Nearly 40 per cent of British Christians don’t like telling others about their faith for fear of “inadvertently ending up in someone’s bad books”, according to a UK poll commissioned by the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life (IIFL).
Despite the number of Christians falling to less than half of the population for the first time in the latest census, there were still 27.5 million recorded in England and Wales as of 2021 – down from 33.2 million a decade earlier.
As reported by the Telegraph, the survey, conducted by pollsters Whitestone Insight last month, questioned some 2,064 UK adults about their attitudes towards faith.
Dr Jake Scott, the secretary of the IIFL, said Christians may be more wary than followers of other faiths when it comes to how their faith may be perceived in social debates.
The academic said: “Given the prevalence of Christianity when it comes to the UK, compared to other faiths, it tends to be the religion people think of when it comes to religious viewpoints and social debates – like gay marriage.
“This means that Christians may be more wary of inadvertently ending up in someone’s bad books, although of course, Christians are not monoliths – and there’s a wide range of opinions and stances across the faith.”
The research also revealed differences in opinions about faith among the generations with just over three in ten 18 to 24-year-old respondents believing that people should not talk about their faith in the workplace, compared with half of those aged 65 and over who were surveyed.
News of the poll’s findings come after Christian Liberal Democrats said they feared being expelled from the party in a “night of the long knives” after former BBC journalist David Campanale was interrogated over his faith and then deselected as the prospective parliamentary candidate for South London swing seat Sutton and Cheam – at the time, local party officers were warned there was “the feel of a witch-hunt” against Mr Campanale.
The prolonged period of hostility began after Mr Campanale indicated his intention, if elected, to vote according to his conscience on non-whipped votes such as pro-life issues. But local party members told him: “we do not recognise your right to have a conscience”.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is now considering a complaint about the party’s treatment of Mr Campanale put forward by the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum (LDCF). “If the opposition to Mr Campanale’s candidacy had been based on any other protected characteristic,” the LDFC told the EHRC, “we believe the party would have taken a zero-tolerance approach.”
Mr Campanale is far from the first politician to have suffered detriment as a result of their Christian beliefs.
Having made it all the way to the leadership of the Liberal Democrats in 2015, Tim Farron was then hounded by the media for being an evangelical Christian, and eventually announced he was stepping down following the 2017 general election.
“From the very first day of my leadership, I have faced questions about my Christian faith. I’ve tried to answer with grace and patience. Sometimes my answers could have been wiser,” he said in a statement following his resignation. “To be a leader, particularly of a progressive liberal party in 2017 and to live as a committed Christian and to hold faithful to the Bible’s teaching has felt impossible for me.”
Then there’s Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen, who despite already having been tried and unanimously acquitted by two courts for publicly expressing her Christian beliefs about same-sex relationships, nevertheless recently had her free speech case appealed to the country’s Supreme Court. In what looks increasingly like a witch-hunt, the country’s State Prosecutor is continuing to call for large fines to be imposed.
In Scotland, Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes has also been criticised by many, including newspaper columnists and SNP activists, for belonging to the Free Presbyterian Church, which follows a strict interpretation of the Bible and opposes same-sex marriage and abortion. “Kate Forbes is unfit to be first minister of a 21st century Scotland. A 1920s Scotland, maybe. A 1950s Scotland, perhaps. But not Scotland in 2024,” wrote Kenny Farquharson in the Times, following Humza Yousaf’s resignation. “Her faith does not reflect the country she wants to lead.”
Last year, the Church spoke out in defence of the 32-year-old after her religious beliefs derailed her previous bid to become First Minister, following Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation.
Ms Forbes was seen as the favourite to replace Sturgeon when she entered the race, but her candidacy drew intense scrutiny despite repeated assurances she had no interest in imposing her personal views on anyone else and would not repeal any of the gains made for gay rights in the country.
A spokesperson for the Free Church of Scotland said: “The issues raised by Kate Forbes’ intention to run as SNP leader have displayed a level of intolerance that we believe is uncharacteristic of the wider ordinary Scottish population.”
Writing for the Telegraph, Tom Harris points out that as with Campanale, Farron and Räsänen, Forbes’s crime is not in being a Christian per se, but in being an evangelical Christian and publicly stating that she accepts Biblical teaching.
Meanwhile, of course, Muslim candidates and elected representatives need make no excuses for publicly expressing their personal faith.
When practising Muslim Humza Yousaf was elected Scottish First Minister in 2023 he posted an image on Twitter showing him and five other male members of his family stood in a line, facing Mecca, in solemn worship of Allah at Bute House, the historic home of power in Edinburgh, no-one batted an eyelid.
There was no suggestion that his faith’s condemnation of homosexuality should prevent him from representing the people of Scotland. To criticise a Muslim, or any other minority, for the illiberal tenets of their faith would be viewed as prejudicial, Harris says. But Christians? They’re fair game.
“Double standards are nothing new to the world of politics,” he added. “But when our political establishment discriminates against Christians while failing to apply the same standards to other religions, something very serious has gone wrong with our democracy.”
