Ed Miliband should challenge Cameron’s preaching head-on

David Cameron told an audience in Oxford – celebrating the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible – that the UK is a “Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so”. You can’t help but think this is going to be another stick which Cameron is intent on beating Ed Miliband with, the latter having previously admitted to atheism.

Still, if Cameron does play the Christian card at the dispatch box then I am tempted to advise Mr Miliband to reply by asking what on earth a “vaguely practicing” follower of the Church of England is – does it mean the Cameron’s attend church every Sunday with Dave sat in the middle, starting vacantly into empty space? Or maybe, it means that Cameron takes the bits he likes out of the Bible and forgets the bits he doesn’t, like helping the poor, for example – religion for the pick n mix generation. Joking aside, it is obvious a more substantial response will be required.

Cameron has to be challenged on his historiography – the reality is that nature based religions and paganism have just as much, if not more, claim than Christianity to be at the cornerstone of British national culture. In order to convert the recalcient Anglo-Saxons, Christian missionaries incorporated swathes of pagan practice into Christian teachings.

Christianity itself has been subject to so many cultural influences outside of the literal text of the Bible that it is in fact a gross simplification to see it in its pure form as the undiluted inspiration for anything. It is therefore hard, given this and the obvious inconsistencies in Cameron’s words of fidelity and actual policy actions, not to think that he is not so much keen on Christianity forming the basis of Britain’s ‘moral code’ as his own interpretation being carved in tablets of stone and enacted as an Act of Parliament.

Secondly, Cameron isn’t even correct in describing Britain as a currently Christian country. He is obviously so out of touch that he neglected to take note of the latest British Social Attitudes Survey which “indicated that 50 per cent did not affiliate to a religion, and some who did seldom attended religious services or meetings”. Maybe they are following the Prime Minister’s lead and just “vaguely practising”? Incidentally, this figure rose to 65% amoung younger people. Cameron is therefore speaking for a clear minority in this country and the question then becomes what gives him, or anybody else, the right to impose the moral code of the minority on the majority.

It is here that Ed’s response should start – with a critique of the democratic deficit in Mr Cameron’s thinking. People’s faith, their beliefs are properly a matter for the individual to decide upon, not Mr Cameron or any other politician in Westminster to pontificate and preach on. Certainly, they are not a matter for the government to legislate on or indeed a sound basis for the formation of any kind of policy or legislation. The point has to be made that secularism is a cornerstone of our modern, representative democracy and that Cameron’s remarks undermine that. Of course, Christian’s should be free to practice and follow their faith but so should every other faith community and they should all do so without preferential treatment from or fear of persecution from the state – that is equality and that is the democratic way.

It is these values that Ed Miliband should trenchantly defend and I am confident, if he were to do so, he would find a surprisingly high level of support from a British electorate which does not take kindly to moral instruction from a political class whose moral compass is notoriously wonky.