The unveiled threat to religious liberty

Even in today’s multicultural Britain, it’s a bit of a shock when you see one of them walking down the street towards you. Dressed in deepest black from head-to-foot, all hints of femininity are rendered invisible. Apart from the eyes, of course – those dark-rimmed eyes staring out at the world with unconcealed mistrust. But then that’s goths for you.

And not just goths. Youth sub-cultures of all kinds enable their members to stand apart from the rest of society – ‘expressing their individuality’ as they might put it, but in fact donning a uniform to signal a group identity.

So, if we are to ban the face veil worn by some Muslims, then why shouldn’t we ban all forms of attire that isolate their wearers from the mainstream? Leaving aside the particular circumstances in which facial recognition is necessary, why should we make a special example of the niqab or the burqa?

One could argue that face-veiling is demeaning to women, but as Jessica Abrahams argues in Prospect, the same could be said of certain other items of clothing:

• “The British government does not have a policy on high heels, and it is right that women are free to wear them, but that doesn’t mean that heels are great for feminism or that they do not help to perpetuate sexist values. They do. And since one argument that is often raised in favour of banning the veil is that women are sometimes forced to wear them, it is worth pointing out that women are sometimes forced to wear high heels, too—either at work, through official company policy, or through social pressure...”
• “We shouldn’t ban the veil, or heels, or make-up. Wearing them is (in most cases) a free choice. But that doesn’t mean those things are helpful to equality, and in discussing that we should turn our attention towards our own culture as much as to others.”

And what about tattoos? It’s no longer unusual to see people with tattoo’d necks or hands – not the ideal boost to their future job prospects, one would imagine. Moreover, unless you can afford the surgery, a tattoo is for life. A veil, at least, can be removed.

Various motivations lie behind the call for a general ban on veils – both well and ill-intentioned. Racially-motivated attempts to secure a ban are certain to fail, but aggressive secularists are more likely to make headway.  

According Christopher Flavelle's report for Bloomberg, the Canadian province of Quebec has gone a long way towards a general ban – and not just on face veils:

• “Last week the Quebec government released what it calls its Charter of Values, which would ban 'overt and conspicuous' religious symbols worn by public employees. That's a broad category in Quebec. It includes day-care workers, physicians, police officers, school teachers and people who work in government ministries…
• “The province says that common sense will be enough to enforce the law, so it won't create a new ‘religious police.’” 

Among the religious symbols that would be banned are crosses over a certain size, headscarves, turbans and yarmulkes (the round caps worn by some Jewish men). You can see a graphic of what would and wouldn’t be allowed here.

No doubt, the people who came up with these proposals think that they’re standing up for liberal values. In fact, whether secular or religious in motivation, those who would regulate our clothes have an awful lot in common.

Heresy of the week: Atheism has its heretics too

You might think that being an atheist is pretty straightforward – all you have to do is not believe in God (or gods) and you’re in the club. But as with theism, atheism comes in different forms where the central idea is bundled up with other essential ideas. If you dissent from these additional articles of faith then you are definitely not in the club, i.e. atheism has its heretics too.

In the English-speaking world, the dominant form of intellectual atheism is not only atheist in its essentials, but also neo-Darwinist and humanist. Thus when the distinguished American philosopher Thomas Nagel published an entirely secular critique of neo-Darwinism, he caused a bit of a stink. The Dawkins brigade were somewhat less than thrilled and it was named as the ‘Most Despised Science Book of the Year’ in the Guardian. 

In a book review for the New York Times, Nagel introduces us to the thoughts of a fellow heretic (albeit one he has his own disagreements with) – the British philosopher John Gray, who though an atheist is not a humanist:

• “‘In the most general terms,’ he tells us, ‘humanism is the idea that the human animal is the site of some kind of unique value in the world.’ ‘A related aspect of humanism is the idea that the human mind reflects the order of the cosmos.’ ‘A third aspect of humanism is the idea that history is a story of human advance, with rationality increasing over time.’
• “Gray rejects all three of these beliefs, along with the pretension of humanism to offer a scientifically respectable replacement for religion: ‘...there is no hierarchy of value with humans somewhere near the top. There are simply multifarious animals, each with its own needs. Human uniqueness is a myth inherited from religion, which humanists have recycled into science.’”

