“For centuries, religious faith has been invoked at the limits of our moral and scientific understanding – but, more recently, at the threshold of political legitimacy.”

More than a decade ago, at the height of the bizarre alliance of Labour and Republican governments, Prime Minister Tony Blair received some sound advice from his Director of Communications and Strategy, Alastair Campbell: He was counselled to conceal – by any means necessary – his Roman Catholic religion from the British public. Duplicitous, perhaps, but wise considering Britain’s “senior partner” in the Iraq-Iran imbroglio was perfectly candid about his direct-line with the Almighty in the decision for war. To figure that foreign policy might take its cues from the whispered wishes of centuries-old prophets was a tradition no PR-wary leftist wished to see swell to our shores.

Of course, this is not an historic phenomenon. In fact, if anything can be said of contemporary British politics it is that, as a general rule, we don’t ‘do’ God. And while some in the far-right may call it politesse, liberals and conservatives alike have made a virtue out of their godlessness. This stance alone safeguards our religious freedoms (an emblem of all freedoms) by preventing any sect from encroaching upon public life. But for David Cameron and the Conservatives of late, it appears circumstance has prompted an unwelcome return to the fold.

As part of the series of events commemorating the fourth centenary of the King James Bible, Cameron delivered a speech at Oxford University, declaring with unwelcome smugness that a Christian ‘moral code’ might serve to counter the decline in national ethics evidenced by last year’s riots and MP’s expenses scandal.

These latest platitudes about deploying religious values in the struggle against moral collapse are spectacularly banal, even by the Tory’s lofty standards. However, Cameron’s sudden deference to the Church of England ought not to come as a surprise. He has long been searching for a means to appease his hard-line conservative backbenchers who believe Christians are now the object of discrimination under an agressive multiculturalism. Nonetheless, for those who don’t contrive toward an imagined victimhood, it represents a retrograde step.

In his speech, Cameron makes vain attempts to transpose our cultural experience with our conception of government which is, in his words, “steeped in the Bible”. This is hardly substantiated. Aside from the ceremonial presence of Lords Spirituals, one would strain to recognize any aspect of our political system which resembles a Christian archetype. In fact, the opposite is true. Cameron instances the ‘emergence of democracy, the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women’ as products of Christian ethics, but forgets that the path to equitable government in this country was paved by the struggle of ordinary men against arbitrary monarchs who ruled under the auspices of divine right. Indeed, if our history has willed anything to us, it is the knowledge that only when in isolation from religious affairs can a democracy take form. Somewhere along the course of Cameron’s self-seeking career at Cambridge, he saw fit to neglect the indispensable philosophies that instruct us tyranny is the invariable result when a majority is allowed to define the whole. There is no stipulation of the democratic state which requires minority creeds to reach critical mass in order to be recognized, but from this rhetoric you could hardly tell.

To his credit, the Premier’s speech was not without its moments of elevation and insight. Cameron credits our nation’s prodigious debt to the Bible as a text that has ‘permeate[d] every aspect of our culture… heritage and language’. While this may be rather obvious, it warrants repeating. Even the most obstinate non-believer must be obliged to concede that a sizable chunk of the Anglo-American literary canon can, to some extent, be traced back to Biblical origin.

But even these salutary features hardly compensate for the sycophancy of Cameron’s latest appeal to the religious establishment. But contrary to his remarks, the social agenda behind this is wholly transparent. The galloping influx of post-colonial immigration and surging tides of disbelief means that religion has become the main fault line in British diversity politics, and it was only a matter of time before the Conservatives saw an appropriate opportunity to stake their claim.

Such religious obeisance is all the more off-putting when one considers that English piety, even at the peak of its influence, was rarely commensurate in its actions to the majestic standards with which it set itself. The Test and Corporation Acts, which set harsh regulations on non-conformist congregations, and the Treason Trials of late 18th Century bear witness to an English church not at all averse to methods of violent oppression. Backward statements like ‘Britain is a Christian nation’ nurture the sort of political attitude committed solely to the cause of a particularly bovine nativism.

A seemingly innocuous piece of anecdotal evidence might help underscore this point. While on a diplomatic mission in Turkey, Barack Obama stated that, despite the United States boasting “a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation”. While precipitating a backlash from the Murdoch press, his words were by no means a concession to his Islamic hosts, but instead a faithful representation of contemporary America. If Obama were to have said anything to the contrary it would be tantamount to flagrant denialism. Cameron, on the other hand, by shamelessly promoting religious obscurantism and attempting to blot out the indelible mark left by freethinkers on our nation, has situated himself beyond the pale of political legitimacy.

It is invariably so that an appeal to tradition is almost never an appeal to reason. And the consequences of anointing a country under one religion are almost always divisive. Cameron’s Oxford speech evinces a marked ignorance of cultural pluralism and utter lack of historical perspective which, if taken to the Tories’ desired end (summarized best by Cameron’s upshot at Munich that ‘to belong here is to believe in these things’) would demote non-Christians to second-class citizens.

Izzy Scrimshire

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