Christians of every flavour, and even the Muslims in the person of Baroness Warsi, the vice chairman of the Conservative Party, in a speech when she went to Rome recently to meet the Pope, have been complaining for a while now about aggressive secularism. They don't seem to see the irony of the expression when used by a group of people known for their aggressive proselytism across the centuries.

It all started, I suppose, when the atheists, led by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Peter Hitchen, started to weigh into religion and hold up to the light what they regarded as its true character. Christians in this country, however, continue to assert that this is a Christian country, that we ought to recognise this fact and be grateful to the Church for its role in our upbringing as a nation. They say, without a twitch of the eyebrow, that religion promotes peace, tolerance and comprehension between people.  They state that our law, our moral principles and our art and culture are all derived from Christianity.  In other words, all that we are, our national identity, we owe to the Christian religion.

But it seems to me that this is a distorted version of history because quite obviously we cannot say that the law or morality of yesterday, the Christian law and moral code, would be in any way acceptable today.  We would still have slavery, something authorised by the old Testament and practised over very many centuries by the Church. We would still have the death penalty for a multitude of crimes both major and minor, religious and non-religious, a situation encouraged by the Church.  We would have the law against homosexuality.  In 1300, the law said that the penalty for homosexuality was to be burnt at the stake.  It was only in 1861 that it finally became a non-capital crime, and we have had to wait until this millennium for equality before the law, at least before the law of the land, because canon law has still not caught up.  It is still a mortal sin according to the Catholic church and the Church of England can't seem to decide quite what to think.

What about the arts? The claim is that the great works of art owe the very existence to Christianity. There are many great works of art which describe events in the bible. They are amongst the most important pictures in the world.  But, as we all know, art follows the money: often the face of a religious personage in these pictures would bear a striking similarity to that of the person paying the bill.  How else does an artist make a living except by doing work for the rich?  And there are very many equally important works of art of every sort which are not related in any way to religious themes and which were even considered scandalous by the Church in their time.

Science?  I have never heard it seriously suggested that religion is the source of the incredible scientific progress we have seen over the centuries, progress which has influenced and benefited our lives so very much.  Instead, it is quite obvious that religion has acted as a drag on that progress, with its refusal to accept what has been discovered.  Remind me, when was it that Galileo was finally exonerated by the Catholic church for his heresy in saying that the earth orbited the sun?

Which all means that we shouldn't feel grateful to Christianity or any other religion for the formation of our national character, but that we should instead feel grateful to the humanity of our predecessors who succeeded in substantially reducing the pernicious effect of religious dogma.  Because it is our humanity, our sense of empathy, which has overcome the inflexibility of religious rules and has given us the motivation not to follow religion's unjust and doctrinaire precepts.  To the extent to which the church is now different to its predecessor, the Church ought to thank that same human instinct, seen in the reluctance of ordinary people to take its dogmatism too seriously. In reality this humanity has made the Church see the error of its ways, after so many centuries, and has succeeded in bringing about a religion which is less aggressive - even if still irrational.

Christianity has not defined society.  Society has redefined Christianity.

Paul Buckingham

November 2012