I’ve just returned from our family holiday on a Spanish campsite, some of which has been spent in shorts and t-shirt under a shady tree with a good book.

It’s become my habit to take a weighty tome or two with me each summer, hoping that the children will be so engaged in jumping off the pool diving board and Sally with her camera that I can lose myself in a mental challenge which busy life at home does not easily facilitate.

Alan Storkey’s stimulating and original ‘Jesus and Politics’ was my introduction to heavyweight holiday reading, followed by Haykal’s laborious, pedantic but informative 600-page ‘The Life of Muhammad’ a couple of years later. This year I took ‘Matters of Life & Death’ by Christian ethicist John Wyatt (which opened my eyes to the heartless – and of course unchristian – treatment of weak, vulnerable and disabled people implicit in the Ronald Dworkin and Peter Singer type of secular humanism) and best-seller ‘The God Delusion’ by atheist Richard Dawkins, and it’s to the latter we turn in this post.

I approached Dawkins with some trepidation. I have of course read some of his articles and once I listened to him and his wife, Doctor Who actress Lalla Ward, ridiculing religion and especially Christianity on stage at, I think, ULU in Bloomsbury.

But, perhaps affected by the Spanish sun, I decided I’d give him full credit and try to get inside his ‘evidence-based’, ‘rational’ and naturalist arguments against the existence of God. “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down,” writes Dawkins (p28). Apprehensively, I determined to be open and vulnerable to his evidence and arguments, with the attendant risk that his book might in some way undermine my faith.

My concern was entirely misplaced as, delightfully, Dawkins is his own worst enemy; in this book the world-renowned zoologist is so patently unbalanced and blinded by his prejudice and atheist ideology that he couldn’t find a real duck let alone persuade it to quack. He entertained me but he hasn’t convinced me to give up on God. Rather he has opened my eyes to the weakness of his atheist case and – in that sense – confirmed my faith.

On the first page of the book he commences his initially modest but certainly unnecessary personal abuse (“faithheads”) and maligning of adversaries’ motives (academic opponents’ arguments based partly on their personal, genuine and often difficult conversion from atheism to Christianity are airily dismissed as “one of the oldest tricks in the book”); the abuse and maligning intensifies as the book progresses, and Dawkins is soon as happy to include dissenting atheists as much as religious opponents. By page 25 his self-confessed mission to be a “consciousness-raiser” for atheists is resulting in populist and risible over-statement (“There is no such thing as a Christian child”) and, soon, unrefined rabble-rousing. On page 51 he offers his famed paragraph of un- and pseudo-scholarly bias, bigotry, blindness and buffoonery (“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving, control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, meglomanical, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”)

But it was just a fifth of the way through (on page 81 to be precise; the book has 420 pages) that Dawkins finally lost me. Stephen Jay Gould was – he died in 2002 – an eminent evolutionary biologist, campaigner against creationism and agnostic who wrote in his book Rocks of Ages that science, which deals with the empirical realm, and religion, which deals with questions of ultimate meaning and moral value, are ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ (NOMA); the how question is categorically different from the why question. It’s an unexceptional if limiting solution to the science/religion debate.

Dawkins is a scientist who, he claims, draws conclusions only from hard facts and clear evidence; if there was incontrovertible proof of the existence of God he would change his mind immediately and convert. This sounds terrific – right up until you read Dawkins on Gould on page 81 where you realise it is patently untrue. Dawkins has creedal beliefs and doctrines as strong as any red-neck fundamentalist believer. Gould’s NOMA directly conflicts with Dawkins’ ideological scientism (which reckons science has or will have the answer for virtually every question), so “I simply do not believe that Gould could possibly have meant much of what he wrote in Rocks of Ages”!

Gould’s book says one thing plainly and clearly. Dawkins, away with the fairies, flying teapots and little green men, and against the written evidence, believes it simply must mean something else. It’s classic Dawkins self-delusion.

