The trend towards removing every last trace of religion from the public square continues apace across the Western world. In a blog for the Telegraph website, Brendan O’Neill (pictured) says that the hallmark of this trend is secular liberal intolerance.

O’Neill, himself an atheist, writes: “If you want to see what intolerance means, look no further than the current campaign against faith schools.

“Spearheaded by the British Humanist Association (BHA), and cheered on by liberal broadsheet newspapers and people who fancy themselves as right-on, the campaign depicts itself as a socially enlightened effort to prevent children from being split into religious camps.

“But in truth it is a deeply illiberal assault on the fundamental right of parents to socialise their children into the values and beliefs that they consider to be true and profound.

“The rights of parents over their children, and of religious communities more broadly, are being severely undermined by those who, with an Orwellian glint in their eye, would love nothing more than to rid Britain of the alleged blight of faith schools.”

O’Neill adds: “No amount of PC-sounding lingo about trying to prevent “social segregation” or seeking to “bring all children together” can disguise the fact that the war on faith schools is fundamentally a war on institutions that have the temerity to hold and teach different values to those preached by your average Guardian-reading, liberal atheist.”

You can read the whole thing here.