Winter Solstice or What Happened To The Sun?

Just like Frazz (shown above), our Winter Solstice seemed to be over and done with in no time flat! Here, just four miles south of 55 degrees North latitude, we had the shortest day I have ever experienced! The sun rose just before 8:30 am . . . I think; it was cloudy. Big surprise! And it set at 3:40 pm in the afternoon. Now those are the official times. In real life, it was nearer to 9 am and 3 pm. The 3 pm I am more certain of because it had cleared off by that time of day and I know that my wife walked home from her job (only a mile away) in the dark. Normally, she would have been getting off from work about that time, but yesterday, she was delayed for a while before coming home and it was completely dark by the time she walked home. That's just way too early for it to get dark!!!

It's dark when we get up and it's dark long before we have our evening meal, usually between 5 pm and 6 pm. No wonder I'm depressed. LOL Actually, there are a lot of people up here in northern England who suffer from SADS (Seasonal Affective Depression Syndrome). I imagine it's a lot worse up along the northern reaches of Scotland. And I don't want to even imagine what it's like up in the Shetland or Orkney Islands. Can you imagine what it must have been like back in the Middle Ages, or during the Celtic Ages, when they didn't have much in the way of artificial light, and let's not even talk about how they kept warm on those really, really long winter nights.

No matter how long I live here, I don't think I'll ever get used to it getting dark so awfully early in the afternoon. Nor do I think I'll ever get used to the sight of the sun getting no higher above the horizon than an hour's height in the sky before it starts to head back down toward the horizon. I often wonder what the Romans, who grew up down on the Mediterranean, thought of the strange winters and the really long winter nights as they patrolled Hadrian's Wall.

On the Geordie Dialect

I remember from my English classes in high school and college being taught that the English language was distinct in not having any dialects, merely different accents. Then, during my college years, it was announced that there had been discovered a brand new dialect along the coastal islands of Georgia and South Carolina amongst the black population living there. There was a big debate as to whether Gullah was merely a dialect or creole or a whole different language with roots in English and various African languages. I found all this extremely interesting at the time because all my teachers still insisted that English had only different accents and no dialects.

Then all these many years later, I moved to England to find out that not only does English have a great variety of honest to goodness dialects, but hundreds of local accents that vary depending on what village or which side of town the person comes from. My English teachers must have been thinking of American English . . . which, by the way, is considered over here to be a distinct dialect of English. I wonder what my high school English teachers would have thought of that.

The dialect that is used here where I live is called Geordie. Nobody is quite sure where the term Geordie comes from. There are as many theories as there are people offering these theories. Whatever the origin, the fact remains the Geordie dialect not only thrives, but is known of all over the UK, not always with a favorable reputation. :-) Folks from the southern portions of this fair country think of Geordies about the same way folks from Georgia think of people from Alabama. I think this is highly unfair because many great engineers who have contributed a great deal not only to England, but to all industrialized countries have come from the Newcastle area. You can find some of my musings on this subject in earlier posts.

The Geordie dialect happens to be one of the oldest dialects in the English language. The reasons for this are somewhat complex. One of the things we Americans fail to appreciate about our mother tongue is that it has a very rich and deep history whose development reflects quite accurately the history of England, especially of all the early invasions of this island. After the Roman Army was withdrawn from Britannia sometime around 400 A.D., there was left behind a mixture of Britons and Romans who continued to live together, intermixing through marriage much as they had been for the previous 300 years or so. But for reasons we are not quite sure of, various peoples from present day Denmark and the Flanders region, known as the Angles, Saxons and the Jutes, started to invade the Eastern coastal lands of England. Sometimes they were invited to help the original Britons fight off the Picts who originally occupied Scotland. Other times, they just came on their own will, conquering large portions of modern day England. Eventually, they had pushed the original Celtic Britons back into what is now Wales and Cornwall.

Later came the Vikings from the same area of Europe, trying to do to the Anglo-Saxons what they themselves did to the Britons. They weren't as successful as the Angles or the Saxons were, but they left an indelible mark upon the genetic pool and upon the languages of the Anglo-Saxons. It was this mixture of the various languages that became known to us as Old English. Believe it or not, but there are a great many words from that time period that still exists today, but are pronounced much different from their original pronunciation.

In 1066, when William the Conqueror landed in England and defeated Harold II at the battle of Hastings, and then subsequently went on to conquer the entire country, Norse-French was introduced to England. Norse-French was itself a melding of Viking and French. This became the language of the government while Old English continued in use with the common people. But they influenced each other to produce what is now known as Middle English.