I’m still finishing the book which is littered with other Dawkins doctrines, dogmas, beliefs and creedal statements for which there is no proof, inadequate verification or, worse, contradicting evidence. Critic Terry Eagleton reckons Dawkins, like fellow bestselling atheist Christopher Hitchens, “plays to the high-minded liberal-humanist prejudices of (his) elite audience” (here). Certainly Dawkins is sniffily elitist and no doubt plays well in the salons of Hampstead and Islington. But his book displays breathtaking and sometimes hilarious bigotry and his chosen weapons are simplistic brutal insult, satire and derision. Believers are treated with contempt – which in a perverse way soon becomes a compliment.

He is to atheism what Nick Griffin is to patriotism. Philosophy professor Michael Ruse reckons The God Delusion makes him ashamed to be an atheist (here); the British National Party makes people ashamed to be British.

Dawkins is atheism’s rabble-rouser who preaches well to the choir and is no doubt achieving his mission of raising the consciousness of committed non-believers. Believers and agnostics shouldn’t buy a copy; he’s already rich enough from the royalties. But borrow one from the library – there’s nothing to fear from this high-voltage diatribe and much to laugh at and enjoy. You certainly won’t be persuaded.

It’s ironic that progressive Muslim Dr Taj Hargey of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, (here) asserts what radical-progressive Christian Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia doubts (here), that there is now active discrimination against Christianity in the UK – much of the responsibility for which I reckon lies at the door of this country’s particular brand of aggressive New Atheist secularisation.

Such discrimination in schools was highlighted in an Ofsted report published three weeks ago (here). And a publication ‘A New Inquisition: Religious Persecution In Britain Today’ launched a couple of week ago by the independent non-religious think-tank Civitas (here) and dedicated to Ben and Sharon Volgelenzang (see my previous post here) highlights how recent religious hatred legislation has been used in an “at best arbitrary and at worst biased” way particularly against Christians.

But discrimination against Christians in the UK is nothing compared to the persecution of Christians abroad. Over the past month:

On 1st July, Muhammad Guul Hashim Idiris, a convert from Islam, was publicly executed in the Hudur district of Somalia, apparently because of his Christian views (here).

On 5th July Maher el-Gowhary, also a convert from Islam who in the face of deep hostility is trying to get his conversion recognised by the Egyptian authorities, was ferociously attacked on a Cairo street while accompanied by his lawyer (here). According to Maher the attackers intended to behead him.

On 16th July Pastor Artur Suleimanov, another convert from Islam, was shot dead outside his church in Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan (here).

On 17th July, at least eight Christians including the wife, two children and grandson of a priest were slaughtered in a previously peaceful village near Jos, Nigeria, (here) where the wider conflict is a complex tribal and economic/land issue as well as a religious one (here).

On 20th July, two local Christians questionably accused of blaspheming Islam’s prophet were shot dead outside court in Faisalabad, Pakistan (here).

On 27th July, a Christian centre in West Java, Indonesia, was attacked by Islamic extremists and buildings were destroyed (here).

There are fewer than sixty Catholic priests in Turkey and in June the fifth to be shot or stabbed in the past four years was killed and decapitated by Islamic ritual (here).

In Iraq the campaign of violence against Christians is so decimating and displacing the community that some commentators reckon it is possible Christianity’s 2000-year history in Iraq could end within a generation (here).

It is right of course that discrimination against Christians in the UK should be challenged by Hargey, Ofsted, Civitas and others.

But it is abroad where the real Christian persecution is taking place.

(Incidentally, I spoke outside 10 Downing Street yesterday at a protest against Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws. Organised by the British Pakistani Christian Association (here) and including Sikhs and people from other persecuted Pakistani minority faiths, it was held on the anniversary of the Gojra atrocity – see my previous post here – and had Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali (here), who is himself a refugee from death-threats in Pakistan, as keynote speaker.