This is very naughty of Mr Gray, pursuing orthodox atheism to its logical conclusions is not something one does in polite society. And in any case, does he have anything to put in place of humanism?

As a matter of fact, he does. It’s set out in his book The Silence of Animals, a philosophy which Nagel summarises as follows:

• “...an alternative of pure contemplation that just lets the world be. That is the meaning of the title: we are invited to become more like other animals, freed of the perpetual need for commentary, understanding and transcendence.”
• “…Gray thinks the belief in progress is fueled by humanists’ worship of ‘a divinized version of themselves.’ To replace it he offers contemplation: ‘Contemplation can be understood as an activity that aims not to change the world or to understand it, but simply to let it be.’”

But this is where Gray’s own logic runs into the buffers. You see, if we are supposed to just let the world be, to accept nature as it is, then surely that means we must also accept human nature as it is (humanity being an entirely natural phenomenon according to Gray). Yet, it is very clearly not in our nature let the world be – or to free ourselves “of the perpetual need for commentary, understanding and transcendence”. 

We are not like the animals. Something within us is always looking for ultimate explanations. We can’t simply put it away, it is part of who we are. 

It’s almost as if it were there for a reason.

Pornography, cathedrals and the conservative case for common ownership

Whatever the merits of privatising the Royal Mail, it is certain to revive the old calumny that Conservatives ‘know the price of everything and the value of nothing’ and that, consequently, we forget that some things aren't for sale.

Writing for the Washington Monthly on the subject of common ownership, Timothy Noah quotes from a recent Alan Bennett play:

• “One of the sharper satirical jabs in People… occurs when a consortium of wealthy investors decides to purchase Winchester Cathedral. ‘I know it’s pricey,’ says an absurdly practical-minded archdeacon, ‘but Winchester is such a good idea.’ ‘Isn’t it?’ replies the consortium’s smooth-as-silk agent. ‘And after all, the school is private, so why shouldn’t the cathedral be private too?’ Warming to the topic, the archdeacon proposes ‘a series of exclusive celebrity Eucharists [for] leading figures in business, sport, and the world of entertainment.’”

Of course, unlike the Royal Mail, Winchester Cathedral isn’t owned by the state, but by that ultimate Big Society institution – the Church of England. In a broader sense, cathedrals belong to a category of ownership that Jonathan Rowe (a collection of whose writings are reviewed here by Timothy Noah) called “the commons”:

• “By ‘commons’ he meant things that are widely shared as a matter of law or sometimes mere convention. In the most literal sense, a common is a public park... But in the broader sense commons can mean anything that’s available to all takers for at most a nominal fee. It can be a work of timeless literature no longer under copyright. It can be an invention of enormous societal value on which a patent either expired or (as in the heroically selfless cases of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine and Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web) was never claimed. It can be the air we breathe, or the water we drink. It can be an experience we all go through, such as childhood or old age. It can be the absence of something we hate, like noise. It can be Wikipedia. It can be an ocean beach. It can be free Wi-Fi.”

Because the commons “is a realm that lies outside conventional market economics” its value can be overlooked – if only because it is hard to put an objective price on things that are never bought and sold. Nevertheless, the commons “creates wealth—sometimes monetary, sometimes spiritual or psychic—for us all.”

It is a shame that conservatives are often seen as being hostile to the commons. In part, this is down to the usual leftwing practice of character assassination, but we have brought some of it down on ourselves through an over-emphasis on private ownership, as if it were the only alternative to state control.

In fact, as Jonathan Rowe recognised, ‘the commons’ represents something distinct from both state and market:

• “Rowe was reared in a conservative household, and though his politics subsequently turned leftward he never entirely lost his distaste for big government… The commons worked best, Rowe felt, when it stood apart from both government and commerce, which is why Rowe would have howled with laughter at Alan Bennett’s use of Winchester Cathedral to lampoon market worship.”