It wasn't until the advent of the Movable Type Printing Press that Modern English began to emerge, slowly overtaking the wildly varying dialects of Middle English and it was during this time that Norse French at last disappeared as the language of the government. While Modern English of the time (that spoken by William Tyndale and Shakespeare) helped bring into use a common tongue that could be recognized and spoken all over England, there still remained the regional dialects. But they didn't differ too much from Modern English, mostly in that they retained a few of their original words or usages that didn't conform to Modern English.

Geordie, on the other hand, was little affected by Norse-French, and as such, didn't evolve so much towards Middle English as the other dialects did. Nor, it seems, has it been as affected by the Great Vowel Shift that has made such a difference on how we pronounce our words today as compared to the days of king Henry VIII. Much of what makes up the Geordie dialect today comes directly from the original Anglo-Saxon and borrowing a lot from the original Viking language. Mix in a little of the Scots and the rest as Modern English, but with the original pronunciations and you get the Geordie dialect. Indeed, to a visitor who has never heard it before, it sounds like a completely different language altogether! If it hadn't been for my exposure to the American English dialect common to the coastal areas of North Carolina where the pronunciation of many English words were frozen at the time of English settlement in the very early Colonial period of our history, I wouldn't have recognized any of the Geordie at all.

One thing that is common to what I learned from my family in North Carolina and here in the Newcastle area is the habit of pronouncing words that have either "ow" (such as down) or "ou" (such as found or around). In both places, these words are commonly spoken with an "oo" sound. So, in both places, you are just as liable to hear "It's aboot time to turn the car aroond and head back to the hoose."

Here is a short list of some Geordie terms I copied from Wikipedia:

"Geordie also has a large amount of vocabulary not heard elsewhere in England, though some are shared with (or similar to) Scots. The Geordie accent is often broader (heavily used) in Newcastle, other parts of the north east tend not to have a very strong accent, it all depends on how its grasped. Words still in common use by Geordie dialect speakers today include:

• areet (/'a:lri:t/ a variation on alright or Hello
• cannit 'can not'
• canny for "pleasant" (the Scottish use of canny is often somewhat less flattering), or to mean 'quite'. Someone could therefore be 'canny canny'.
• cuddy 'small horse or a pony'
• geet for "very", also *muckle (used more in Northumberland)
• hyem/hyam for "home"
• deeky for "look at" *very rarely used*
• kets for "sweets/treats"
• knaa for "to know/know"
• divint for "don't"/
• bairn/grandbairn for "child/grandchild"
• hacky for "dirty"
• ya for you/your
• gan for "to go/go"
• hoy for "to throw"^[24]
• pet a term of address or endearment towards a woman or a child
• toon for "Town"
• nettie for "toilet"
• naa for "no"
• aye for "yes"
• neb for "nose" (nebby=nosey)
• banter for "chat/gossip"
• clart for "mud" as in "there's clarts on yar boots"
• hadaway for "get away"
• hinny a term of endearment - "Honey"^[24]
• haad for "hold" example: 'keep a hadd' is 'keep a hold' and 'had yer gob' becomes 'keep quiet'. That polite little notice in the parks aboot keepin' yor dog on a lead is 'ye cud hev keep a-hadden yor dog'^[24]
• divvie for "stupid person"
• tab for "cigarette"
• chor "to steal" *very rarely used*
• chiv for "knife"
• neva never
• wor for "our", used mainly in the context of wor kid, meaning 'friend', one's sibling or literally 'our kid'. Used primarily to denote a family member.
• nowt for "nothing"^[24]
• is for "me", but you can't say "that is my ball > that is is ball".
• me for my, and also works in myself > meself or mesel.
• man Not realy got a translation, often used eg. "Give is it here now man"
• wuh for "us"
• a for I
• ee used like oh, often in shock "ee neva"
• doon down, own is often replaced with oon.
• get awesh for "go away" *very rarely used*
• wint for wont
• doon for down
• D/dee for do
• chud/chutty chewing gum
• Neva for never
• N'ew Now, very hard to write. Prounounded like new, N 'ew
• Lend often used for borrow, "lend is a pen" meaning "Can I borrow a pen".
• Wo, Wa, Woh or wat or wot what"