I don’t hold much hope. Not only is the Pakistan government unwilling to address the evil effects of the blasphemy laws in their own country, they are actively promoting what is effectively a global Islamic blasphemy law at the United Nations. Pakistan, on behalf of the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) – including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, etc, who are not exactly known for promoting human rights – proposed the Combating Defamation of Religions resolution (here) which was passed at the United Nations Human Rights Council in March; indicatively and ominously the resolution highlights Islam and Muslims four times but cites no other religion. It certainly makes no mention of the defamed and mistreated Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Ahmadiyya Muslim sect in the Islamic Republic’s own backyard.)

I am hoping that the Labour government’s £145m Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) initiative will get the chop as part of the new ConLib coalition’s spending cuts. The programme has been ineffective, wasteful, puts public money into extremists’ hands (here) and finds our avowedly secular and religiously-neutral government pouring £millions into anything from schools to soccer clubs, whose common identity overwhelmingly is that they are Islamic. As far as the UK is concerned, Buddhists don’t do violent extremism so their religion doesn’t get state financial support. Nor do Christians. Nor Hindus. Nor Jews. Nor Sikhs. Odd isn’t it?

It is also awful but ironic that a senior member of the government that introduced PVE has himself been assaulted allegedly by one of the violent extremists that PVE was intended to prevent.

Stephen Timms is the personally likeable Labour MP for East Ham. He was a member of Tony Blair’s cabinet and he also held senior portfolios outside the cabinet under Gordon Brown. He lives in Newham, describes himself as a Christian Socialist and is recognised as a hard-working constituency MP.

The alleged assailant Roshonara Choudhary, 21, lives with her parents and four younger siblings in East Ham, just a mile away from Timms. According to neighbours she is a devout Muslim who has given private English lessons to local kids for £5 an hour (here) . She is also bright. A reliable source says that she was an A-star student at a London college who dropped out and became unemployed earlier this year when she started getting involved in radical Islam and studying Islamist websites.

The same source says it appears the suspect would have preferred to get Tony Blair but, reckoning she wouldn’t be able to approach him because of security, she chose Timms instead as an easier target.

Apparently wearing an orange hijab and carrying two kitchen knives she attended Timms’ first constituents’ surgery after the 6th May general election when he was returned with the largest majority in the country. Unusually for a devout Muslim woman she allegedly put out her hand to shake the male MP’s hand – then apparently she suddenly plunged one of the knives into his stomach.

The wounds were not life-threatening and after a spell in hospital Timms has now recovered enough to attend both parliament and his surgeries. He also appeared at the Global Day of Prayer at West Ham FC, Upton Park, on Sunday (see previous post here) where he said he’d been helped by the large number of people praying for him.

(“The church is growing in London,” he also told the 10,000 worshippers, contra Alan Wilson’s Guardian article quoted in the previous post too, “and is a remarkably diverse group of congregations, but one in their faith in Christ.”)

Two thoughts struck me about the stabbing:

First, Timms’ alleged assailant is likely to spend the next decade or so in jail – what a waste of a promising young life. But even more, what a tragedy for the accused’s family who by all accounts are normal local people who will now have to live with the bewilderment, horror and shame that the attack has brought upon them. They deserve our sympathy.

Second, what is it about Islam that regular and socially-integrated people from normal families with good futures ahead of them serving other people can suddenly turn into monsters and killers who perpetrate unspeakable evil?  The Glasgow car bombers were doctors working in NHS hospitals and the leader of the 7/7 bombers was a primary school teacher with a young family. Outwardly there was little sign of the dark destructive thoughts that were corroding their inner beings.

The issue is a spiritual one of course and the crisis lurks deep within the consciousness of the individuals. I have noted before (here) the inner moral collapse that was the result of one intelligent middle-class Englishman’s conversion to Islam. How much more must have been the moral and spiritual collapse of the suicide bombers cited above?

