Losing our religion

Here's an interesting article from this month's GQ:

Losing our religion

Britain has lost its faith in the Church, and Christians are calling for special privileges. But, argues our free-thinker, emptying pews show a new-found belief in equality.

By Johann Hari

And now, congregation, put your hands together and give thanks, for I come bearing Good News. Britain is now one of the most irreligious countries on earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else. According to an ICM survey, 63 per cent of us are non-believers, while 82 per cent say religion is a cause of harmful division. Now, let us stand and sing our new national hymn: "Jerusalem was dismantled here/in England's green and pleasant land."

How did it happen? For centuries, religion was insulated from criticism in Britain. First its opponents were burned, then jailed, then shunned. But once there was a free marketplace of ideas, once people could finally hear both the religious arguments and the rationalist criticisms of them, the religious lost the British people. Their case was too weak, their opposition to divorce and abortion and gay people too cruel, their evidence for their claims nonexistent. Once they had to rely on persuasion rather than intimidation, the story of British Christianity came to an end.

Now that less than seven per cent of British people regularly attend a religious service, it's only natural that we should dismantle the massive amounts of tax money and state power that are given to the religious. It's a necessary process of building a secular state, where all citizens are free to make up their own minds. Yet the opposition to this shift is becoming increasingly unhinged. The Church of England has only one explanation: Christians are being "persecuted" by a movement motivated by "Christophobia". George Carey (pictured), the former archbishop of Canterbury, says Christians are now "second-class citizens" and we are only "a small step" away from "a religious bar on any employment by Christians".

Really? Let's list some of the ways in which Christians and other religious groups are given special privileges. Start with the education system. Every British school is required by law to make its pupils engage in a daily "act of collective worship of a wholly or mainly Christian character". Yes: Britain is still a nation with enforced prayer. The religious are then handed total control of 36 per cent of state schools, in which to indoctrinate children into their faith alone.

These religious schools, paid for by you and me, are disfiguring Britain. One reason I grew up without the prejudices of some of my older relatives was because I went to school with kids from every ethnic and religious group, and I saw they were just like me. But in Britain today, that mixing is happening less and less. The children of Christians are sent to one side, Jews to another, Muslims to another still. Yet after the race riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley in 2001, the official investigations found that faith schools were a major cause.

So why keep them? Their defenders say these schools perform better in exams - and, at first glance, it seems to be true. On average, they get higher grades. But look again. Several studies, including one by the think-tank Civitas, have shown that faith schools systematically screen out children who will be harder to teach: children from poor families, and less bright children. Once you look at how much a school improves its pupils (the only real measure of a school's success), it turns out faith schools do less well than other schools - not surprising given they waste so much time teaching nonsense such as virgin births and Noah's Ark. The British people instinctively know all this: 65 per cent want every state school to be neutral when it comes to religion.

Special rights for the religious don't stop at the school gates. They get 26 unelected bishops in the House of Lords. Public broadcasters are legally required to give money and screen time to religious propaganda. Jews and Muslims can ignore animal cruelty laws and slit the throats of live animals without numbing them to create kosher and halal meat.

Given all this unearned privilege, how can Christians claim they are "persecuted"? Here are the cases they offer as "proof". A nurse called Shirley Chaplin turned up to work with a crucifix around her neck. Her hospital told her that they were worried elderly and confused patients could grab it, and said she could pin the crucifix to her uniform instead. That's it. That's their cause célèbre. Oh, and a registrar called Theresa Davies refused to perform civil partnerships for gay couples, so... she was moved to work on reception.

In response, Carey and the Church of England demanded Christians be allowed to break the law requiring them to treat gay people equally when providing a service to the general public, and Christians in discrimination cases should be judged by a special court of "sensitive" Christians.

If we started allowing religious people to break anti-discrimination laws, where would we stop? Until 1978, the Mormon Church said black people didn't have souls. (They only changed their mind the day this was made illegal, and God niftily appeared to their leader to say they were ensouled after all.) Would we let a Mormon registrar refuse to marry black people? Would it be "Mormonophobic" to object?

Carey has said Christians might engage in "civil unrest" if judges continued with "dangerous" rulings. His suggested exemptions were dismissed by Lord Justice Laws - a Christian himself - as "irrational, divisive, capricious and arbitrary". Carey's rageful threats made me think of a child who had been beating up gay kids for years and is finally told to stop - only to bawl that he's the one who is being picked on.

As their dusty churches crumble because nobody wants to go to them, the few remaining British Christians will only grow more angry. Let them. We can't let hysterical toy-tossing stop us turning our country into a secular democracy where everyone has the same rights, and nobody is granted special privileges just because they claim their ideas come from an invisible, supernatural being. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Holy Lamb of God to carve into kebabs - it's our new national dish. Amen, and hallelujah.