My eleven year old Step-daughter, who has spent most of her life here in the Newcastle area, dispite her mother's influence, is becoming quite fluent in Geordie and has acted as a guide for me in my exploration of this dialect. The most common usage she has adopted is referring to herself as "us" as in, "Are ya gan follow us?" meaning "Are you going to follow me." The only time I have a hard time following what is being said by the locals now is when they speak extremely fast (which means most of them) or too softly to be heard. So the lesson I have learned is to keep my step-daughter close at hand as an interpreter when possible. Too bad she doesn't feel the same way. LOL

The difference between Gasoline and Petrol

One of the word changes that I keep tripping up on is the Gasoline/Petrol words. They both mean exactly the same thing, but one is American and the other is British - I'll leave it up to you to figure out who uses which word. The only significant difference is the price! Gasoline costs a great deal less than Petrol. By this, I mean that fuel costs here in the United Kingdom are significantly higher than in America.

Back in October when I was home in Georgia visiting my family and friends, gas prices were artificially inflated up to as much as $5 a gallon or more due to the two hurricanes hitting the Texas coasts this year, almost back to back. Now I understand it's down close to $2 a gallon again. That's about what it was when I moved over here to England 2 years ago. At that same time, the price of petrol was about 87 pence or so a Liter. Yes, they sell fuel over here in liters, or to be more proper, litres instead of gallons. At that time, the currency exchange was hovering around $2 per Pound Stirling. So by factoring in 3.78 liters per gallon multiplied by the price per liter gives us a price of 3.29 Pounds per gallon. Then you multiply this by the currency exchange rate at the time of $2 for £1, that gives us a dollar value for $6.58 a gallon for gas here in England. Oh, and by the way, I learned that I had to be careful about which gallon I use in these calculations. We Americans use the English gallon while the British use the Imperial gallon, which is a wee bit more. Why they don't use their own gallon as we do is a mystery to me.

But the price of oil went up to record highs during this last year and the price of petrol ran up to about a £1.17 a liter. Now plugging this into the above calculations, we find that gas prices here in American dollars was as high as $8.85 per gallon. The prices were even higher before I left to come to America in September. Then, in this last month, the price of oil has dropped a lot and because of the world wide economic crisis, the Pound Sterling has dropped against the US Dollar. As I write this, £1 will fetch you only $1.47.

As I was riding on the bus yesterday (because we sold our car because it was too expensive to keep), I noticed that the price at a local station was now down to £0.92 per liter. Now let's plug in these new figures into the formula I describe above. We get a gallon of gas for about £3.48. Enter in the new exchange rates and we get $5.11 a gallon. This is still more than double the price of gas back home in Georgia. But it's not as bad as it was just a few months ago. Now consider then that the price of oil per barrel is the same for the British as it is for the Americans, maybe even a little less because of the large oil deposits in the North Sea that mostly comes through British companies. The large difference for what we pay for gasoline/petrol here in England compared to what you are paying for it now is due largely to taxes! So next time you start to grumble about the price of gas, consider this: it could be much worse!

The same goes for taxes. Taxes here in the United Kingdom are much higher across the board than they are back in the good old USA. They have a national sales tax, called Value Added Tax or VAT for short, of 17 percent! Ouch! And Income Taxes can be rather painful too, especially if you are rich. The highest tax bracket as I understand it, is about 77 percent! Can you imagine having to pay 77 percent of your income in for taxes? What's the point of becoming rich if most of it goes to the State? And to think that I used to grumble when the company I used to work for back in the States would take out the maximum taxes out of my annual bonus at the rate of 28%. But the nice thing over here is that the Crown doesn't tax people for income earned abroad. The IRS will tax you for everything you earn, no matter what country you earn it in. British citizens living abroad don't have to pay taxes to the Crown for any earnings they get from abroad. So far as I know, the United States is the only country that charges income tax on citizens that live abroad. However, they have given us expatriates a wee bit of wiggle room. We don't have to pay on any income as long as we earn less than $76,000 a year. Once you hit that mark, you gotta pay taxes on all of it. Not that I have to worry about such things as that because I'll never earn that much in a year even if I live in the States. :-) I still have to file; I just don't have to pay . . . yet.

Guy Falkes Night: just what are they celebrating?

