It is harder than ever to claim, as the Britain’s Prime Minister does, that Britain is still a Christian country.
It was at the time when Baroness Thatcher stood outside No 10 and recited the prayer of St Francis of Assisi, to offer reassurance about her intentions. Two thirds of Brits were Christian then, and phrases such as “where there is discord, may we bring harmony” had wide resonance.
Those were the days where friends parted using phrases like “God bless” and hedged future plans with “God willing”.
But over the past three decades Britain has been losing its religion at a precipitous rate – as Ed Miliband has worked out.
There was almost no comment, let alone fuss, about the section of the Labour leader’s speech where he proclaimed that he had no religion.
This, in itself, is something of a milestone.
When Neil Kinnock spoke about his atheism, he was monstered, as if this were evidence of his otherness. In fact, he was at the vanguard of a growing secularist trend.
Today religion has become, if anything, a handicap to those governing modern Britain. Tony Blair judged it best to keep quiet about his faith. David Cameron has declared a Christianity-lite, one that comes and goes like “Magic FM in the Chilterns”.
But this week, Ed Miliband wanted to tell the world about his creed. He is not a man for synagogues or churches, he said, but is emphatically a man of faith. “Not a religious faith,” he said, “but a faith none the less. A faith, I believe, many religious people would recognise.”
He listed the tenets: a duty to leave the world a better place; a desire to tackle injustice; a belief in the power of collective action. It is not unusual for politicians to describe their values, or give them funny names like “irreducible core”. But it is unusual for them to elevate these to the status of a “faith”.
Over the past 30 years, the two single most striking changes in Britain have been mass immigration and the collapse of Christian worship.
The former has only partially offset the latter.
Pews have been emptying at the rate of 1,500 souls per Sunday, and churches have been turning into pubs almost as fast as pubs have been closing. Deconsecrated churches now stand all over the country, like memorials to an era where weekend worship was the focal point of the community and “Sunday best” meant something.
Today, just one in seven Brits says they worship every week. Regular church-going is as odd, now, as atheism once was. Continue reading