Both state and market can also strengthen the commons – and the internet is a prime example. No one owns the internet as a whole, it was originally created by the US military, underwent a further stage of incubation within the academic world and subsequently flourished through the input of private enterprise. It is therefore a shared space and the role of government should not be to take it over or sell it off, but to support those who use it in maintaining common standards.

For that reason, David Cameron is right to heed the widespread calls to limit online access to abusive and extreme pornography. Though some people regard the internet as belonging entirely to the private realm, the reality is very different. Like a public park or a cathedral it actually belongs to the commons and the common standards required to keep it that way are not just technical in nature.

Immigration is a poor excuse for secularisation

Compared to America, most of Europe finds little place for religion in public life. Yet it is America that has a secular constitution, in contrast to the formally religious constitutions of many European countries.

In an article for Aeon, Ronan McCrea notes that –

• “...not a single European state has institutional arrangements that would satisfy the requirements of the US Constitution, which prohibits symbolic or financial endorsement of religion by the state.”

McCrea has an explanation for this apparent paradox:

• “The populations of most European states have a clear majority of one particular denomination of Christianity. This means that, until recently, to be of a particular nationality usually meant to belong to a particular religion: to be Spanish was to be Catholic; to be Swedish, Lutheran; to be Greek, Greek Orthodox; and so on. The overlap between religious and national identity meant that the symbols and other elements of a country’s predominant religion played a significant part in public life, and in many cases still do.”

However, mass immigration means that this religious homogeneity – however nominal in nature – no longer applies:

• “Migration has pushed religion back to the centre of public debate, but has also placed pressure on the remaining legal and symbolic privileges held by Christianity in European states, pressure that may well have the effect of banning religion from legal and political life altogether.”

A few months ago, the Labour MP and former Anglican minister, Chris Bryant, proposed that the chapel of St Mary Undercroft, in the Palace of Westminster, be turned into a multifaith prayer room so that it could be used for same sex weddings. Leaving aside the SSM issue, let’s just consider the multifaith angle. 

Anyone who’s ever visited the chapel will know that every inch of its richly decorated interior is infused with High Anglican iconography. It would be hard for many low church Protestants to worship there, let alone members of non-Christian religions. Unless one were to remove or cover-up the imagery – which would be an act of sacrilege and of cultural vandalism – the chapel doesn't exactly lend itself to a multifaith purpose.

For a certain kind of secularist the answer is not multifaith but no faith. In the case of St Mary Undercroft, that would mean shutting the chapel as a place of worship altogether – perhaps redesignating it as a museum, in the manner of the Bolsheviks.

The chapel is a symbol of a wider debate, which, according to Ronan McCrea, has been sharpened by the challenge of integrating immigrant communities into mainstream society:

• “Olivier Roy, professor at the European University Institute in Italy and a well-known scholar of European Islam, has noted how suspicion and fear has been created in Europe by ‘the emergence of new communities of believers who do not feel bound by the compromises laboriously developed over the past centuries between the religious and the secular’. These fears are driving a process that formalises and restricts the role of religion and its privileges in public life.”

Instead of standing firm against the minority-of-the-minority who genuinely pose a threat to our society, there are those who would have all expressions of religious faith restricted equally. With the best of intentions, Mr McCrea would appear to be among their number:

• “The clarification of limits on the role of religion in law and politics, if fairly applied, could help to alleviate the sense of double standards and unfairness that many migrants and their naturalised descendants feel...
• “Perhaps, as Giuseppe di Lampedusa wrote in his novel The Leopard (1958), ‘everything must change so that everything can remain the same.’”

Except that everything would not be the same. Christian traditions are woven into the very fabric of our national identity. The institution of the monarchy, our constitution, our flag, our national anthem, our public holidays, if you tear the religious symbols out of our national institutions, what would be left of them?

If you’re reading this, then you’re probably WEIRD

Readers of ConservativeHome aren’t necessarily weird, but they’re almost certainly WEIRD – western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic. It’s a useful acronym, because it reminds us that most people in the world aren’t WEIRD, and it is we westerners who are the exception.

The point is explored in a fascinating article by Ethan Watters for the Pacific Standard:

• “It is not just our Western habits and cultural preferences that are different from the rest of the world, it appears. The very way we think about ourselves and others—and even the way we perceive reality—makes us distinct from other humans on the planet, not to mention from the vast majority of our ancestors.”

