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I for one bemoan nothing. These things happen. I also agree that some children know more about other religions than their parents. What concerns me is not the multi-culturalism issue (not terribly relevant in Fraserburgh and Rhynie) but the secularziation question. Hence I am less interested in what people know about and more concerned with what they have been immersed in. What they learnt to take for granted. Knowing a bit about what some other people do is no substitute for being steeped in a religious culture. A shared religious commitment requires a common culture. A common religious background is not a sufficient condition for belief but it is a necessary one. Hence its disappearance has huge implications for religiosity in modern societies. I suppose my major concern is the question of innate religious needs. Many scholars argue that we are essentially religious (the Stark-Bainbridge theory of religion is a case). Hence if one church or tradition declines another must take its place. A thoroughly sociological view would argue that religiosity, like most everything else, is learnt and that it requires 'steeping'. If a generation is raised in a secular environment, it will remain what Weber called 'religiously unmusical'. While multi-cultural education may be good for what we used to call race relations, it implicitly promotes a relativistic view of the truth that undermines commitment. This is, of course, as much a threat to the minority religions of the UK as it is to what were once the dominant traditions. ---------------------- Steve Bruce Professor of Sociology Sociology University of Aberdeen Aberdeen AB24 3QY Tel: 01224 272761 (work); 01467 671595 (home) [log in to unmask] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%