PVE is not the answer. A spiritual problem requires a spiritual solution. As a committed Christian Stephen Timms will know this too.

Like our recent prime minister, German federal chancellor Angela Merkel is a child of the manse but, unlike him, she is willing to bat for the public benefits of Christianity – as of course befits the leader of Europe’s largest Christian Democratic party, the CDU.

In Munich last month, following in the footsteps of federal president Horst Kohler, she beat a path to the Ecumenical Kirchentag (church congress) where 50,000 Christians from all major Gernam denominations heard her clearly re-affirm that Christianity is the main foundation of that country’s value system.

Alan Wilson reported in the Guardian about Kohler’s robust pull-your-socks-up call to the ecclesiastical leaders attending the Kirchentag – ‘power speaking truth to church’ Wilson dubbed it (here).

(Incidentally, Wilson writes an informative article – but why does he underplay Christianity on this side of the Channel? He states twice that the 55,000 attendees at Munich are about 20 times the numbers of those at the largest Christian gathering in England. Really? Just 2,750 people?

Here in Newham 30,000 Christians meet twice a year at the ExCel Centre for an all-night ‘Festival of Life’ (here) .

Also in Newham this coming weekend, Christians from across London and the denominations will meet at West Ham United FC in Upton Park for the annual Global Day of Prayer (here). If the last GDOP at West Ham in 2007 is anything to go by, there will be up to 15,000 Christians in the stadium on Sunday afternoon.

At the end of July my family will attend New Wine (here) for a week of Christian worship, teaching and fellowship – together with over 10,000 other believers.

There are many more examples. In its heyday before the development of the Olympic complex claimed its premises in 2007, Hackney-based Kingsway international Christian Centre (here) had 12,000 worshippers in its 4,000-capacity building every Sunday. So although Wilson is (a) a C of E bishop and (b) writing for the Guardian, surely these are inadequate excuses for him being so out-of-touch with on-the-ground Christian reality.)

But while Kohler’s robust comments rightly grabbed the headlines, Merkel’s were important too. “Our society lives on premises that it cannot create by itself,” she reminded the Christian audience, a statement which commentators recognise as based on the dictum of German legal philosopher Ernst-Wolfgang Bockenforde, that “the liberal secular state is based on normative premises that it cannot itself guarantee”.

Basically the argument is that only religion – Christianity – can create the ethical basis that modern secular societies depend upon to function. “On the one hand (the liberal secular state) can subsist only if the freedom it consents to its citizens is regulated from within, inside the moral substance of the individuals and of a homogeneous society,” wrote Bockenforde in his ‘Staat, Gesellschaft, Freiheit’ (here). “On the other it is not able to guarantee these forces of inner regulation by itself without renouncing its liberalism.”

Exactly! Our democratic freedoms depend on their Christian undergirdings, and as the latter are eroded from public life so inevitably the former shrink too. The direct consequence is our burgeoning and increasingly illiberal nanny state where Big Sister knows best and replaces God; citizens are handbagged into line by progressively more intrusive laws, bureaucratic regulations and diktats from Brussels as well as Whitehall; fear and caution replace faith and optimism in public discourse; and, for example, freely consenting adult smokers are no longer allowed to get together to form a smoking club! The vital organs of our mature democracy – such as freedom of association – are being closed down. Liberalism is being renounced.

Regrettably despite his much-vaunted churchgoing, I don’t see David Cameron following Angela Merkel with a reminder of the necessity of Christianity for the health of our democracy.

Personally, I’ve always found election time in Newham enjoyable but regrettably there’s rarely any real debate. The democratic deficit created by the all-powerful Labour Party – that’s produced effectively a one-party state in the borough – ensures that there’s little scope for sparks to fly or temperatures to rise. Labour labours hard to close down debate and to ensure that everyone sings from their Town Hall song sheet.