Watters draws upon the groundbreaking work of the anthropologist Joe Henrich, who argues that most academic research in human behaviour is based on a massively unrepresentative sample of humanity:

• “A 2008 survey of the top six psychology journals dramatically shows how… more than 96 percent of the subjects tested in psychological studies from 2003 to 2007 were Westerners—with nearly 70 percent from the United States alone. Put another way: 96 percent of human subjects in these studies came from countries that represent only 12 percent of the world’s population...
• “...Researchers had been doing the equivalent of studying penguins while believing that they were learning insights applicable to all birds.”

Re-running the studies with people from non-WEIRD parts of the world uncovers a variety of hitherto unsuspected differences. Across a range of thought processes – from visual perception to moral reasoning – it turns out that we don’t all think alike.

But why should this be? It’s not down to biological differences – people everywhere have much the same thinking equipment. Rather, it is culture that makes the difference, influencing not only what we think about, but how we think about it:

• “Ethnic backgrounds, religious beliefs, economic status, parenting styles, rural upbringing versus urban or suburban—there are hundreds of cultural differences that individually and in endless combinations influence our conceptions of fairness, how we categorize things, our method of judging and decision making, and our deeply held beliefs about the nature of the self, among other aspects of our psychological makeup.”

Of course, any proper conservative could have told the academics that tradition plays a vital role in shaping and perpetuating ways of thought. But, unfortunately, conservatism is no longer the dominant philosophy of the WEIRD world. Its place in the western mind has been usurped by liberalism, which places extreme emphasis on the autonomy of the individual. It is a value system that can be summed up in that universal moral justification of our age: ‘I’m just being myself.’

The reason why it took the academics so long to realise the importance of culture and tradition is that they themselves are the supreme exponents of the liberal way of thinking:

• “Taking an object (in this case the human mind) out of its context is, after all, what distinguishes the analytic reasoning style prevalent in the West. Similarly, we may have underestimated the impact of culture because the very ideas of being subject to the will of larger historical currents and of unconsciously mimicking the cognition of those around us challenges our Western conception of the self as independent and self-determined. The historical missteps of Western researchers, in other words, have been the predictable consequences of the WEIRD mind doing the thinking.”

How’s that for an irony?

Conservatism and the city – or why urban policy shouldn't be left to the left

The US political map is famously divided between Republican ‘red states’ and Democrat ‘blue states’. Though this might be an American exception to the political colour scheme that applies elsewhere in the world, it works well geographically – given that most of the blue states are coastal.

So, is there something about the oceans (or the Great Lakes) that inclines people to the left? Only that American cities tend to be coastal and that urban voters turn out for the Democrats:

• “After the presidential election in November, New York Times exit polls found that Republican candidate Mitt Romney had received only 29 percent of the big-city vote to President Obama’s 69 percent… the GOP has an urban problem. And it’s partly a self-created one. The party, nationally and even locally, has focused on winning suburban and rural votes and has stopped reaching out to city dwellers.”

This is a story we’re not entirely unfamiliar on this side of the pond, which is why Ed Glaeser’s advice to Republicans in an article for City Journal is relevant to British Conservatives too:

“The GOP wasn’t always so dismissive of cities,” he argues:

• “Almost at the front of its 1968 platform was a section called ‘Crisis of the Cities,’ which declared that ‘for today and tomorrow, there must be—and we pledge—a vigorous effort, nation-wide, to transform the blighted areas of cities.’… After Richard Nixon won the election that year, he sought to deliver on those promises. Aided by his HUD [Housing and Urban Development] secretary, George Romney (Mitt’s father), he moved federal policy away from subsidizing disastrous public-housing projects and toward a system of housing vouchers. Nixon also championed block grants, which gave cities flexibility in distributing federal aid, allowing them to target their greatest needs.”

Of course, we all know how things turned out for Tricky Dicky, but at least the guy won elections – unlike modern-day Republicans:

• “The 2012 party platform, by contrast, had no city-oriented policies whatsoever and used the word ‘urban’ just twice—once to decry the current administration’s allegedly ‘replacing civil engineering with social engineering as it pursues an exclusively urban vision of dense housing and government transit.’”

