British officialdom treats Christianity with open contempt

It’s a busy day in London’s main shopping street, and a young woman is singing hymns. A police officer walks up and orders her to stop, saying “You can’t sing church songs outside of church grounds”. A few weeks later, and at a railway station just a mile or so north of the shopping street, an electronic board displays a hadith – lines from the prophet Muhammad – which says: “All the sons of Adam are sinners but the best of the sinners are those who repent often”.  

While the Met later reprimanded the police officer in the Oxford Street hymns incident, and the managers of King’s Cross Station claimed on Tuesday that the “Hadith of the Day” marked Ramadan, Islam’s holiest month, and that they also mark other religious festivals, including Easter, these two episodes tell us a lot about Britain today. While other religions are respected, Christianity – the faith of this nation since Augustine arrived in 597 – seems to be out of favour. Indeed, it often appears to be treated now by officialdom as anathema, a hindrance to progress, rather than the bedrock of the nation’s laws and culture. 

Some of the most difficult dilemmas come when a faith clashes with other beliefs, as happened when a Leeds teacher, Andy Nix, preached in the street, openly critical of what he termed LGBT ideology. The police feared trouble, he was fined, later sacked by his school, but then secured compensation. The case highlights the complexities of balancing one person’s freedom of speech versus the greater good. Yet these concerns have now led to a situation where a young woman on Oxford Street cannot even sing a devotional song without someone deciding Christianity proffers some sort of threat. Diversity is good – but not if it’s about Christianity. 

Bashing Christianity has long been part of the liberal agenda, with many vilified, for example, if they find abortion deeply disturbing. They are denounced for being anti-feminist, although quite why a law that enables disabled children to be aborted right up to the moment of birth is considered feminist, I’m not sure. Christians are also condemned as unfeeling if they are troubled by assisted dying, as if they want people to suffer pain. That their worries are about a slippery slope leading to the elderly being pressured into death is ignored. 

Christian symbols and spaces are contested, too. Years ago, the Radio Times would have a special border on its pages with programmes for Good Friday, with a cross within the image. This year, the cross – the very thing that denotes Jesus’ crucifixion which is commemorated every Good Friday – is missing and instead there is a gambolling spring lamb and a miniscule church. Perhaps they thought it too distressing or too, well, overtly Christian. Good Friday itself is barely a day for contemplation, fasting and abstinence any more: some restaurants have emailed me with an invitation to “celebrate” Good Friday with a slap-up lunch. 

But the appetite of an entrepreneurial chef for making a profit out of Good Friday is forgivable. Far less comprehensible is the way that churches dilute their Christianity. Anglican cathedrals, focused on being tourist destinations, fill their naves with dinosaurs and helter skelters. 

One of the most depressing indictments of the half-heartedness of Christian clerics is the decision, made by St John’s College, Cambridge, to keep its Church of England chapel free of regular services on Mondays. This, apparently, “will allow other uses of the space and allow the Dean and Chaplain to progress student programmes for civic engagement and faith”.  Surely anybody wishing to know about civic engagement and faith need look no further than the services of the established Church of England? Yet to St John’s College, they are a hindrance. And if the representatives of the established Church won’t defend Christianity, why will others take it seriously? 

People in officialdom treat Islam with respect, perhaps because they are picking up on Muslims’ own feelings about their faith: they love and respect it with a passion. If only more Christian leaders felt the same about theirs.