So it was with some amusement that we received a letter from the solicitor of Newham’s Mayor Sir Robin Wales. It seems we’ve scored a significant hit and one of our election leaflets has incurred Sir Robin’s wrath: “It will be understood by those reading (the leaflet) that the Mayor has put his own interests above those of disabled drivers and (it) makes derogatory comments on the Mayor’s motives and values,” said the solicitor’s letter. “(It) will undoubtedly cause serious and ongoing damage to the Mayor’s reputation, feelings and chances of re-election.”

Our intention is not to upset the man himself but rather to expose his self-serving secular administration. So… yes, it’s election time and we are objecting by all valid means to the values and policies that this all-powerful executive Mayor has imposed on Newham during his second term of office. And yes, we believe from the evidence that the Mayor puts his own interests above those of disabled drivers and many others. And yes, we wish to do all we can to swim against Newham’s traditional Labour tide, to spoil his chances of re-election and to offer a better and Christian alternative.

So we’re guilty as charged by his solicitor – but welcome to democracy and legitimate democratic politics, Sir Robin.

The letter continued by listing 11 demands to which CPA should agree including the disclosure of all the names and addresses to which the leaflets have been distributed (we had 23,000 printed and most have been delivered!); the publication of a full apology; the payment of Sir Robin’s legal expenses; and the donation of £5,000 to a charity of his choice.

“Typical,” said one wit in the office, “God had Ten Commandments so Sir Robin has to have eleven.”

The source of all this controversy? It centres primarily on a photo taken with my family camera in the basement of Newham Council’s sparkling new glass offices close to London City Airport. It’s a picture of the parking space that is closest to the lifts and stairs to the offices above.

Before Newham Council moved in, it rightly had been reserved for disabled drivers. Now it’s reserved for you-know-who who parks his car daily over the blacked-out disabled logo. Case closed.

You can see how we’ve used the photo in the latest edition of the Newham Recorder – turn to page 15 on the online digital edition here.

We’ve used it too on the Christian Peoples Alliance pages in the Mayoral election booklet that is sent free to every voter across Newham. In view of Sir Robin’s legal letter it’s significant that all party inserts in the booklet have to be approved for their accuracy and fair comment by the Council’s Chief Executive & Returning Officer and also by the Council’s Head of Legal Services.

We’re also promoting it on a lorry that is driving around Newham for the last two weeks of the campaign.

Our aim is to highlight the strutting preening self-promoting values that are at the heart of New Labour’s showcase project in Newham – in direct contrast with the caring serving Christian values that were taught to us by the Son of God. Newham Labour operates at the Town Hall through the unholy trinity of power, control and self-promoting spin, and we are attempting to hold up a mirror so that all Newham can see just how ugly is this secular ‘we-don’t-do-God’ (here) New Labour project beneath its smooth glossy exterior.

We replied to the solicitor’s letter suggesting that Sir Robin should recognise that our leaflet is part of the rough and tumble of election politics and is therefore protected as such by the law. The alternative is that he’ll have to take us to court.

So far we’ve heard no more. It seems Sir Robin has blinked first.

My apologies to any readers who have missed my posts over the past few weeks. I’ve been taken over by preparations for the Newham elections on 6th May. The Christian Peoples Alliance is putting up candidates for Newham Council right across the borough; I’m standing as CPA candidate for Newham’s executive Mayor; and in the national General Election on the same day we’re running a candidate – Stan Gain – in the West Ham parliamentary constituency.

This is a massive exercise for a small party that relies almost entirely on volunteers. But we’re up and running, the initial exhausting preparation and organisation is over, the campaign is going well and I’ve now a little more time for blogging.

On the doors it appears many people are confused about how to vote in the General Election. “They’re all the same” and “I can’t tell the difference” is a common refrain, and apathy a common result. Many it seems won’t vote at all.

