United Kingdom: Kicking God out of public services

Cristina Odone

The Telegraph

The “evisceration of Christian culture” in Britain continues apace, said Cristina Odone. An uptight atheist, one Clive Bone, is suing a city council for opening its meetings with a prayer. He claims the practice contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of belief. And he may well win. After all, judges invoked that same article earlier this year to rule that a devout Christian couple running a bed-and-breakfast had to allow same-sex couples to share a bed under their roof. That appalled couple actually threatened to close their business rather than comply with such a violation of their religious beliefs.

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Imagine what would happen if Bone achieved a court ruling to “sever the link between religion and public duties” that has been an English tradition since the 9th century. We’d have no more Remembrance Day prayers for our veterans and our fallen soldiers, and we’d even have to change the coronation oath, in which the monarch promises to uphold the laws of the Gospels.

Instead, the law should treat Christians as a group that merits special treatment, like the disabled or ethnic minorities. We should “accommodate their beliefs, not ignore them.”