Note the sneering contempt for public transport – typical of a party consumed by its knee-jerk hostility to the public sphere.  Such an attitude might be attractive to those that can afford to create their own entirely private bubbles in which to live their lives, but in a city this is a luxury that few can afford. 

In an urban environment, a decent quality of life for most people depends upon investment in the shared spaces and services that make up the public sphere. By having nothing positive to say on these issues, the right surrenders the urban vote to the left. This is doubly shameful, because  as Ed Glaeser shows, conservative and market-orientated ideas on policing, schools reform, road pricing and competition in public services have a huge contribution to make to our cities.

Furthermore, with the right approach, conservative leaders like Rudy Giuliani and Boris Johnson can win over the most cosmopolitan of electorates. However, in order to make the most of this potential, two things need to happen.

Firstly, real boldness on decentralisation: Cities should be seen as organic entities with the local knowledge and spirit to run their own affairs; not as dumping grounds of social need to be managed from afar. Secondly, we need to build urban homes fit for families: If middle class voters feel compelled to grab their children and run for the suburbs as soon as they can, the urban conservative cause will remain a hopeless one.

Is the Charity Commission trying to suppress religion?

Last month, Peter Bone MP used a Ten Minute Rule bill – and a comment piece on ConservativeHome – to raise the case of Preston Down Trust, an organisation of the Plymouth Brethren that had been denied charitable status by the Charity Commission.

The case, now the subject of a tribunal, has important implications for religious freedom in this country, and so it is good to see a balanced article on the issue appear on the Guardian website.

Written by James Gray (an independent campaigns adviser, not the Conservative MP), it provides some useful background:

• “Founded in the 19th century, the Brethren are a Christian movement whose lifestyle is characterised by daily bible study, an emphasis on traditional family roles and a rejection of radio, TV and cinema. Their doctrine of ‘separation’ limits time spent with outsiders, but adherents say the popular perception that the community lives in isolation, severing all ties with those who choose to leave – hence the ‘Exclusive Brethren’ epithet – is an outdated stereotype.
• “The case hinges on whether the doctrine and practices of the Brethren are compatible with the public benefit requirement of charity law. Until the Charities Act 2006 there was a presumption that ‘advancement of religion’ was in itself a public benefit, but the act removed that presumption and required religious charities – just like those with other legally defined charitable purposes – to demonstrate explicitly how their activities made a positive contribution to the community.”

The idea that charities should be able to demonstrate public benefit is not an unreasonable one. After all, the public nature of the benefits provided by charities is what distinguishes them from private associations like businesses or, for that matter, families.

When the 2006 reforms were first debated, a commonly given example of a religious organisation that would fail the public benefit test was that of a completely enclosed religious order. By definition, no public access to the activities of such an organisation would be possible – therefore it wouldn’t qualify for charitable status.

This seemed fair enough at the time. However, the Charity Commission now appears to be making an example of the Plymouth Brethren – where the situation is substantially different.

It is certainly true that, compared to the Church of England, participation in Brethren activities can involve greater demands upon the individual. But something similar could be said of, say, a community theatre group that only stages productions of a highly experimental nature instead of the more ‘accessible’ fare of mainstream amateur dramatics. Does the Charity Commission propose to deny charitable status to arts organisations when they get demanding – or is it just religion on the hit list?

The Preston Down case is complicated one and the issue of public access is just one of its strands. Nevertheless, one has to ask whether an unelected quango like Charity Commission is going too far in interpreting the law: 

• “When parliamentarians and parts of the media found out about its decision, they were quick to accuse the commission of ‘anti-Christian’ bias... The case also dominated last month's Westminster Hall debate on charity registration, with some MPs calling for a full parliamentary inquiry.”

Some people may see this as political interference. But the alternative view is that it is the Charity Commission that is over-reaching itself. Adjudicating on regulatory technicalities is one thing, making value judgements is entirely another. 

