Despite a tidal wave of prejudice and negativity, faith remains the foundation of our civilisation

Jeremy Paxman was on great form last week, reminding us that when it comes to being rude to prime ministers he has no peers.

Jeremy’s rudeness is, of course, magnificently bipartisan. However elegant the sneer he displayed when asking David Cameron about Stephen Green, it was as nothing compared to the pointed disdain with which he once asked Tony Blair about his faith. Was it true, Jeremy inquired, that he had prayed together with his fellow Christian George W. Bush?

The question was asked in a tone of Old Malvernian hauteur which implied that spending time in religious contemplation was clearly deviant behaviour of the most disgusting kind. Jeremy seemed to be suggesting that it would probably be less scandalous if we discovered the two men had sought relief from the pressures of high office by smoking crack together.

Praying? What kind of people are you?

Well, the kind of people who built our civilisation, founded our democracies, developed our modern ideas of rights and justice, ended slavery, established universal education and who are, even as I write, in the forefront of the fight against poverty, prejudice and ignorance. In a word, Christians.

But to call yourself a Christian in contemporary Britain is to invite pity, condescension or cool dismissal. In a culture that prizes sophistication, non-judgmentalism, irony and detachment, it is to declare yourself intolerant, naive, superstitious and backward.

Michael Gove is right – Christianity has become a laughing stock

.....Religion has become a toxic brand, and by “religion”, people mean something quite like the Christianity that was taken for granted 100 years ago. It now written off as obscurantist, authoritarian, and largely concerned with stopping anyone, ever, having any fun in bed.

It may be that this situation is not going to change.

Whose fault is this? Some of it is down to organised secularism and anti-theism. Richard Dawkins banging on about “faith-heads” must have done something to discredit Christianity with people who have never thought about it. The campaigning against faith schools makes Christianity seem unjust and decisive, at least to parents who would like to get their children into one and have failed.

Some is down to the churches themselves. In the past 30 years they have managed to place themselves with astonishingly consistent clumsiness, athwart of the prevailing currents of moral sympathy. This is not because individual Christians have been cruel or bigoted or hypocritical – though of course some have been – but because the mainstream denominations have carried on as if the laity did what the clergy told them at a time when that kind of deference was fading everywhere. By agonising in the belief that the opinions of the clergy had special moral weight, the churches managed to make their opinions completely irrelevant, and visible only when they were absurd.