Lord Mawhinney, 18 March 2010: 'As a follower of Jesus Christ, I believe that it is an integral part of who I am that I should try to practise in the public sector what I believe and practise in the private sector.'

We live in a time when society is deeply confused. On the one hand the General Pharmaceutical Council last week confirmed that pharmacists can refuse to prescribe contraceptives such as the morning after pill if it clashes with their religious beliefs; on the other, the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust is today being taken to an employment tribunal because a Christian nurse, Shirley Chaplin, with over 30 years of nursing experience was prevented from working with patients after refusing to remove or conceal a necklace cross that she has worn as a sign of her faith for more than 40 years. A multitude of similar cases spring to mind in which the rights of believers to 'practise in the public sphere' what they believe and practise in private have been challenged, ranging from school staff, bed and breakfast owners, and Catholic adoption agencies.

Those who continue to defend the liberty and tolerance that have traditionally been fought for and upheld in this nation are therefore to be applauded, including public figures such as Lord Mawhinney, quoted above from a recent parliamentary debate on the British Humanist Association's reports Quality and Equality: Human Rights, Public Services and Religious Organisations and The Case for Secularism: A Neutral State in an Open Society.

Philosophers see current post-modern thinking as anarchism and are all agreed that this is not a stable position for any society. However, anarchism is a transitional state. As shared values within our society are eroded and individualism takes hold, the ability of society to operate becomes dependent on some form of central coercion. If people don’t agree on what to do, then nothing gets done unless someone takes charge. Thus the danger of the current attitude is not in fact the risk from freedom for all to think and do what they like, it is totalitarianism.

As we observed a year ago in our Cambridge Paper, Three principles for Christian citizens, it is ironic that religious expression is being stifled by a new political absolutism in the name of ‘equality and human rights’ because equality and human rights are a contemporary expression of Christian belief. It is for the benefit of everyone (not just that of believers) that we should make the case for faith in public life on the basis of the common good, institutional independence, and conscientious witness.

Nevertheless, we should not be seeking a return to a world of so-called traditional values. All too often Christians sound as though they are looking backward to a fictitious golden age. Rejecting the fashionably liberal individualism of our age, we are called to be the radical future-looking progressives. Our eyes should be firmly fixed on a more relational, more biblically-informed society. After all, the point of the resurrection and the consummation of this week's Easter celebrations, is that we look forward to Christ's second coming, not that we simply look back to his first. If all we can do is look back, we are to be pitied more than all others. But our hope in Christ assures us that liberty and tolerance will ultimately be established in a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth will pass away.

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