The name Guy Falkes will remind the history buffs reading this blog of the Gun Powder Plot of 1605. For the rest of us, a brief summary may be necessary. Back in the 1500's, England underwent the English Reformation when King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church and established the Church of England so that he could get a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (somewhere in Spain). The Reformation in England was not easy and often quite rocky. Politics as much as religious convictions were behind much of what happened during those turbulent years. After Henry died, his young son, Edward VI didn't last too long either. Mary, Henry's oldest daughter came to the throne. Her mother, Catherine, had firmly rooted Mary in the Roman Catholic faith and because of this, Mary set to reverse the actions of her father and root out all the Protestant leaders, earning her the name of Bloody Mary. She had over 300 Protestant leaders and followers burned at the stake during her short reign.

Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry and Anne Boylyn, took to the throne next and reaffirmed her father's actions and brought England back to a Protestant state of affairs. Over the next 50 years, the Roman Catholics of England had to watch their step, often conducting their affairs in private in order to not be exposed as traitors to the Crown. James I was a staunch Protestant and was less tolerant of Roman Catholics than Elizabeth (if you can call her tolerant). James had been on the throne only a few years when some of the Roman Catholic community, seeing that no help was going to come from King Philip of Spain, decided to take matters into their own hands. Their plan was to blow up the Palace of Parlament during the opening ceremonies when the king and all of Parlament would be present.

The Gun Powder Plot, as it became known, involved renting a cellar under the Parlamentary buildings and placing 800 pounds of gun powder there to blow up the entire building thereby killing everyone inside. However, at the last minute, literally, on November 5th, Guy Falkes was caught trying to light the fuse before fleeing. Under torture, he later revealed the names of his co-conspirators, all of whom were already known. He died a traitor's death along with several of his cohorts at the Tower of London soon thereafter.

Now here is where things get a little strange for us Americans to understand. By Royal Decree and by law, everyone was required to celebrate the deliverance of the king. This compulsory celebration lasted until 1859. However, to this day, most all of England celebrates Guy Fawkes night on November 5th of every year. In most communities, children would make little effigies of Guy Fawkes and stand on the street corner begging a penny for the Guy. They would then take the money and buy fireworks to shoot off at the bon fire later that night. This custom of the children has fallen by the wayside in most parts of England now, but the Bon Fire and the fireworks are still a big part of the night.

When I first experienced this last year, I asked several many of my friends here in England just what the celebration was about. Were they celebrating the fact that Guy Falkes failed in his plot or that he made the effort? I got answers on both sides of that fence, but the best answer I think I received was from a woman in my church when she said that generally, everyone just got together and celebrated anarchy for a night.

So, this November 5th, weather permitting, I may be there at the Bon Fire celebrating the results of the election of America's next president or I may be looking forward to the anarchy that may descend upon my homeland in the next few years.

About Cars here in the UK

As we all know, the British maintain the unusual habit of driving on the wrong side of the road, despite the fact that the rest of Europe drives on the proper side of the road, the right side. And because of this, their steering wheels are on the wrong side also. And you may also know some of the famous brand names of automobiles that come from the UK, such as Jaguar, Land Rover, and of course Bentley and Rolls Royce. Some of us remember such names as Triumph, MG and Morgan. A brand that I had never heard of until I came over here is Vauxhall, a company owned by General Motors. They are mostly reworked Opels with the Vauxhall name on them. To me, they are nothing more than British Chevys.

The average size of cars over here are roughly that of the Chrysler PT Cruiser, which by the way, is sold over here with the steering wheels on the right side of the car instead of the left like the American version. All the Asian brands are well represented here as well as most European brands, including some we've never heard of. Skoda, a division of Volkswagen, are produced in the Czech Republic. Alfa Romeo, Citroen, Renault and other brands that we used to see in the States all sell well here. The largest car sold over here that I know of is the Chrysler 300C, and yes, the Hemi is an available option over here too, for those who don't care how much gasoline (petrol) costs. The smallest car sold over here is the Smart Fortwo. Smart, a division of Mercedes Benz, sells the Fortwo, a two seat car for urban drivers. These cars are not made for driving across the Contentent, not that you couldn't, it's just not a good idea. Actually, the Smart Fortwo would be a great car for all the commuters that drive from the suburbs into the major city centers like Atlanta. Imagine how much space would be freed up if all those cars coming out of Atlanta during rush hour were Smart Fortwos. And they'll drive just as fast as anyone would need to survive on the Interstate system. And parking these little beauties is a snap in any parking lot!

