We’ve been asking a few religious questions recently and publish the answers below.
Today, we asked how people saw this day. Able to choose more than one option, a little more than half of YouGov’s First Verdict panel was inclined to see it as “the day that we remember Jesus Christ, his resurrection and victory over death” and a third saw Easter Sunday as the holiest day in the Christian year. 17%, however, recognised today as “a day when Christians remember a scientifically impossible fiction – no person has even been raised from the dead”.
The percentages who told us that they would deliberately pay attention to the Pope’s Easter message or who would avoid it were almost identical. Asked “How much attention will you give to the Pope’s Easter message?” 10% answered “a lot, he is a great, wise man of God” and another 16% said “a little bit, he is sometimes interesting”. 25% said “not at all”. A further 39% said they might “accidentally” come across it in their news habits but wouldn’t deliberately choose to follow or ignore anything the Bishop of Rome said.
Two days ago we presented a list of religious ideas to panellists and asked them to identify those which had personal relevance to them:
And finally on religious attitudes, we recently asked the panel about Senator Ted Cruz’s appearance on his presidential campaign trail with a controversial evangelical pastor, Kevin Swanson. The full question and answers are below but I thought it was worth highlighting that 11% of respondents agreed with the option that stated “homosexuality is sinful and people who do have gay sex risk going to hell”.
‘I’m personally convinced that our civilisation is approaching its end,’ wrote the British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge in 1980. ‘I think of St Augustine when, in AD 410, the news was brought to him in Carthage that Rome had been sacked by the Barbarians.’ Jim Callaghan was equally gloomy. In 1974, he remarked: ‘When I am […]
Josiah Quincy Jr., who was the mayor of Boston in the middle of the nineteenth century, wrote in his Last Will and Testament that his son should read ‘John Locke’s works, – Lord Bacon’s works, – Gordon’s Tacitus, – and Cato’s Letters. May the spirit of liberty rest upon him!’ Indeed, there is nothing closer […]
Spare a thought for Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, heading the US negotiating team, as they met with Qatari Emir Al Thani this week to discuss the ‘progress of the negotiations’ between the US and the Iranian regime in the Qatari capital, Doha. While the venue for the talks has shifted from Pakistan to Switzerland […]
