Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has claimed that Christians of “deep faith” are being penalised as he launched a campaign aimed at speaking up for Christian values in public life.
Lord Carey gave his backing to the Christian Concern Not Ashamed Day, urging Christians to “wear their faith with pride” in the face of alleged attempts to “airbrush” them from public life.
“Christianity is a public religion, always has been and always will be,” he said. “What we believe in is of paramount importance to our nation and were we to lose it, then I have no idea what will happen to the Christian faith in this country.”
Good for Lord Carey for championing this. It needs to be said because hardly a week goes by here without one horror story or another about the driving of Christian expression out of the public sphere – the removal of prayers from meetings, schools, or people being suspended for wearing crosses, or horror of horrors, having the audacity to offer to pray for people.
Lord Carey also was interviewed about ‘Not Ashamed Day’ on the Sunday Program and a transcript of what he said is here
Political parties woke up to the importance of the Christian vote just before the last election, and there was unusually some Christian interest and organisation of lobbying of candidates to see what where they stood on religious freedom. The election over, the temptation is for politicians to just take us for granted again, so our profile needs to be raised, particularly to counter the small but organised and vocal secularist lobby.
Hopefully the launch on the 1st was not marred too much by coinciding with the worst winter weather most can remember for this time of year. Needless to say with a bit of snow here, significant parts of the country ground to a halt – but that is another matter.