He came out recently with some comments about how Britain should be proud to be a Christian Nation
and how Christianity has played such a significant part in making Britain the country it is today.
Given that he has admitted that his own faith is limited to occasional church attendance(probably all official),
sporadic prayer and no real day-to-day experience of living close to God we must ask why he has suddenly
decided to come out with this burst of religious zeal.
One of his comments that caused me to shake my head in despair was this one:
“The Bible runs through our political history in a way that is often not properly recognised. The history
and existence of a constitutional monarchy owes much to a Bible in which Kings were anointed and
sanctified with the authority of God and in which there was a clear emphasis on the respect for Royal
Power and the need to maintain political order”
We English fought a civil war to oppose the “Divine Right of Kings” and to replace it with the rule of Parliament.
In the twenty first century when we still find ourselves struggling to maintain our democracy what madness
is it to have the leader of our Parliament, a man who should champion democracy with his every breath,
speak out in praise of a religion that has bought tyranny and theocracy for centuries.
Great Britain in the year 2014 has no place for the god given right of kings to rule over commoners and even
if he were just saying this to appeal to his Christian audience and score a few votes this is skirting the limits
of common sense and verging on something far worse.
When our Prime Minister, a man who already represents less than a third of our electorate, speaks fondly of
Christianity for bring us the right of a tyrant to rule over us should we be asking if he has plans along those
lines.
He goes on to make the claim that Christianity is the reason why so many good and kind people give
generously of their time to charitable works, does he mean to say that those same good and kind
people would not give their time to charity were they not Christians.
Goodness, kindness, generosity, willingness to help those in need, these are not Christian values, they are
Human values. They have existed for as long as people have existed, people who follow every religion and
people who follow no religion have as much decency and kindness as those who follow Christ.
Christianity has no call on kindness or decency; in fact Christianity has all too often been used to excuse
cruelty and inhumanity. It is Christianity and Islam that inspires most of those who condemn Gay marriages
and oppose the Lesbian, Gay and Transgender community.
The recent comments as to why the Church of England, that faith that apparently makes Britain what
it is, cannot and will not support the right of people to marry out of love because some two thousand
year old book says marriage is only between one man and one woman is a case in point.
Britain has a long history of oppression, hatred, tyranny, all done in the name of Christianity.
It is the attitude of men like Cameron that make some people afraid to openly admit they are Agnostic or
Atheist. When the head of the government speaks so openly and enthusiastically of Britain being a Christian
nation then people are reluctant to admit that they are NOT members of the dominant national faith and
so tick that box labelled Christian on the census.
People who never go to church or pray and only say ‘Jesus’ or ’Jesus Christ’ as a curse still tick that box that
says they are Christian, why, because it is somehow seen as being ‘Not British’ to say otherwise.
The faith of the Druids existed long before the first Christians walked these shores. Wicca, Gaia,
Heathens, Pagans, all of these worshiped their faiths long before the bible was written.
Why are these faiths now so uncommon, that would be because Christianity, the religion that apparently
made Britain what it is today hunted them down and did its very best to destroy any belief or faith that
did not come from the book of god.
At a time when UKIP is causing the Tory vote to abandon “Call me Dave” in droves and when focus groups
are highlighting the concern over Immigration we suddenly have our PM waving a pseudo nationalist flag in
the form of the state religion.
Are people who are not Christian somehow less British, are all those people coming to the UK from non
Christian nations less valued because they lack the shared faith?
Does our PM know or even care that by highlighting his image of Britain as a ‘Christian’ nation he runs
the risk of disfranchising every one of us who do not follow the faith that he admits to following so poorly?
Does he care that his words judge those of us who do not fall to our knees and heed the orders of priests
and holy men claiming inspiration from words written by men who’s bones are long since dust as being
less British?
Church and state should be separate. There is no place for religion in government; you only have to look
to history or the Middle East to see why rule by priests brings nothing good. Laws should be made to
reflect human and Humanist values, justice should not be shaped by interpretations of 2,000 year old
writing translated again and again and then interpreted to suit the desire of the church.
Our politicians should be the first line of defence against religious rule; they should be the guardians of
our secular society and democracy where basic freedoms are guaranteed.
When it is our politicians who are advancing the case of state religion we should all be concerned.