Something that most Americans don't know is that here in the UK, as well as throughout all of Europe, automatic transmissions are quite rare except in the upper market cars, and even then, it's an option. If you come over to the UK or anywhere else in Europe and expect to drive, you had better be well versed with a five speed transmission! In fact, here in the UK, if you take a driving test in a car equipped with an automatic transmission, you'll be limited to driving cars so equipped! In order to be licenced to drive cars with any type of transmission, you have to test in a car with a manual transmission.

So, why is everyone over here hung up on manual transmissions? Simple . . . when your fuel costs around $10 or the equivalent, you use whatever gives you the best mileage. That's also why most cars are tiny compared to American cars. The car we had, until the insurance got too high for us to afford was a 2001 Ford Mondeo, similar to the Taurus in the States is considered to be something of a large car over here. It has a 1.8 liter four cylinder engine, a size that would never make it in the States, and a 5 speed transmission. Since they don't have as tough of emmission standards as we do, they are able to use smaller engines that don't burn quite as clean to provide decent power. With just me in the car, I could go from 0 to 60 in about 7 seconds, not bad for an engine not much bigger than what's on some riding mowers! But there are times I wish I could have brought my 1999 Ram Quad Cab over with it's 5.8 liter Magnum engine. There's just something almost musical about the sound of a big V-8, especially if its hooked up to dual exhausts. Not only that, it sounds more wholesome than the tiny little weedeater motors that some of the hot-rodders around here have. I find it somewhat ironic that I enjoyed more room in my old pickup truck cab than most people over here have in their entire car. And there is something just unnatural about a country that considers 2 liter engines to be quite large. I'm not quite sure you can buy a car with that small of an engine in the States, can you?

Choosing a school?

I always knew that the school systems here in England are different from American schools, but these past few months, I've been learning a lot about the differences. Take for instance, when we mention Public Schools in America, we are talking about the normal schools that are run by the local school board. Public Schools in England are anything but! Here, Public Schools are what we Americans would call private boarding schools. Why are they are called Public Schools, I don't know.

Here in England, they start children in schools at an earlier age than we do in America. They have their equivalent to Pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, but they start a year earlier than what we do in the States. As a consequence, their official first year of school is when the child is 5 years old instead of six. And they don't refer to each year of advancement as Grades. What we would call 4th Grade, they call Year 4. Elementary or Primary schools go up to Year 6. After that, the parents then apply to different Secondary schools, or what we would call High schools. The process is quite interesting, as I am learning.

Schools come in different types. They come as: Primary, which deals with K-Year 6 students; Secondary, which deals with Years 7-13; and Comprehensive schools which take students all the way through their education. When a student reaches Year 6, regardless of whether they go to a Primary or a Comprehensive school, the parents have to start applying for places at Secondary schools of their choice. If they make no applications, the student most likely will wind up at the school in his or her "Catchment" area, the zone for which that school is primarily responsible for. And to make matters even more interesting, some of the Secondary schools are semi-private. For instance, down where our street empties into the main road, there sits Emmanuel College. It is a Christian Secondary school that is not governed by the local school authority, but falls under a different program. It is funded by a partnership of the Crown and certain local businesses. Since they don't have "Separation of Chuch and State" over here, there is no conflict of interest. Then there are in our local area, 2 Roman Catholic Secondary schools that voluntarily submit to local authority . . . to a point. That point being where it doesn't conflict with their primary ethos for education, in this case, being Roman Catholic Christian schools. They accept students first from their Roman Catholic feeder schools, then if there are slots still open, they then accept, in this order, other Christian students and then students within their catchment areas.

Because Emmaunel College is funded by "other means," it is administered by it's own board, which then is held responsible by the laws that allow such schools to exist - a government program which I know nothing about other than it does this and pays for the student's education just as if the student went to a regular school. However, the thing that excites me about this program is that it allows the school to be a Christian school where the Christian ethos is taught in a Christian environment. The Bible is considered essential equipment for each student, even if only for the morning devotion assembly. The program was set up to address the lack of Secondary schools dedicated to high technology and business curiculum. The fact that the founders of this particular school are very devout Christians and insisted that it also be a part of the curiculum is all the better. It would be considered somethink akin to the Magnet (or is that Magnate?) school programs in various states in America.

Since it is outside the normal system, we had to apply for a slot for my step-daughter, Emily, back in July. Last week, she had to take a 2 hour assessment test and in a couple of weeks, she has to go in for an interview. One of the provisions of this program is that these schools cannot simply take the best and brightest students that apply, but must take on students of all abilities like the other schools do and in similar ratios. How they do this is a mystery to me.

