The similar phrase 'Worldly Christianity' is one used by Bonhoeffer. It's J Gresham Machen that I want to line up most closely with. See his Christianity and culture here. Having done commentaries on Proverbs (Heavenly Wisdom) and Song of Songs (Heavenly Love), a matching title for Ecclesiastes would be Heavenly Worldliness. For my stance on worldliness, see 3 posts here.

Christians who XL

You may have seen the articles that for some reason caught my eye today reporting a study that suggests religious people in Britain tend, on average to be, how shall we put it, on the larger side. See here for example.
Basically, researchers from the University of Coventry have concluded that people of faith are more overweight than godless heathens, with Christians likely to be most overweight of all.
In research by Dr Deborah Lycett looking at the Body Mass Index (BMI) of over 7,000 people, it was discovered that people belonging to a religious group were on average almost a point higher than atheists.
Similar studies have already been conducted in the US, where one found the more dedicatedly religious someone is, the greater their chances of being overweight. The study looked at those who rarely prayed and those who attended worship every week.
Lycett’s study found that while Christians were the portliest, Sikh men came in at a close second, with a significantly higher waist-to-hip ratio … seen in Christian and Sikh men.”
There are plenty of reasons why this might be the case I guess. Perhaps religious people concentrate more on their souls than their bodies. If that is the case, then wrong theology is creeping in somewhere.

1 comment:

Paul Burgess said...

Size aside our Alicia was actually taught on her OT course that people of faith are less likely to have dementia in old age.