through its humanitarian endeavours and its contributions (in the UK) to such things as the abolition of the slave trade, factory reform, child welfare, and education in the 19th century, its indirect contribution to the rise of the trades union movement especially towards the end of the 19th and early 20th century, its effect on the quality of life amongst the English working classes through the rise of Methodism in the 18th century and the Salvation Army in the 19th century, and its humanitarian contributions of education, medicine, and much else around the world. (I noticed that Indian relief conveys in the recent earthquake in Pakistan bore the red-cross symbol).

But this may be beside the point. A more pertinent question is in what ways a society, like the US, with a statistically high proportion of church attendance, can be described as a ‘theistic society’; what indicators, apart from numerical analysis, are we using to define what ‘theistic society’ means? (Makaden’s website link gives some interesting insights in this respect).

Perhaps even more to the point, should a mark of the ‘success’ of Christian belief and practice be the extent to which it provides measurable moral/social ‘uplift’ to the society it inhabits? On what basis does Christianity carry a mandate for this kind of social change? Clearly, in the UK, pressure groups such as ‘Care’ have been carrying this mandate for many years, and social concern is central to the objectives of groups such as Shaftesbury and Oasis. More recently, the pressure group led by Stephen Green, ‘Christian Voice’, has been seeking to bring influence to bear in a more strident, and to many, alarming way.

Has the effect of religious debates and controversy (‘liberals’ versus ‘evangelicals’) during the last century been to separate a ‘spiritual’ message and identity of Christianity from a ‘social’ conscience and identity? Do we need a better theology which will unite the spiritual and social relevance of Christianity? Is the ‘emerging church’ and its various theologies and practices any different, or potentially more effective, than other Christian groups which have been operating in the social field for a long time? I think there is a necessity for a better theology, but I suspect that the emerging church movement may prove less effective in relating to a social context than it would like to believe - or at any rate, like the charismatic movement, it may be a trail-blazer for more conventional expressions of the faith to follow and take up on a wider front.