This week, my lovely wife, Rebecca, has been threading her way through the application process for the schools within the normal school system. We could list up to three choices in order of preference so that this would be taken in consideration by the assignment offices. As I understand it, this year, there is a new process whereas the preferences are taken into consideration when schools are overbooked. Up until now, the preferences were a major part of what was considered when placing a child in a school. Now, it is different, but after reading the material about three times, I still don't understand it, but somehow, it still is a major consideration. We put down one of the Roman Catholic schools as our first choice and then 2 secular schools as second and third choices. We will learn the results of this sometime in March. We will learn if Emily can go to Emmanuel sometime earlier. After we get the results in, we'll make a commitment one way or another. And of course, if we don't like any of the choices given us, we can appeal.

When Emily goes to whatever secondary school she winds up in, she's required to go until Year 11, when she's 16. She has the choice of continuing her education in what's known as 6th Form, where she simply continues to go to school for another 2 years (Year 13). Students have the option of changing schools when they go for 6th Form, but this is an option rarely taken. And then when she finishes 6th Form, she simply doesn't go back to school the next year. There is no ceremony like we have in America where we graduate from high school. What a shame that there is nothing to mark the achievement of going the full course of school here in England.

A couple we know have a son who's 16 this year. Before the term finished back in July, he had to take a mandatory series of tests known as the GCSE's, which stands for General Certificate of Secondary Education. Then there are what is known as the A Levels. The A Level GCSE is taken during 6th Form and is used by universities to determine if a student is eligible for entry into that particular institution. The grades that a student gets in the GCSE's and the A Levels will follow them for the rest of their life. All applications for employment over here ask for the scores received in the GCSE and if applicable, the A Levels. In my own humble opinion, that's way too much pressure to bring on teen aged kids. If they do poorly, for whatever reason, that will follow them for the rest of their life! I can understand the need to assess if a student has learned the material taught before being allowed to leave school, but to have that grade be used to determine something in their lives twenty years down the road is too much!

I've seen some kids who don't take them seriously because they know that they won't have a chance at some really big job opportunities. But then I've also watched others who really sweated bullets on these tests because of their plans to go on to University as the phrase goes over here. Then there are the few who are smart enough and have done their homework as we say and the tests are no bother to them because they know their material and are confident of themselves. Those who have prepared themselves in the years leading up to the GCSE's and the A Levels will find a lot of opportunities ahead for them . . . providing they survive University. LOL

Christianity and England

England has a tremendously rich history of the Christian faith. The Roman Catholics look upon the beginning of that history with the arrival of St. Augustine (a different Augustine than the one most of us have heard of) in the late 500's, in what is now known as Kent, England. He set up his bishopric in Canterbury, which even today is counted as the center of Christianity in England. But Christianity was certainly here long before that. There is good evidence that there were Christian Romans living here in England during the First Century! However, the Romans withdrew from England sometime around 410 A.D.

For some time, the Angles, Saxons and the Lutes were all making invasions along the Eastern shores of England from the Danish lands they came from. They were all pagans. When the Romans withdrew completely, the so-called Anglo-Saxon invasion got underway in a big way bringing with them their pagan polytheism. Oswald, a prince of Northumbria living with the Scots while in exile, converted to Christianity when he visited the holy island of Iona just off the Western Scottish coast. When he regained power in Northumbria, he requested missionaries from the monastery of Iona to spread Christianity among his people:

"Owing to his past among the Scots, he requested missionaries from Iona, the pre-eminent monastery of the Irish in what is now Scotland, rather than the Roman-backed mission in England. At first the monastery sent a new bishop named Cormán, but he met with no success and soon returned to Iona, reporting that the Northumbrians were too stubborn to be converted. Aidan criticised Cormán's methods and was sent as a replacement in 635.^[2]

Aidan chose Lindisfarne, like Iona an island, and close to the royal fortress of Bamburgh, as his seat of his diocese. King Oswald, who after his years of exile had a perfect command of Irish, often had to translate for Aidan and his monks, who did not speak English at first. When Oswald died in 642, Aidan received continued support from King Oswine of Deira and the two became close friends.

