If David Cameron is sowing religious division, he's going about it in a very funny way

I never thought I’d take to the web to defend David Cameron from attack by some of my favourite writers (quite the reverse), but here it goes. Easter in Christian tradition is a festival full of strange reversals of fortune and inversions of ideas, and this past season has been stranger than most, having seen a group of avowed atheists and secularists take a more orthodox position on religion than the staunchly Anglican Prime Minister. Something weird is going on.

First, to the clash that’s revealed this difference in conceptions of religion. David Cameron wrote a column in the Church Times, which follows the pattern of politicians’ essays in being full of generally unremarkable platitudes, standard shallow defences of policy with a few key phrases desgined to grab headlines. The latter, in this case, was the belief that Britain “should be more confident about our status as a Christian country”. This was a dog-whistle not only to the disgruntled Tories the Prime Minister was trying to woo back into the fold after the rise of UKIP and the passage of gay marriage, but also to the British Humanist Association, who promptly and predictably fired off a letter to the Telegraph signed by Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman and a host of other luminaries, accusing Cameron of fostering “alienation and division”.

My eye was caught by the comments of the BHA’s chief executive, making the statistical case that Britain was not Christian on the grounds that 60% of people never attended a religious service (though this seem a lot of people who never get invited to religious weddings or funerals), and that the census data recording 59% of people as Christians as “gives an inflated figure and measures cultural attachment rather than religiosity”. He is likely write that those identifying as Christians are doing so for cultural rather than religious reasons. But does the fact they do so no support the idea that British culture is in fact tinged with Christianity? If a large number of Britains identify as Christians, even if very vaguely, on the grounds they also identify as British, that surely means Britain is, even if very vaguely, a Christian country.

The use of Christianity as an adjective here is not meant in an all-encompasing description of Britain as uniformly Christian. Britain clearly isn’t, and hasn’t been for several centuries. Rather it is to imply that Britain has long been influenced by Christianity, has a large number of adherents, has many shared values and is in these terms more Christian than some other countries, and isn’t meant to suggest there aren’t countervailing British traditions. These are the same criteria by which we might describe Britain as liberal, eccentric, pleasant, sarcastic, hypocritical, animal-loving, football-obsessed, cricket-obsessed, moderate, conservative, secularist, class-ridden and rainy. All these and more form a part of our ‘nation character’, and it seems churlish to deny ‘Christian’ a place in the frequently self-contradictory list.

It is a little strange that in their attempts to cut down the statistical significance of self-described Christians, the BHA end up presenting themselves as arbiters over what ‘really counts’ as Christian. I’m particularly struck that they use belief in the divinity of Christ and the Resurrection . These are topics over which Christians in the past two centuries have spilt a great deal of ink (and, in earlier centuries, more than a little blood). The divinity of Christ, and exactly what that means, has provoked Christians to disagreement and schism, and to this day different denominations label each other as not being properly Christian for not believing in Jesus’ divinity in the right way, for all that they share a devotion to the same man. While clearly these things are important to Christians, it’s strange to see the BHA doing the same. Belief in the Resurrection as a historical fact, which is probably what the BHA would understand as belief, is a touchstone for many Christians. But others (like myself and, I suspect, David Cameron) struggle to reconcile this, much as the BHA would, with a scientific and historical view of the universe, and hold to the Resurrection as a spiritual truth.   To its critics, inside and outside the church, this position seems vague and woolly, and I can hardly deny it, but here is not the place to defend it, only to note that it exists within Christianity. At any rate it is surely encompassed within David Cameron’s vision of the Church of England. He defends its “percieved wooliness”, saying:

I am not one for doctrinal purity, and I don't believe it is essential for evangelism about the Church's role in our society or its importance. It is important - and, as I have said, I would like it to do more, not less, in terms of action to improve our society and the education of our children.

