The Slow, Whining Death of British Christianity

[Dardedar]

The Slow, Whining Death of British Christianity

by Johann Hari, Columnist
The London Independent

And now congregation, put your hands together and give thanks, for I come
bearing Good News. My country, Britain, is now the most irreligious
country on Earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more
completely than anywhere else. Some 63 percent of us are non-believers,
according to an ICM study, while 82 percent say religion is a cause of
harmful division. Now, let us stand and sing our new national hymn:
Jerusalem was dismantled here / in England's green and pleasant land.

How did it happen? For centuries, religion was insulated from criticism
in Britain. First its opponents were burned, then jailed, then shunned.
But once there was a free marketplace of ideas, once people could finally
hear both the religious arguments and the rationalist criticisms of them,
the religious lost the British people. Their case was too weak, their
opposition to divorce and abortion and gay people too cruel, their
evidence for their claims non-existent. Once they had to rely on
persuasion rather than intimidation, the story of British Christianity
came to an end.

Now that only six percent of British people regularly attend a religious
service, it's only natural that we should dismantle the massive amounts
of tax money and state power that are automatically given to the
religious to wield over the rest of us. It's a necessary process of
building a secular state, where all citizens are free to make up their
own minds. Yet the opposition to this sensible shift - the separation of
church and state Americans have known for centuries - is becoming
increasingly unhinged. The Church of England, bewildered by the British
people choosing to leave their pews, has only one explanation: Christians
are being "persecuted" and "bullied" by a movement motivated by
"Christophobia." George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says
Christians are now "second class citizens" and it is only "a small step"
to "a religious bar on any employment by Christians."

Really? Let's list some of the ways in which Christians, and other
religious groups, are given special privileges every day in Britain.
Start with the educational system. Every school in Britain is required by
law to make its pupils engage every day in "an act of collective worship
of a wholly or mainly Christian nature." Yes: Britain is still a nation
with enforced prayer. The religious are then handed total control of 36
percent of our state-funded schools, in which to indoctrinate children
into their faith alone.

These religious schools, paid for by the taxpayer, are disfiguring
Britain. I know one reason I grew up without the prejudices of some of my
older relatives was because I went to school with kids from every
conceivable ethnic and religious group, and I could see they were just
like me. A five-year-old will make friends with anyone, and he'll be much
less likely to believe smears against those friends for the rest of their
lives. But in Britain today, that mixing is happening less and less.
Increasingly, the children of Christians are sent to one side, Jews to
another, Muslims to another still, and they never see each other except
from the window of their parents' cars. After the race riots in Bradford,
Oldham and Burnley in 2001, the official investigations found that faith
schools were a major cause.

So why keep them? Their defenders say these schools perform better in
exams - and at first glance, it seems to be true. On average, they get
higher grades. But look again. A number of studies, including by the
conservative think thank Civitas, have blown a hole in this claim. They
have proven that faith schools systematically screen out children who
will be harder to teach: children from poor families, and less bright
children. Once you look at how much a school improves the pupils it
actually admits, the only real measure of a school's success, it turns
out faith schools do less well than other schools - which isn't
surprising given they waste so much time teaching them crazy nonsense
like Virgin births and Noah's Ark. The British people instinctively know
all this: 64 percent want every state school to be neutral when it comes
to religion.

Special rights for the religious don't stop at the school gates. They
automatically get 26 unelected bishops in the House of Lords. Public
broadcasters are required by law to give them large amounts of money and
time to screen religious propaganda. Jews and Muslims are allowed to
ignore the laws on animal cruelty and engage in the barbaric practice of
slitting the throats of live animals without numbing them in order to
create kosher and halal meat.

And it seems that, in crucial cases, religious figures are virtually
exempted from the law. There is now overwhelming evidence that Joseph
Ratzinger, the Pope, was involved for over twenty years in an
international criminal conspiracy to cover up the rape of children by
priests in his Church. (Check out the superb edition of the BBC's
Panorama, 'Sex Crimes and the Vatican,' for the evidence.) But when he
arrives in Britain in September, our politicians will fawn over him
rather than dialing [911].

Given all this unearned privilege, how can Christians claim they are in
fact being "persecuted"? Here are the cases they offer as "proof." A
nurse called Shirley Chaplin turned up to work wearing a crucifix around
her neck. Her hospital told her that they were worried the elderly and
confused patients she worked with could grab at it, so they said she
could pin the crucifix to her uniform instead, if she liked. That's it.
That's their cause celebre. Oh, and a woman called Theresa Davies who
worked in a registry office, but refused to perform civil partnerships
for gay couples, so... she was moved to working on reception.

In response, Carey and the Church of England demand Christians be allowed
to break the law requiring them to treat gay people equally when
providing a service to the general public - and that any case where a
Christian feels discriminated against should be judged by a special court
of "sensitive" Christians. If we started allowing religious people to
break basic anti-discrimination laws, where would we stop? Until 1975,
the Mormon Church said black people didn't have souls. (They only changed
their mind the day the Supreme Court ruled this was illegal, and God
niftily appeared to their leader that morning and announced blacks were
ensouled after all.) Would we let a Mormon registrar refuse to marry
black people? Would it be "Mormonophobia" to object?

When Lord Chief Justice Laws, who is a Christian himself, ruled the
exemptions demanded by Carey would be "irrational, divisive, and
arbitrary," he threw an extraordinary tantrum and said Christians might
begin to engage in "civil unrest." When I saw Carey make these threats on
television, red-faced and rageful, it made me think of a nasty child in
the playground who had been beating up the gay kids and spitting at the
girls for years and is finally told to stop - only to start bawling that
he's the one who is being picked on.

As their dusty Churches crumble because nobody wants to go there, the few
remaining Christians in Britain will only become more angry and
uncomprehending. Let them. We can't stop this hysterical toy-tossing stop
us from turning our country into a secular democracy where everyone has
the same rights, and nobody is granted special rights just because they
claim their ideas come from an invisible supernatural being. Now, if
you'll excuse me, I have a Holy Lamb of God to carve into kebabs - it's
our new national dish. Amen, and hallelujah.

Huff Po

This article appeared in GQ magazine, where I write a monthly column. To
get these articles a month in advance of this website, you can subscribe
to GQ

[kwlyon]

Now if we can just get them to brush their teeth! Okay...that was uncalled for. I denounce and reject myself.