Last week’s edition of the current affairs weekly New Statesman (14 April) returned to the topic of religion (see my post of 3rd February), with three articles collectively entitled ‘Belief is back’.

Two observations on these:
First, there is a major article about the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright. Unlike his recent and very liberal predecessor at Durham, David Jenkins, who was famously (but inaccurately) quoted as referring to the resurrection as a “conjuring trick with bones”, Bishop Tom is decidedly and delightfully orthodox. He believes that the resurrection is literally true, that we will be physically raised at the Second Coming of Christ and Day of Judgement – “no metaphors… no decoding… no poetics.”

As the article says, “Wright’s line… is to be taken entirely at face value. If this man is a hero to millions of conservative Christians, then belief is certainly back.”

And so it is. But the interesting thing is that not just ‘religion’ or ‘church-going’ is back, but that it is the theological content of belief (in this case, the resurrection) which indicates the return of faith in the UK, at least according to the New Statesman. If sensible balanced intelligent people (like Tom Wright) can state publicly that the dead will rise again without being sectioned into a mental institution, then belief itself is well and truly back and able to impact the public agenda.

Second, there is no mention of Islam in the articles. The New Statesman seems to think the return of faith is entirely related to Christianity.

This seems unfair and untrue. Islam more than Christianity has put religion back into UK political discourse and Islamic belief has recently dominated the public agenda. See for instance the furore over the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Sharia law lecture or tomorrow’s BBC radio programme about the difficulties for UK Muslims who convert to Christianity and the role of apostasy in Islam.

But whatever the limitation of the articles, the New Statesman is certainly abreast of a key development in our national political debate. Belief is definitely back.

Last night I was shocked.

For some time I’ve been tracking the rise of religion in our political debate and – perhaps unfairly – laughed at the antics of religiously illiterate politicians and secular commentators as they try to get to grips with – especially – Christian and Islamic concepts.

Last night I encountered the dark side of the phenomenon.

As The Christian Choice Mayoral candidate I attended election hustings at Kensington Temple (KT) in Notting Hill Gate. It’s an amazing multi-ethnic church stuffed full of young people that holds five services on Sundays and lots of mid-week services including youth worship on Saturday night, and that has spawned daughter churches all over London.

KT is the only organisation in the whole of London so far that has invited all 10 mayoral candidates to hustings. KT does not buy into the cosy BBC-style exclusivity of inviting only the ‘big three’ or four. Our democracy grew out of our fertile Judeo-Christian heritage and it takes a church to maintain open level-playing-field democracy in London.

But that meant the BNP came too.

The shock was how far and how much the BNP clothe their narrow nationalist and racist dogma in ‘Christian’ garments. They claim to be Christian despite the views of their founder John Tyndall (“What passes for Christianity in this country today can only be described as superstitious sociology: a bland doctrine of welfare-mongering with guilt, humility and self-abasement…”) and current legal officer Lee Barnes (“The teachings of the Biblical Jesus and the Biblical Christ are a mixture of truth and deliberate falsehoods…”).

But as I listened to the BNP spokesman last night I realised that theirs is a counterfeit Christianity, a pseudo-Christianity or at best a sub-Christian ideology that tells nothing about a living relationship with the living Christ. There is no grace, no warmth, no compassion – their ‘Christianity’ is all harsh ethics, loveless discipline and dubious morals, and no spirituality.

There is a wide gap between their ‘Christianity’ and my Jesus Christ. When I spoke I said that they themselves needed to come to Christ; if they did so they would leave the BNP.

The other shock was the positive response the BNP received from some Christians of ethnic minority background. Asians and Africans applauded when the BNP spokesman started speaking about the Bible, the Ten Commandments and Christianity in schools. I was embarrassed – not about promoting faith in schools but that Christians can be naively taken in by BNP ‘Christian’ rhetoric. The journalist from the Evening Standard was puzzled too.

It is widely predicted that the BNP will get at least one seat on the London Assembly on 1 May. I’m praying that we, The Christian Choice, do too – now if for no other reason than that true Christianity should be represented rather than just the BNP counterfeit.