Atheism / Satanism

[Alex K]

Oh cool, how is the fight against the antidisestablishmentarianists progressing?

Terribly. Whilst it would appear that most people in England & Wales do not espouse any sort of religion or belief in a deity (& are thus de facto atheists), this I think is more down to apathy rather than an upbringing in religion and subsequent de-conversion.

Also, a lot of people here don't know shit about political institutions and structures, and thus are equally apathetic to an established church.

Recently however I've been hearing arguments that support an established church in that it acts as a buffer against the more extremist forms of religion that are prevalent in, say, the US and elsewhere. I'm not necessarily convinced by that but I haven't seen the evidence yet so I can't make a decision either way.

I think it somewhat works like that in Germania. Here, everyone is so used to church = two established state-sanctioned institutions (EKD, roman catholic), that anything outside of this officially sanctioned system is automatically perceived as suspicious and possibly dangerous. That's because anyone who would bother to join a christian denomination outside the standard two must really be taking it too seriously, and probably also be craaazy.