So I was amused to see this refusenik position being bolstered recently by handbills that suddenly sprouted on walls and advertising hoardings around my neighbourhood. ‘Voting is Haram’ they announced – ‘haram’ being an Arabic term for ‘forbidden by Islamic law’. Muslims were being urged not to vote in the elections.

This is of course a minority position within the Muslim community (here) that is propounded mainly by extremist groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun and its successors. And it’s in interesting contrast to Premier Christian Radio’s worthy initiative called ‘I Promise To Vote’ (here) which attempts to mobilise Christians for the elections.

Personally I’ve always insisted on going to the polling station and fulfilling my civic duty. But in the past, when faced with the mind-numbingly anodyne and limiting choice of one of the three main parties (which is Box and which is Cox?), I’ve often scrawled ‘Christ is King’ across the ballot paper and stuffed it in the box.

It may have been a spoilt ballot paper, but at least I’ve expressed my views.

Religious minorities have a difficult, sometimes horrendous, time in Pakistan. In previous posts I have cited the murder of Christians in Gojra (here) and the persecution of the Ahmadi Muslim sect (here) . More recently Shazia Masih, the 12 year old Christian domestic servant of Lahore High Court attorney and former president of the Lahore Bar Association Muhammad Naeem, allegedly has been raped and killed by her well-connected and wealthy employer (here) and three Sikh men who refused to convert to Islam were beheaded by the Taliban in Peshawar (here).

So when the charismatic Wilson Chowdhry of the British Pakistan Christian Association, together with his cousin Alex, asked me recently to join a group of UK-based Sikhs and Christians who were presenting a petition and letter at Downing Street about these atrocities, I accepted with alacrity.

Our joint protest not only covered the Sikh beheadings and the Shazia rape and murder case, but also the urgent need to change the Blasphemy Laws of Pakistan, Sections 298A and 295B & C, which are used to persecute and harass minority faiths in the country.

Besides the BPCA and the Christian Peoples Alliance, the delegation included representatives from the British Sikh Council, United Sikhs and the Sikh Human Rights Group.

As ever, leading, organising and energising the delegation was Wilson.

This is a cause close to my heart and worthy of the support of everyone who sees freedom of speech and religion as vital human rights.

A friend recently drew my attention to an ‘Official Response’ issued to the press on 23rd December by the Muslim Debate Initiative which slates me for comments I made about Islam and women in posts on this blog. The Response was authored by Dr Tabasum Hussain, a UK-born Muslim now living with her family in Canada, and is published in full on the MDI website (here).

On behalf of MDI Tabasum took strong exception to a couple of light asides I made about the lack of women in the their organisation in London: In one post last November I wrote (here) ‘Yes, only guys, no girls of course – this is Islam’, and in a December post I remarked (here) ‘No women of course, this is Islam’.

In her Response Tabasum writes that ‘Mr Craig (makes) ignorant and often hateful comments about Islam in general, and in his failing to get his facts straight about this whole issue he does a great job of highlighting the lack of credibility in anything else he may blurt out against Islam, Prophet Muhammad (saaw), Women, and Muslim organisations.’

Fortunately this is neither true nor is it the view of all Muslims. Indeed in my December post, above, I quote journalist and blogger Umar Farooq who listened to my trenchant views on the niqab (Islamic face veil) and the gender bias inherent in Sharia law at MDI’s own Islamification debate, yet gave me the highest rating of the six panellists (here for Farooq’s full report).

So yesterday I emailed Tabasum as follows:

Dear Tabasum,

I was both surprised and sorry when a friend recently pointed out your Statement on the MDI website dated 21st December: ‘Official response to Head of Christian Peoples Alliance party, Alan Craig’s article: ‘Off with their heads.’’

I was surprised because, regrettably, in your Statement you don’t seem to take any account of my genuine warm regard for the MDI organisers as expressed in my comments such as “I take my hat off (to MDI)”, “The (MDI) event was democracy in action”, “courageous”, “genuinely interested in grappling with the issues”, etc.

