In Brief... England
Beyond Today Magazine
World News and Prophecy: June 2001
Course Content
The Catholic auxiliary bishop of Liverpool, Vincent Malone, explained the national decline in terms of people's growing feeling of self-sufficiency.
The overall percentage of the population in England attending church has dropped from 11.7 percent of the population in 1979 to 7.5 percent in 1998. Merseyside (the Liverpool area), the Channel Islands (Guernsey and Jersey) and the Isle of Wight are still 10 percent or above, but every other county in the country is below that figure. These new figures (statistics for 1999-2000 apparently are not yet fully available) have been compiled and analyzed by Peter Brierley, former cabinet office statistician for the British government.
In terms of raw attendance, the survey spotlights South Yorkshire as the least devout county in England with a figure of 4.5 percent. The highest attendance is in Merseyside (12.1 percent), which has the largest concentration of Roman Catholics in England.
The Catholic auxiliary bishop of Liverpool, Vincent Malone, explained the national decline in terms of people's growing feeling of self-sufficiency. He said: "Everything seems to be within our own control. We don't have the same need of dependency or the need to look beyond ourselves." We don't seem to rely on God anymore.
Note: This survey does not include Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but the vast majority of the population of the United Kingdom is in England.
Source: The Sunday Telegraph.
Darris McNeely works at the United Church of God home office in Cincinnati, Ohio. He and his wife, Debbie, have served in the ministry for more than 43 years. They have two sons, who are both married, and four grandchildren. Darris is the Associate Media Producer for the Church. He also is a resident faculty member at the Ambassador Bible Center teaching Acts, Fundamentals of Belief and World News and Prophecy. He enjoys hunting, travel and reading and spending time with his grandchildren.
John died on March 8, 2014, in Oxford, England, four days after suffering cardiac arrest while returning home from a press event in London. John was 77 and still going strong.
Some of John's work for The Good News appeared under his byline, but much didn't. He wrote more than a thousand articles over the years, but also wrote the Questions and Answers section of the magazine, compiled our Letters From Our Readers, and wrote many of the items in the Current Events and Trends section. He also contributed greatly to a number of our study guides and Bible Study Course lessons. His writing has touched the lives of literally millions of people over the years.
John traveled widely over the years as an accredited journalist, especially in Europe. His knowledge of European and Middle East history added a great deal to his articles on history and Bible prophecy.
In his later years he also pastored congregations in Northern Ireland and East Sussex, and that experience added another dimension to his writing. He and his wife Jan were an effective team in our British Isles office near their home.
John was a humble servant who dedicated his life to sharing the gospel—the good news—of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God to all the world, and his work was known to readers in nearly every country of the world.
