Media Monitoring

British secularists deplore their country’s established church and the national broadcaster’s religious programming. But there can hardly be a more comfortable home for an atheist. Fewer people profess a belief in God than in America and even much of post-modern Europe. Church attendance has dropped sharply since the war. So irreverent are Britons in matters spiritual that 390,000 of them gave their religion as “Jedi” in the last census, making the science-fiction warrior cult the fourth-largest faith in the land.

Most satisfyingly for the non-believer, politicians live in terror of being seen as righteous. Tony Blair was reticent about his Christianity while in office in order to avoid being thought a “nutter”. To the extent that Gordon Brown has played up his personal brand as an ascetic son of the manse, it has only amplified his aura of unelectable otherness. David Cameron, the Conservative leader who is likely to replace him as prime minister next year, recently stressed the doubting nature of his Anglicanism. Out-and-proud atheists abound in Westminster.

Yet it would be a mistake to infer from this that religion has no intellectual purchase on British politics.

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