Two articles recently appeared in the British press arguing that there was an alignment between the Conservative Party and ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘evangelical’ Christians (depending on which piece you read) with their socially conservative ‘moral’ agenda.

The first was entitled ‘The right hand of God’ and appeared in the New Statesman written by Sunny Hundal. It was published before the election. The other, entitled ‘Tories and the new evangelical right,’ was published in the Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ belief section on Andrew Brown’s blog after May 8th. While both are about the same subject, only the first betrays a tone of scaremongering.

This difference illustrates and partially delineates where the real UK culture war lies. The line is not party political or between the sacred and secular. It is drawn between, on the one side, the religious and the secular who are willing to take a hospitable, if robust, view of their disagreements, and on the other, those religious and secular ‘fighters’ who seem unwilling to concede that a real humanity lies behind the ‘other’, and often resort to demonizing the opposition while claiming victimhood for themselves.

Andrew Brown represents the first sort. He understands that reporting on the changing landscape of the churches’ involvement in the public sphere in terms of US-style ‘culture wars’ is unhelpful for conservatives and liberals alike. More importantly, he understands that such comparisons are broadly inaccurate and too narrow. He recognises that the main players of the social conservative side of the Tory party have an agenda that is bigger than abortion or homosexuality. They have a desire for structural change to alleviate poverty, promote civil society and political engagement.

Sunny Hundal is the editor of the blog Liberal Conspiracy which ‘campaigns for liberal-left policies and causes.’ It should not be a surprise that he uses thermal language to ‘re-invigorate the liberal-left in Britain.’ As with parts of the fundamentalist ‘right’ Hundal’s conspiratorial-liberals are concerned about more than equality for homosexuals or women’s reproductive rights. It would be unfair to caricature his concerns as being purely about scaremongering. However, he has regretably agitated against legitimate relationships between a Conservative MP and socially conservative Christian pressure groups. The relationships are worth reporting on if only for the sake of transparency and accountability, but his stories tend to lack a bigger picture.

Brown and Hundal are right to warn about invisible but smellable combustible particles in the air. However, adding fuel to the incipient fire and thereby actually creating a US style culture war is not the same as pointing out the smell that precedes only a possible full-scale fire.

Christians, fundamentalist, evangelical or otherwise, care about abortion and homosexuality but they care about a lot more too. Many of them will have voted Labour or Liberal Democrat rather than Conservative at the election. There are plenty of ‘fundamentalists’ who work around Westminster to support the welfare state or promote green issues. These folk don’t get the culture war treatment by the secular press, or much press at all for that matter. There are ‘fundamentalist’ Christians in all parties and their views on how the church relates to the state differ. All issues are moral issues in some way or another, some are in vogue others are not.

But it is true that there is a smell in the air. There are those in the church that would seek to push the Christian vote toward a particular political party. The Westminster Declaration 2010 was an attempt to articulate a united view of how Christians relate to the state. It has been criticised for being too narrow by Faithworks, who complained that it only dealt with traditionally ‘moral’ issues. The Declaration also evaluated the suitability of returning parliamentary candidates according to a narrowly defined voting record. While the accusation was not completely fair, it does authenticate the whiffs Brown and Hundal smell.

According to Brown ‘evangelical Christians have considerable attraction to any conservative leadership’, their influence amongst the Conservatives will grow and it will outlast Cameron. But there are those in the party, such as Alistair Burt MP who criticised the Westminster Declaration saying it portrays: “some elements of the Christian Church more as a lobby group than as people of faith.” Indeed, many evangelicals fear the cooption of the churches voice by a single political party. Brown correctly recognizes this. Sadly, Hundal is heating up his liberal ‘fundamentalist’ following in an unhelpful way. It is also lamentable that elements of the wrong sort of heat are appearing in parts of the church.

We might be seeing the beginning of a culture war. Here though, the battle lines are drawn between the scaremongers and fretful peons, whether Christian or secular-liberal, and those that are passionate about their own position but committed to listen and don ‘varifocal’ lenses in matters of faith and politics.

Lauri Moyle is fellow of the Institute for Faith and Culture. He blogs at realgrasshopper.wordpress.com