The Tory MP Sir Gerald Howarth got on his religious high-horse today. “We are a Christian country: if you despise our Christian values, please leave and go somewhere else.” Ouch! That’s me told, then. I just hope he isn’t referring the the values from the Old Testament where the God character was responsible for a mere 25 million deaths. Mind you, don’t blame Sir Gerald himself. His master’s voice, David Cameron, proclaimed recently that the UK was “still a christian country” at the same time as polling revealed that some 62% of the population did not regard themselves as religious.
In fact, the results of another poll were revealed today in which 49% of Britons claim no religious belief, up from 31% in 1983, whilst those belonging to the Church of England have declined over the same period from 40% to 17%. Only Islam, which has shown a tenfold interest since 1983, now covering 5% of the population, has increased support.
The results are unequivocal. There is a long term collapse in affiliation to the Church of England and this is clearly, plainly and obviously not a Christian country. But why should the UK be a religious country of any sort at all? Even if 90% of the population believed in a particular religion, should it be the official religion of that country and so inflict its doctrine on the rest of its citizens? That’s what happens in much of the middle east, for example, with disastrous consequences.
As ever, I have no issue with politicians, nor anyone else, following a religion. It is purely a matter for them. What God they choose to believe in is none of my business, at least for as long as their God and their “moral code” does not overlap into my life. If they hold views, they are entitled to have them, no matter how absurd they may seem to the rest of us. There is no law against believing in things that aren’t real, after all, I spent my early years believing that there really was a Santa Claus and the tooth fairy wasn’t actually my mum. Luckily for me, I grew out of these superstitions, but it doesn’t happen to everyone.
Sir Gerald is actually echoing what, say, ISIS would say about christians living in occupied Syria and Iraq, the only difference being that ISIS would behead those who believe in the wrong god rather than instructing them to leave the country. I would imagine escaping christians would far rather remove their faith to a less unsympathetic country than one ruled by ISIS. But that’s what religious states do for you. Far from representing freedom and intolerance, Sir Gerald reinforces both.
To be fair, I am probably being unfair on Sir Gerald because much of his speech was about another religion. He also said: “Our services simply cannot continue to accommodate a quarter of a million new arrivals a year, quite apart from the serious cultural issues arising from people taking advantage of our liberal society while seeking to impose their medieval ways on us.” In other words, Islam. He was having a pop at Islam. But wait a minute: this is a man whose government encourages more “faith” schools, meaning inevitably more muslim schools. But he can’t have it all ways. The genie is out of the bottle now and if you are going to be critical of one religion, then you have to be critical of all of them. There are enough Christians out there, for goodness sake, who hold odious views about gay people, the right to choose, divorce, euthanasia and all manner of things to which they are entitled to have opinions, but not entitled to tell others to hold the same ones.
I am very much against the very concept of multiculturalism because it has been a failed experiment and the expression itself is meaningless. What if a culture encourages slavery, genital mutilation, cruel and barbaric methods of killing animals and the oppression of women and gays? Do we just stand by and say: “Oh well, that’s their culture! Let’s just let them get on with it!”? Of course, we don’t. Different cultures must adapt to work within the existing culture and within the framework of fairness and equality.
And the answer is? Secularism, meaning the strict separation of the state from religious institutions and that people of different religions and beliefs are equal before the law. It doesn’t sound much, but it frightens the extremists to death.
I don’t “despise christian values” per se, but they do not shape my life and nor should they, nor any religious values, shape society. We are a country in which some people hold religious views, worshipping a variety of Gods. They should be able to do that within a secular society not instead of one.
