Neil McNicholas: Baroness proves a strident defender of all faiths

General opinion this week seems to be stating the obvious with regard to the banning of pre-council prayers – that those who do not wish to be part of such proceedings are perfectly free to absent themselves until the prayer is concluded. Having no prayers, on the other hand, removes the option completely for everyone and that hardly seems fair and that word “fair” is significant.

Once again the furore has been at the behest of the National Secular Society whose website states that it exists “to promote secularism... as the best means to create a society in which people of all religions or none can live together fairly and cohesively”.

How is it fair to deny people of faith the opportunity and freedom to practise their faith in favour of those who don’t believe? The phrase “reverse discrimination” comes to mind.

It’s the old Orwellian quote from Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” The NSS has a right to their beliefs (or lack thereof), but they surely have no more right than people of faith to impose them by legal process. The law of the land currently permits freedom of religious practice, but it doesn’t force it on non-believers. How then can the law force secularist practices on people of religious beliefs?

If people of faith wish to pray before a council meeting, or MPs before proceedings in the House, or anyone before any gathering, isn’t that surely their right? They are not imposing their beliefs on non-believers who are free either not to arrive until afterwards, or, as a sign of respect (sadly so often lacking in society today), to simply sit silently until those prayers are concluded.

But, as I have said above, if prayer is banned by law, it removes the rights of people of faith to ask God’s blessing on the business in hand. That isn’t doing any harm to those who don’t believe and, during that time of prayer, they are free to reflect in their own way on what might help facilitate the agenda before them. Indeed there can be few council and parliamentary meetings these days that couldn’t benefit from a little divine intervention or its secularist equivalent, so why can’t we all be free to call on that guidance in our own way?

That said, I think Baroness Warsi must be commended for the extra mile that she is walking on behalf of people of faith – and specifically, so it would seem, on behalf of Christians, even though she is a Muslim. She argues that religion must be given a greater role in public life to push back the wave of what she calls “intolerant secularisation”. And her “strident defence of faith” supposedly also has the backing of the Prime Minister.

A number of letters to this newspaper this past week have pointed to the fact that, with due respect to those of other faiths or of none, ours is still nominally a Christian country.

Again that doesn’t impose Christian beliefs on non-Christians but establishes, or should do, a firm foundation on which the mores and laws of our society should be founded, and which will hopefully benefit and protect the well-being and rights of everyone whether they share those Christian beliefs or not.

Why, therefore, do those of the secularist persuasion feel so threatened by this that they have to resort to legal process to have the rights and freedoms of believers restricted or even banned under the politically correct banner of human rights? The society in which they live is benefitting and serving them just as much and as equally as it does people of faith, so why can’t they simply practise the same respect and tolerance they expect people of faith to extend to them? Why does it always have to be a one-way street?

One explanation is that people of faith, and I would have to say Christians in particular, just haven’t got the same sense of commitment to their faith that the secularists have to their lack of it.

We simply roll over far too easily and surrender the religious high ground to any and all who challenge us for it. Baroness Warsi calls us to be more confident in our Christianity. Indeed we need to demonstrate more commitment to our Christian faith, ensuring that it isn’t just something we do on Sundays, but is a working principle that we actively live by every day of the week, all year, all the time.

We need to “fight” our corner and defend our religious rights at least as vociferously as the NSS – but hopefully even more so. This week it has taken a Muslim to mount a defence on our behalf. When are we going to come to our own defence?

• Father Neil McNicholas is a priest at St Hilda’s Parish, Whitby.