An inspired missionary, Aidan would walk from one village to another, politely conversing with the people he saw and slowly interesting them in Christianity. According to legend, the king gave Aidan a horse so that he wouldn't have to walk, but Aidan gave the horse to a beggar. By patiently talking to the people on their own level Aidan and his monks slowly restored Christianity to the Northumbrian communities. Aidan also took in twelve English boys to train at the monastery, to ensure that the area's future religious leadership would be English." - Wikipedia

Later, the Celtic Christianity of St. Aidan and Roman Catholicism would come to a reconciliation at Whitby Abbey just north of Scarborough, and Christianity spread throughout the land. Even the Vikings converted when they started to colonize the eastern coasts of what became known as the Danelaw.

Today, two universities, Oxford and Cambridge, are considered two of the premier universities of the world. They got their start as Christian seminaries to train priests in theology. One of the first men to make a mark on Christianity as we know it today came from Oxford. John Wycliffe was a scholar and professor at Oxford. He made his mark by protesting the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church in latter 1300's. He also produced the world's first Bible written in the vernacular, that is, in English, so that the common man could read the Scriptures for himself. Until this time, the Bible was written only in Latin, known as the Vulgate translation which was completed in the 400's. He also was the main force behind a movement known as the Lollards, a precursor to the Reformation that took place about 150 years later under the guidance of such men as William Tyndale, Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cramner. The only reason Wycliffe's Bible didn't have a bigger impact than it did was that the Printing Press had not yet been invented. Books had to be hand copied in those days - a very laborious job. Another was that the English language was undergoing a major change that would not settle out until Tyndale's time.

When the Printing Press did come around, men such as Tyndale and Latimer wasted no time in spreading the seeds of the English Reformation. William Tyndale ultimately died before he could finish his complete translation of the Bible into Modern English. But his translation had such an impact that it helped in large part to shape Modern English into what it is today. Henry VIII was in power at this time too and was looking for a way to get his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled or be granted a divorce. Since the Pope was in no mood to grant either one, Henry took things into his own hands and broke the church in England away from Roman Catholicism. Ironically enough, he did this after he wrote a seminal paper attacking the German Reformation movement and in defence of Roman Catholicism earning him the title Defender of the Faith.

From 1525, when Tyndale started publishing his English translation of the New Testament until 1611, there were no less than 7 major English translations of the Bible! Most of these had the blessing of either King Henry VIII or his daughter, Queen Elizabeth I. In the time between them, Elizabeth's older sister, Mary, who was Roman Catholic, tried her best to stamp out the Reformation, having killed over 300 major leaders of the English Reformation. The most popular of these was the Geneva Bible, named so because of where it was printed during the 1540s.

When King James I came to the English throne after 1600, he was approached by officials of the Church of England for permission to render a new Bible translation to replace the official Bishops Bible translation which had not won much popularity among Christians. So from 1605 until 1610, 50 scholars worked to produce a new translation that was printed in 1611, which we know now as the 1611 King James Authorized Bible. Even it too decades to overcome the popularity of the Geneva Bible. Today, millions of Christians in the English speaking world consider it to be the first and only Bible to be used. Strangely enough, it was not published as a Protestant Bible, but to counter the Protestant Bible. Now most Protestants embrace it as their own.

During this time, we also see that the Pilgrim movement and the Puritan movement got their starts. The conflict between the Church of England, which also meant the English government since the Church of England is the State Church, and the Puritans came to a head with a civil war which cost King Charles his head after he was tried for treason by the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell. There were also major conflicts between the Crown and the Scots with their Presbyterian Church under the leadership of John Knox. The people of the United Kingdom took their Christian faith very seriously in those days! For two or three centuries, many English people died as a consequence of which faith they chose and stood by, no matter the price!

Later, a group of men at Oxford started a Holy Club that promoted a methodical study of the Bible. Out of this group, we gained the two brothers John and Charles Wesley who started the Methodist Movement, which later became a church in America. George Whitehead also came out of this club to become a major Baptist preacher in America along side Jonathan Edwards.

When you travel across this ancient land, you'll also find littered across the landscape, dozens of cathedrals that took tremendous resources to build and several centuries in most cases. Nowhere I have ever been has as many beautiful churches dotting the landscape, ranging in size from small chapels that are works of art in themselves to massive cathedrals that bring to mind the Temples of Jerusalem. Within 15 miles of my home here in Gateshead, I have seen some of the most beautiful churches that I think will stand up against any church in the world for sheer beauty. Too bad these beautiful churches don't reflect the faith of this great nation.

