The Prime Minister, David Cameron, has spoken of the “enormous contribution Christianity has made” to Britain. 
In an Easter message, he said that the season “reminds us all to follow our conscience and ask not what we are entitled to, but what we can do for others. It teaches us about charity, compassion, responsibility, and forgiveness”.
“No matter what faiths we follow, these are values which speak to us all,” Mr Cameron added.
His words came ahead of a meeting on Wednesday with senior Christian leaders in Downing Street for an Easter celebration.
Wednesday’s No 10 meeting will include representatives from various denominations and is being touted as an endorsement of Britain’s Christian heritage and identity..
It is the most explicit outreach to Christian groups by the British Government in recent times. Prior state-led engagement with religion has focused almost exclusively on Muslims and the Islamic faith.
Baroness Warsi, a Cabinet Minister in the Cameron Government is one of several cabinet figures wooing church leaders.
Earlier this month she was the keynote speaker at a Catholic conference addressing the issue of social responsibility, while last year she unequivocally told Anglican bishops that, unlike the previous administration, the coalition did “do God”.
The moves come amid fresh controversy over the marginalisation of Christians in public life.
The leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, said in his Easter address that there were “those who would indeed try to destroy our Christian heritage and culture and take God from the public square”.
Cardinal O’Brien, archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, told his congregation at St Mary’s Cathedral; “Christians must be united in their common awareness of the enemies of the Christian faith in our country, of the power that they are at present exerting, and the need for us to be aware of that right to equality which so many others cry out for.”
Religion must not be removed from the public square, he added.
And he said that Christians of all denominations were united in standing for religious freedom.
He referred to a letter he had received some weeks earlier from a Presbyterian minister in the Church of Scotland who “contrasted the promise by the British Government to act against the persecution of Christians in other countries, while apparently ignoring the increasing marginalisation of Christians in the United Kingdom”.