A big society or a bankrupt NHS – the choice is ours. Boles was wrong to castigate Phillip Blond

In an interview in last week’s Spectator, the Conservative MP and Cameroonian cheerleader, Nick Boles, expressed some bracing views on the ‘modernisation’ project that he himself was a part of:

• “Boles concedes that ‘for classic, relatively low income, Midlands and northern towns and cities there was something missing’. He blames this on the modernisers being ‘very carried away with – which were very much the media-zeitgeist – the chocolate oranges in W.H. Smith and some of the environmental messages and the work/life balance stuff and all of that. We got side-tracked a bit from what is now clear should be our proper concern… we didn’t have a strong economic message.’ They were, he says, perhaps ‘overly obsessed’ with university-educated professionals in Cambridge, and not attentive enough to ‘the hard-working strivers’.”

Some fair points here, but who, in particular, does Boles blame for this failure of vision? David Cameron? George Osborne? Himself? No, none of those. Instead, his scapegoat of choice is the political thinker Phillip Blond:

• “He moves on to the Cameroons’ flirtation with ‘Red Toryism’, a mix of social conservatism and economic communitarianism. Or, as Boles puts it, ‘That Phillip Blond nonsense we indulged in… Phillip Blond and others… sort of hoodwinked us into thinking there was some interestingly new type of Conservative who wasn’t obsessed by costs and making people’s wage packets go further…”

Let’s leave aside the reality that a “mix of social conservatism and economic communitarianism” is a pretty good description of voter values in “relatively low income, Midlands and northern towns.” Let’s ignore the fact that Blond defined the Conservative mission as creating “a capitalism that works for the poor”, when the Cameroons were still chasing those “university-educated professionals in Cambridge”.  Let’s even move on from the blindingly obvious truth that turning rhetoric into reality is the job of government ministers, not think tank directors.

Instead of all of that, let’s remind ourselves that what used to be the central idea of Cameronism – the big society – is still of central importance to the future of our nation. Furthermore, it is important in terms of practical outcomes, not just in a philosophical sort of way. Take, for instance, the issue of healthcare and its long-term impact on our public finances.

Over the coming decades it is predicted that, as our population gets older, the diseases of old age – such as dementia – will place ever greater demands on the NHS. Thus, if we are not be overwhelmed by the financial consequences, we need solutions and we need them soon.

But what relevance does the big society have here? Well, we do need more volunteers to get involved with the fight against dementia, as David Cameron called for last week; but, apart from that, isn't the main challenge one of scientific research?

Perhaps not. Harry Boothby is a dementia researcher, and in a significant article for Standpoint, he argues that though conditions such as Alzheimer’s are linked to physical changes in the structure of the brain, the extent to which people succumb to these changes is influenced by social factors:

• “Another longitudinal study being carried out in Chicago has recently published findings linking the density of a person's social network to their vulnerability to plaques and tangles. At post mortem it was found that the individuals with dense social networks were less severely demented than their counterparts with smaller social networks even though they had the same tangle density in their brains.”

It should be stressed that this is an observation that applies across a population, not to each and every person with dementia. Furthermore, our understanding of the relationship between chronic medical conditions and social factors is clearly in its infancy. And, yet, it is not unreasonable to suggest that an atomised society of increasingly isolated individuals is, both metaphorically and literally, an unhealthy one.

Free schools, bad people and evangelical Christians

Alan Judd advises the Government on the vetting of free schools. In an article for the Daily Telegraph – in part, a response to a scare story about creationism in the class room – he makes it clear that applying for free school status is an extremely demanding process: 

• "One applicant I spoke to described how his group fell apart through exhaustion after struggling nine-tenths of the way through the bureaucratic thicket, only to find that the premises they thought they’d got were abruptly sold off by an ideologically hostile local authority. Such antipathy from elements of the educational establishment, particularly the unions, won’t go away, as control is part of their raison d’etre and any freedoms that threaten it – no matter how beneficial to the children they’re supposed to be educating – will be opposed." 

On the particular issue of faith schools, he makes another good point: 

• "To ban believers from setting up free schools would be to exclude a large number of able, well-meaning and experienced people who can do much to raise levels generally. The trouble is, as always, when it’s taken to extremes, whether it’s evangelical Christians, totalitarian Muslims or segregationist Jews." 