Today, it is a different story. When I first moved here to Gateshead in January of 2007, I was shocked at how many churches stand empty or if not empty, are used for things other than as a church. Out in the rural areas, it's not uncommon to find a fair sized church, or even a large church, surrounded by only a few houses. In cases like these, it's simply a case of villages that used to be large enough to support these churches shrank in population as people moved off to other places or to the cities following the jobs. But to find in many small towns, large towns and even the cities, lots of empty churches boarded up, or sold off to be used as offices for some company, it came as a major shock to me. In America, especially in the South, you'd never find this happening! If a church grows too large for it's building, it usually builds somewhere else a larger building and sells the original to another church looking to upgrade themselves. Or you might find where a church builds a bigger sanctuary next to their former church building and then use it as a chapel. But you'll almost never find a church building abandoned or closed up.

For a country which has a very rich history within the Christian Faith, England no longer reflects this proud heritage! England has 66 million people within her borders (including Wales). Tearfund had this to say about the state of Christianity in England today:

In 2007, Tearfund published the following results of their comprehensive review of British Christian religion in 2006:

“One in four of the UK adult population say they go to church at least once a year. [...] 59% never or practically never go to church.”

Tearfund (2007)₁₀

• 10% of the UK adult population go to church at least weekly.
• 15% attend church at least monthly.
• 26% attend church at least yearly.
• 59% never or practically never go to church.

Self-disclosure polls of church attendance are generally twice as high as reality. Actual measures of church attendance have shown that Church attendance in 1999 was 7.5%, down from 10% in 1989 and 12% in 1979 (declining by about an absolute 2% per decade)[uk.news.yahoo.com 2000]. This trend predicts that in 2007, the rate will be close to 6% who attend, not the 10% who think they do according to Tearfund. This estimate was backed up by the English Church Census 2004.

The Christian Research group's fourth English Church Census (2004) is another professional census whose authors have never shied away from reporting honest statistics, no matter how painful they have been for British Christianity. 37500 churches were invited to take part, and about half did. Some stark truths of Church attendance between 1998 and 2005:

• Between 1998 and 2005, half a million people stopped going to church on Sunday₁₃.
• Daily Telegraph's religious affairs correspondent, Jonathan Petre, says "While 1,000 new people are joining a church each week, 2,500 are leaving"₁₄.
• 6.3% of the population go to church on an average Sunday, compared to 7.5% in 1998₁₄.
• 29% of churchgoers are 65 or over, compared with 16% of the population₁₄.
• Sunday churchgoing is declining at 2.3% per year, slightly slower than the 1990s rate of 2.7% per year₁₃.
• Nearly all Church 'growth' is due to immigrants. A massive influx of Polish workers have filled some churches₁₃.
• "The Roman Catholics have recorded the largest drop [...], it has halved over the past sixteen years"₁₆.
• The drop in the 20-29 age group was 29%₁₆.

"The fastest rates of decline were among Roman Catholics and Methodists; whereas the Pentecostal Churches showed significant growth over the period. As a result, Methodism has dropped to fourth place behind Pentecostalism. If these rates continue, the C of E will overtake the RC Church within the next four years"₁₅.

"London has 11 per cent of all churches in England, and 20 per cent of all churchgoers. It has 53 per cent of all English Pentecostalists, and 27 per cent of all Charismatic Evangelicals. Also, it caters for 57 per cent of all worshippers in their 20s. "I couldn't believe that figure myself, and had to check it again," said Peter Brierley, the director of Christian Research"₁₅. - Religion in the United Kingdom: Diversity, Trends and Decline by Vexen Crabtree, July 2007

In another part of the same report Crabtree shows that after polling 1000 people, 55% consider themselves to be athiests and have no belief in a higher being. The truth of the matter is, here in England, at the most 17% of the population attend church at least once a month. In America, that number is better than 80%!

When I was in high school back in the late 70's, a history teacher of mine, Mr. Larry Harmon taught me to look to England to see where America would be about 50 years later. His theory was that if you wanted to see where America was heading in the next 50 years, study the trends that are prevalent in England today. Looking back over the past 150 years or so, this has proven true in many cases . . . but not all.

Where was it that the English people lost their faith in Christianity? I'm not certain, but if you look to see when the denominations over here changed from growth strategies to maintence strategies, you'll find the answer. I don't know when that happened, but it wouldn't surprise me if it happened after the First World War, or as they call it over here, the Great War. As I said in posts below, England lost more than 3 million people in that war, more than any other war in their history . . . including the Second World War. I'm going to look into this more and see what I can find and when I do, I'll let you know what I find so that maybe, just maybe, we can avoid the same fate.