Religion
The two main faiths of the people are Islam and Christianity, with 50 per cent Muslim and 34 per cent Christians.
There are many historical churches in Bethnal Green. Notable churches include, St John on Bethnal Green, located near the Bethnal Green tube station, on Bethnal Green Road and Roman Road. The church was built from 1826 to 1828 by the architect John Soane. Other notable churches include St Matthew - built by George Dance the Elder in 1746. St Matthew is the mother church of Bethnal Green; the church's opening coincided with a vast population increase in the former village of Stepney, resulting in the need to separate the area around Bethnal Green from the mother Parish of St Dunstan's, Stepney. All but the bell tower, still standing today, was destroyed by fire and the church again suffered devastating damage during the bombing campaigns of the Second World War, resulting in the installation of a temporary church within the bombed-out building. St. Matthew's remains a major beacon of the local East End community and is frequented on Sundays and other religious occasions by a mixture of established locals and more recent migrants to the area.
Other churches include St. Peter's Church by Lewis Vulliamy (1841), St James the Less by Lewis Vulliamy (1842), St James the Great by Edward Blore (1843), and St Bartholomew by William Railton (1844). The church attendance in Bethnal Green was 1 in 8 people since 1900, and is estimated around 100 people attend church as of today (only 10% attend regularly in the UK). Baptisms, marriages and burials have been deposited nearly at all churches in Bethnal Green.
There are four Islamic places of worship or services in Bethnal Green for the Muslim community. These are the Baitul Aman Mosque and Cultural Centre, Darul Hadis Latifiah, the Senegambian Islamic Cultural Centre and the Globe Town Mosque and Cultural Centre. The London Buddhist Centre, at 51 Roman Road, is one of the largest urban Buddhist centres in the west, and is the focus of a large Buddhist residential and business community in the area.
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Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“Female Virtues are of a Domestick turn. The Family is the proper Province for Private Women to Shine in. If they must be showing their Zeal for the Publick, let it not be against those who are perhaps of the same Family, or at least of the same Religion or Nation, but against those who are the open, professed, undoubted Enemies of their Faith, Liberty, and Country.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“The religion of England is part of good-breeding. When you see on the continent the well-dressed Englishman come into his ambassador’s chapel and put his face for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed hat, you cannot help feeling how much national pride prays with him, and the religion of a gentleman.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Both Socrates and Jesus were outstanding teachers; both of them urged and practiced great simplicity of life; both were regarded as traitors to the religion of their community; neither of them wrote anything; both of them were executed; and both have become the subject of traditions that are difficult or impossible to harmonize.”
—Jaroslav Pelikan (b. 1932)