Christ Church Kilkeel Survey shows majority believe in God
As part of their Year of Mission activities, a small team from Christ Church, Kilkeel, have been going door to door with a short survey asking people in the community about what they believe.
Rector, Revd Ken McGrath, reports their findings:
We’re still visiting door to door but at the time of writing, our sample size was just under 200 homes visited all over the Kilkeel area. Only 3.5% said that they did not believe in any kind of God. The vast majority, 82.5%, definitely believed in God while some 14 % were not sure.
63% of those responding said that God was a personal being and not just some kind of force or distant being. 68% of those responding thought that Jesus was the only Son of God with just 1% saying that he never existed at all!
People were asked what one question they would most like to ask God. By far the biggest concern was about “all the suffering” in the world; some 60% of those responding said that this was often something that troubled them when God is said to be a God of love.
The last of our 5 questions on the Personal Beliefs Survey asked, “If you could know God personally would you be interested?” 75% of those responding said ‘Yes’, 2% said ‘No’ while the remaining 23% were ‘Not sure’.
By God’s amazing grace and our repentance, that personal relationship is possible. Indeed it was the privilege of some on our team to chat through exactly how that might happen and to pray with a number of people who wanted to make that commitment there and then.
In this part of the country at least, these results show a high degree of awareness of and curiosity about faith. While we did not ask if respondents were regular attendees at a religious service I know that the percentage of my parishioners who are actually involved in the services and life of the parish is closer to 20% than 80%. This discrepancy may be for many reasons, some legitimate and others, if we are honest, are really only excuses.
I, for one, would be interested to hear why so many profess faith but neglect to meet with others on a regular basis to deepen that faith and to encourage and be encouraged. I have no doubt that some of the answers would prove deeply challenging for the church.
For now, as another Christmas approaches, let’s ask ourselves: what will we be celebrating, why will we be celebrating, who will we be celebrating and where will be celebrating?
This article first appeared in The Mourne Observer