Militant atheists should thank God that they live in a Christian country
Why do these militant atheists spend so much time worrying about something they don’t believe in?
A list of the usual secularists (minus Richard Dawkins – presumably on a pilgrimage to the Natural History Museum or something) has written a letter to The Daily Telegraph complaining about David Cameron’s belief in God. We are not a Christian country, they insist.
But why do they care if St Dave has an invisible friend that he wants us all to know? Writing such a letter at Easter time is a little like composing a letter at Christmas telling children that there is no Santa – “Yet politicians, departments stores, schools and parents perpetuate the delusion that a man in a red coat goes from house to house distributing presents. We the undersigned have never believed in the magic of Christmas and we never shall…” Bah humbug, etc.
For the record, the PM never said that he wants to turn Britain into 17th century Salem. He simply said a) I’m a Christian, b) Christians do some good stuff for the community, c) Christians should be a bit more vocal about their values. Cameron’s assertion that Britain is essentially Christian is a fact supported by the constitution, British history, Ed Miliband, the Hindu Council UK and the Muslim Council of Britain. Of course, we’re not Christian in the sense that everyone attends church three or four times a week – but church attendance has been rising and falling since the 1500s and isn’t doing nearly as badly as you think. Either way, we’re Christian in the same sense that we’re Europeans. It’s a part of our cultural makeup.
In fact, contemporary secularists owe Christians a big thank you for the contemporary church/state divide. It’s a point made repeatedly by Tom Holland, a historian of Anglican persuasion who sees Christianity as a faith with a sense of direction – progress towards what we now sort of call “liberalism”:
As it stands, the current attitude of European secularists towards Christianity is like that of a once openly gay man who has since barricaded himself inside the closet and taken to sneering at homosexuality as something deviant. Secularism, in its western form, derives ultimately not from Greek philosophy, nor Roman law, nor even from Enlightenment anticlericalism, but rather from teachings and presumptions that are specifically Christian. Its fons et origo is to be found in the celebrated retort of Jesus to the Pharisees who had thought to catch him out by asking whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Rome: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's."
This is not unique to Christianity. In many Islamic countries, sharia courts offer an alternative to state power – somewhere to get fair, apolitical justice in societies where the Government manipulates secular law to its advantage. Even in revolutionary Iran, opposition to Ayatollah Khomeini’s policies often came from Clerics who complained that they were unIslamic, even that they breached a gap between church and state that the Shi’a religion had hitherto regarded as sacrosanct.
That said, if the authors of the anti-Cameron letter had tried writing it in Saudi Arabia or rural Pakistan, they would’ve quickly learned the benefits of living in a wet, tolerant Christian society. At the heart of modern European Christianity is the principle of freedom of conscience. Yes, Christians have a duty to evangelise but not to force folks to believe – because that would amount to a false conversion and perverts our understanding of the proper relationship between an individual and the faith. Good grief, we even have a Pope who doesn’t like to judge. Frankly anyone who gets exercised about the PM urging more bring-and-buy sales needs to lie down and take a chill pill.
Tags: Pope Francis