If anyone is being religiously divisive here, it isn’t the Prime Minister. The BHA wants to define Christianity in terms of beliefs and church attendance. David Cameron describes a typical member of the Church of England, like himself, thusly: “not that regular in attendance, and a bit vague on some of the more difficult parts of the faith.” The BHA is falling in line with a very traditionalist measure of faith. Cameron, like other Anglicans, is trying to move to something different.

More interesting than the back-and-forth over what counts as a Christian country is whether the BHA is fair in calling Cameron divisive simply because he invokes Christianity. This certainly doesn’t appear to be his intention. Although Cameron sets out how his government policies (like keeping foreign aid at 0.7% of GDP) can be supported by Christian morality, he also explicitly recognises that other Christians oppose him on the basis of that same morality. He could hardly do otherwise when the Archbishop of Canterbury spent his Easter sermon laying into how his policies affect the poor. While he is encouraging more interaction between faith and politics, Cameron frankly admits that the same faith can lead to different politics. This is a strikingly pluralistic model of how faith and politics should interact- rather than religion dogmatically dictating political positions, it provides a shared moral framework differing opinions can debate within.

This inherent pluralism means that the role Cameron sees for Christianity in multicultural Britain is far from divisive: “Being more confident about our status as a Christian country does not somehow involve doing down other faiths or passing judgement on those with no faith at all,” Cameron says. Much like traditional dogma within Christianity, Cameron appears to expect Christianity in British public life to be a starting point for debate, a spur to action. To inspire non-Christian voices in response, not suppress them, is the purposes. The aim of asserting Britain to be a Christian country is not to make Britain more Christian in its religion, but to restore a language of morality to its discourse- nor of particular morals but ethics in general:

Crucially, the Christian values of responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, and love are shared by people of every faith and none - and we should be confident in standing up to defend them.

Cameron opposes this language of morality with “secular neutrality”. This surely means the generation of politicians after Alistair Campbell’s famous declaration that “We don’t do God”, and their constant, bland, meaningless assertion to be “doing the right thing” with little consideration as to what makes a thing right. Cameron himself is as guilty of overusing this lazy phrase as much as any of his colleagues. But if greater public discussion of faith means politicians talk more about “compassion, humilty and love”, this can only be an improvement.

It is worth emphasising that we are talking about how morality is publically discussed. Campbell uttered his famous phrase not because his boss, Tony Blair, was an atheist, but quite the reverse: he thought that if Blair talked about his deep faith, voters would be weirded out. The alternative, adhering in public to secular neutrality, has lead a vacuous political discourse. As well as being shallow, today’s political language is misleading, since politicians do not talk about what truly motivates them: is Cameron not being more honest that Blair by talking openly about his faith rather than hiding it? In doing so the aim is to encourage others, whether Christian or not, to do the same. This is where Cameron’s point that some Jews and Muslims, for example, find it easier to publically assert their religion in a society with an establish church opens out to include people of all faiths and none. By making a break with secular neutrality, assertive Christians open a space for others to do the same, and assert their own moral perspective, be it religious or secular.

This is quite a way from the BHA’s fears of “alienation and division”. I may have read too much of my own thought into what is essentially a piece by a Conservative politician designed in the main to reassure the unhappy right-wing of his party. But the BHA too have focused too much on the phrase ‘Christian country’, taking it as asserting the Britain is a religious monolith, whereas the rest of Cameron’s column is shot through with an awareness of pluralism, and a vision for how it might work that takes a far more interesting and open view of faith. I don't hold out much hope for David Cameron actually leading a charge to bring a new awareness of ethics to public debate. After all, as the one currently at the top of the pack, he would have most to lose from a change from the status quo. But if I've read him right, he sets out some interesting ideas, trying to marry the British Christian tradition to British multiculturalism. The BHA would be quite right to question whether a more assertive Christianity is the best way of achieving a greater moral awareness in British public life. In doing so, they would be entering into the very debate David Cameron (if I've read him right) intends to start.