It seems that David Cameron can’t say or do anything right when it comes to faith. Either he’s not Christian enough, or too Christian, or gets faith involved in politics, or doesn’t get faith involved in politics – he seems to receive criticism from all quarters. Most recently, he’s been criticised in a letter to the Telegraph for calling the UK a ‘Christian Country’. According to the letter:
Apart from in the narrow constitutional sense that we continue to have an established Church, Britain is not a “Christian country”. Repeated surveys, polls and studies show that most of us as individuals are not Christian in our beliefs or our religious identities.
Frankly I think this is an exaggeration when, in the last UK Census – which is surely by definition the most comprehensive survey of them all – 59.3% of the population voluntarily put ‘Christian’ on the form. Not only that, but the established Church is not simply ‘bolted on‘ to a secular state: it has legal recognition (the relation of canons of the Church of England and the Law, for example), Bishops sit in the House of Lords – whether you like it or not, the Church has a role in the fabric of the country at the highest levels. That role may be diminishing, but it is still there. It is not merely a ‘narrow constitutional sense’.
However, aside from that, there is another historical angle on this – which would be true even if the Church of England were to completely disappear, and Christianity became a minority religion.
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