I was sorry because, understandably but also regrettably , neither do you attempt answer the main thrust of my 9th November post which was a stonking great criticism of convert Paul Williams’ foul fetid views on the ‘hot issue’ (as he excitedly describes it) of the execution of apostates. I’m pleased Paul has since taken down his offensive post, but he refuses to debate the execution of Islam’s apostates with me and instead has retired upset into his shell. Perhaps he has had a slight taste of the distress that the growing number of people leaving Islam in the UK may feel when they read such murderous drivel.

Instead in your Statement you major on my light-hearted asides: ‘Yes, only guys, no girls of course – this is Islam’ and ‘No women of course, this is Islam’.

The fact that MDI takes such huge exception to my asides about Islam seems to indicate that I’ve touched a raw nerve.

This raw nerve – and Achilles heel, to mix my metaphors – is of course the fact that Islam is at root a misogynistic religion. There are all sorts of explanations for this, most of which go back to the Founder of Islam himself and the in-built inequalities between the genders within the religion. Of course there are exceptions which prove the rule (Benazir Bhutto became Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan less than a decade after Margaret Thatcher was elected Britain’s first and, so far, only female PM). And I don’t doubt you personally are an effective member of MDI, nor that the new appointee in the UK, Nazli Ali, will be too although I’ve yet to meet her.

But at a fundamental level it is impossible for Islam to provide for the intrinsic equality of worth between the genders that, for instance, Christianity offers.

However, we are members of our respective debating organisations so rather than writing Statements, how about us publicly debating the issue? I suggest I propose the motion: ‘This House believes that Islam is misogynistic’. You would be free to respond to the motion as you see fit.

Unfortunately I cannot undertake such a debate during your immediate visit to the UK, although I’m looking forward to attending your debate with Beth Grove on 5th March. But perhaps we could fix it for sometime during your next visit this side of the Atlantic?

With best wishes,

It will be interesting to see if Tabasum accepts the challenge, and also see if she is willing to debate Islam with a member of the opposite sex.

I’ll keep you informed.

I guess we are no longer surprised that the government, led by The Harperson, does its best to write fatherhood out of the script. Men are the cause of the financial crisis (here), are no longer required on the birth certificate (here), and, as Melanie Phillips observed in her usual incisive style, have been reduced to ‘sperm donors, walking wallets and occasional au pairs’ (here).

In theory the church should do better. After all, it was Christ – alone of the founders of the monotheistic faiths – who majored on the fatherhood of God and introduced the possibility of a warm personal relationship with ‘Our Father which art in heaven’ (Matt 6:9; Mark 14:36; Gal 4:6; etc).

So I became concerned at church recently as we prayed through a prayer about Haiti which was projected onto the screen.

Like others I had watched with tears as the human tragedy of the Haiti earthquake unfolded. In particular I had identified with the panic and despair of fathers as they picked frantically with bare hand at the rubble of collapsed buildings, looking for their families inside: I too have young children.

In context the prayer was beautifully empathetic. Someone had emailed it to a member of the church at work and – at the urging of a Muslim colleague who perhaps had felt the compassion in the prose and shared the urge to appeal to the Almighty – he forwarded it to the company’s HR department who in turn published it for all the staff. Not bad for our secular age.

“Lord I thank you… because this morning I woke up and knew where my children were… because my home was still standing… because I am not crying as my spouse, my child, my parent does not need to be buried or pulled out from beneath a pile of concrete…

“Lord I cry out to You, the One who makes the impossible possible, the One who turns darkness into light. I cry out that You give those mothers strength, that You give them the peace that surpasses all understanding…

“(I cry out) that You may open the streets so that help may come… that You may provide doctors, nurses, food, water… Give them peace… hope… courage to go on… Protect the children and shield them with Your power.

“I pray all this in the name of Jesus.”

