Christians in Britain face ongoing prejudice for their faith, a leading British politician has said.
Conservative Michael Gove, MP, a former education secretary, said in an article for The Spectator magazine that to declare oneself a person of faith today in modern Britain “is to invite pity, condescension or cool dismissal”.
Describing himself as “Christian and proud of it”, Mr Gove went on that making such a statement “in a culture that prizes sophistication, non-judgmentalism, irony and detachment, it is to declare yourself intolerant, naive, superstitious and backward”.
From his own experience in politics, Mr Gove wrote: “Where once politicians who were considering matters of life and death might have been thought to be helped in their decision-making by Christian thinking – by reflecting on the tradition of Augustine and Aquinas by applying the subtle tests of just-war doctrine – now Christianity means the banal morality of the fairy tale and genuflection before a sky pixie’s simplicities.”
In a wider context, he contended, Christian denominations are falling prey to “an incoming tide of negativity”.
“If we’re Roman Catholic we’re accessories to child abuse, if we’re Anglo-Catholics we’re homophobic bigots curiously attached to velvet and lace, if we’re liberal Anglicans we’re pointless hand-wringing conscience-hawkers, and if we’re evangelicals we’re creepy obsessives who are uncomfortable with anyone enjoying anything more louche than a slice of Battenberg.”
However, in the same article, Mr Gove goes on to defend his faith from such clichés.
“Christian faith,” he stressed, “far from making any individual more invincibly convinced of their own righteousness – makes us realise just how flawed and fallible we all are. I am selfish, lazy, greedy, hypocritical, confused, self-deceiving, impatient and weak. And that’s just on a good day.”
During his term as education secretary, Mr Gove ensured that every school in England received a copy of the King James Bible.
