A Christian Eye on Politics
Beleagured British Christians seek support and assurances from David Cameron.
H ere in the UK a General Election must occur within months and, with the conference season of the three main parties close to being concluded, election fever is starting to mount. As somebody who travels the UK regularly, private conversations with Christian believers are clearly starting to tell me that the British Christian community are now very close to throwing their huge support behind David Cameron and the Conservative Party when the General Election dawns. It's simply that the socialists have caused great damage to Christian belief and practice and the feeling is strong that a Conservative government will, at the very least, improve the situation even if not solving all our great nation's serious moral ills.
Just consider the last few years: Christian hoteliers are now being sued for refusing to offer accomodation to homosexual couples; Christians are being arrested for handing out gospel leaflets (not anti-gay leaflets) at gay festivals; the BBC's new head of Religious Affairs, Aaqil Ahmed, is a practising muslim; in 2008 the BBC even made Tommy Nagra, a Sikh, the new producer of the Christian-based 'Songs Of Praise'; various British organisations such as the BBC itself and British Airways have put enormous pressure on the women whom they employ not to wear crosses as necklaces; nurses have received official reprimands for offering to pray for sick patients, and so it goes on.
So Christians are finding themselves sidelined and marginalised almost everywhere, and the feeling is very strong that Christians are being put under unreasonable pressure and that the time has arrived to alter course.
Yet, in fact, some 70 per cent of adult Britons still describe themselves as Christian, though a far smaller proportion regularly attend church. In comparison, support for other religions (including atheism - yes, atheism is a religion, Dawkins has proven it!) is quite tiny. Yet the BBC, encouraged by this socialist government, refuses to represent this situation in their broadcasting. Culturally, the United Kingdom still remains a Christian country with a national Church, the Church of England, whose supreme head is Her Majesty the Queen. Our traditions, music and literature are utterly replete with Christian sensibilities and biblical quotations. We are simply not "multi-cultural" as a people - never mind how many times liberals repeat this particular mantra, our peoples are steeped in Christianity.
Just to take the anti-Christian bias of the BBC which continues as strongly as ever, as Stephen Glover recently wrote,
"At every possible opportunity it (the BBC) will wheel forward one of those professional atheists who are not happy to live silently with their own non-belief but are determined to shove it down everyone else’s throats. I am thinking particularly of the biologist Richard Dawkins, the novelist Philip Pullman and the philosopher A. C. Grayling. Can you think of a Christian biologist, novelist or philosopher who is afforded one-tenth of the airtime of these militant, omnipresent non-believers?"
(source: The Mail Online, May 15th, 2009).In the face of this huge assault on Christian values of the last few years, Christians are increasingly looking to the probable incoming Prime Minister, Mr David Cameron, for a statement of support for Christianity. Nobody is expecting a statement of belief where belief does not exist, but maybe a statement of a new determination to recognise Britain's strongly endemic Christianity, and for a Christian's right to hold fast to their beliefs. Our heritage has for far too long been ridiculed, lampooned and sidelined.
Please may we Christians have a strong statement of support, Mr Cameron?
The Christian Hawk, October, 2009.
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