It was an admirable prayer that I, together with the rest of the congregation, entered into with full but heavy hearts, willing the Lord to answer urgently.

“But hang on,” I thought half way through, “what about the fathers? Why are we praying for mothers in Haiti but not their partners?”

I concluded sadly that the world often impacts the church more than vice versa, and the writer of the prayer – consciously or unconsciously – had simply bought into the secular mindset that ignores the primal social and spiritual importance of fatherhood.

So the invisibilisation of fathers continues apace. The cost to our society, and to the church if she follows suit, will be enormous.

Midnight on Monday found me in BBC Radio 5 Live’s studios at White City discussing faith schools with Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society. We were on Tony Livesey’s late night chat show, and the issue triggering the discussion was the news that Foreign Secretary and avowed atheist David Miliband is avoiding the local state primary school near his home in Camden and sending his five year old adopted son instead to a church school further away (here). Apparently Miliband’s wife Louise attends the Anglican church linked to the school.

It is of course amusingly reminiscent of – but less spectacular than – the decision a few years ago by left-wing former fire-brand Diane Abbott MP to shun local Hackney schools and send her son to the private £10,000-a-year City of London School (here).

But it is the disingenuous nature of Keith Porteous Wood’s National Secular Society that I want to discuss here rather than the hypocrisy or otherwise of David Miliband or Diane Abbott. I’m not surprised that, when push comes to shove, parents want to do the best for their children, nor that the Milibands have chosen a church school in order to achieve this.

But the real hypocrisy and rank cant lies with the NSS, and Keith Porteous Wood is a pleasant and occasionally formidable spokesman for this deceptive organisation. NSS is better described as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The organisation likes to present itself as a benign pressure group that aims to achieve an equitable and just secular society in which religious viewpoints are appropriately represented but restricted in public life. “We campaign… against the undue influence of religion in public affairs and education,” purrs the NSS website (here) claiming they also defend values such as human rights and freedom of speech. NSS, it seems, would persuade us that it promotes a sort of ‘procedural secularism’ (to use the jargon) that includes a neutral public square where no religious worldview predominates and where the state benevolently holds the ring between alternative and often competing beliefs and creeds. This secularism entails a separation of religion and state and non-discrimination between religions by the state that guarantees plurality and religious freedom. For historical and pragmatic reasons I personally wouldn’t advocate disestablishing the national church, for instance, but for many people such ‘procedural secularism’ is an attractive way of organising public affairs, and they point to the US and India as societies where religion thrives within a secular framework.

But in fact the National Secular Society offers no such benign vision. Rather it is another vehicle for shrill and aggressive New Atheism, whose intention is not only to ride religion out of public life, but also to attack faith – especially Christianity – wherever it finds it, including in private belief and practice. According to New Atheists, religion should not even be carried on by consenting adults in private. Their virulent strain of ‘ideological secularism’ (to use the jargon again) which attempts to exclude or severely control religion in private as well as public, is what NSS in fact promotes.

How do I know? NSS’s real motives are uncovered by the ‘debaptism’ campaign currently running on the organisation’s website (here) in which we are urged to ‘Liberate yourself from the Original Mumbo-Jumbo that liberated you from the Original Sin you never had!’ For a ‘bit of fun’ you can also purchase from NSS your very own ‘Certificate of Debaptism’ printed, indeed, on quality parchment paper. Yippee!

Baptism of course is a sacred Christian initiation rite as old as the faith itself. It is personal to the believer and his/her family and is carried out in and by the church. It has no impact whatever on public life or wider social policy.

So why is the NSS sticking its nose into our private business? Because it is two-faced, publicly proclaiming its vocation to promote fairness and restrict religious privilege in public life whilst actually using this as a front for its all-consuming anti-Christian crusade.

Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett et al are open and honest about their desire to eradicate Christianity. The duplicitous National Secular Society is not.

And that’s why Keith Porteous Wood could only talk cant about Christian and church schools on Monday night.