Well, quite. I’m sure that we can all agree – wait a second, what was that about evangelical Christians!? Just look at the context: in a list of religions gone wrong, the adjective ‘evangelical’ is used in same way as ‘totalitarian’ and ‘segregationist’ i.e. to indicate extremism. While there is something undoubtedly extreme about totalitarian or segregationist variants of any belief system, evangelical Christianity is represented in this country by mainstream denominations likes the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians and large parts of the Church of England.

In an unpublished letter to the Telegraph (but published on the Cranmer blog), Steve Clifford of the Evangelical Alliance protests: 

• "It is wrong and worrying that a senior government advisor brands evangelical Christians as extremist… There are approximately 2 million evangelical Christians in the UK, the fastest growing part of the church worldwide. They take their faith seriously, but that does not make them extremist. To suggest it does demonstrates a woeful lack of religious understanding at the heart of government." 

It is possible that Alan Judd meant ‘evangelical’ in some non-specific colloquial sense rather than to identify a major branch of the Christian faith, but shouldn’t a government advisor on faith-related matters should choose his terms more carefully?

If a major branch of any other religion had been equated with extremism – whether inadvertently or otherwise – there would have been no end of fuss. However, when it comes to Christians – and, in particular, evangelical Christians – rather less care and attention is paid.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the media. When, for instance, did you last see an evangelical Christian portrayed sympathetically in a TV drama – rather than as a self-regarding ass / horrendous bigot / murdering lunatic?

Perhaps the BBC’s diversity unit could look into the matter?

Secularism versus democracy

Can you guess which publication the following came from?

• "It compromises democracy, it promotes and rewards hypocrisy and doublethink, it reflects a crippling failure of imagination on the part of its proponents and it’s founded on principles that are cynical, unempathetic and deeply un-humanist. It’s called secularism, and I think it stinks." 

Was it, perhaps, the Catholic Herald, the Baptist Times or even the Al-Qa’eda Gazette? Nope, none of those. It was an opinion piece by Richard Smyth for the New Humanist, an organ of the Rationalist Association.

So, why would an outspoken atheist be so opposed to secularism? It’s not because he’s one of those high church unbelievers with a penchant for the Common Book of Prayer, rather it's because he’s a democrat:

• "The basic premise of secularism is that religion should be kept out of politics… My premise is that people who get things wrong should be kept out of politics. 
• "How is that to be done? Why, by not voting for them, of course. Not by erecting self-serving and undemocratic Chinese walls between ‘church’ and ‘state’, ‘religion’ and ‘politics’." 

This is a really important point. Like it or not, we live in a plural society – in which different groups and individuals hold different, often conflicting, values. Not so long ago, the response of the liberal left to this state of affairs was to make us celebrate diversity for its own sake. But in more recent years (and especially since 9/11) we’ve seen a different, more intolerant attitude. Instead of allowing culture clashes to be settled at the ballot box (or through other public choice mechanisms ) aggressive secularists would like to exclude certain worldviews from the public square altogether – the democratic equivalent of pre-match fixing.

It’s an attitude that tries to put certain beliefs under a kind of ideological house arrest, saying, for example, that it’s OK to be privately opposed to abortion, but that you shouldn’t try to change the law. Smyth points out that’s there nothing liberal about such an approach:

• "…it’s an argument that crumbles as soon as you spin it around and take a look at it from the other side. If I believe that human life is sacred, then an abortion is essentially a murder. A woman has no more right to terminate her foetus than a mother has a right to strangle her three-year-old son. And a person who believes this has a moral obligation to prevent it wherever possible." 

In the end, there is no neutral worldview: Removing the religious elements of the British constitution is as ideologically charged as leaving them in. A politician who says nothing about his beliefs is making as big a statement as one who speaks of nothing else. A school syllabus that makes no mention of faith is as freighted with significance as one that does.

In every case, a choice must be made, so let’s make it freely. Richard Smyth puts it this way:

• "If I were to be the only atheist in a country otherwise full of Christians, I would want and expect the government to be run on Christian principles. I wouldn’t like it, of course – but that’s democracy." 

Indeed it is, thank God.