Lord Carey warns British Christians not to get carried away

The British need to talk about religion. The trouble is, every time God rears His head in the public square — as we have seen this week with the row about prayers at council meetings and Baroness Warsi’s speech on ‘militant secularism’ — everybody starts speaking in platitudes. The debate follows a familiar pattern: an anti-religion spokesman, probably a man from the National Secular Society, says something about Britain not being a ‘theocracy’. He then might mention America as an example of the theocratic menace, happily ignoring that the USA is, definitively, a secular country. In reply, somebody religious, probably Lord Carey of Clifton, says that ‘religious freedom’ is under threat. And finally, somebody who wants to sound reasonable — it used to always be Tony Blair — says ‘what a difficult and painful issue’ this is. We all agree and try not to think too hard.  

Maybe the problem isn’t the angry atheists or the religious zealots at the extremes, for once.