I heard a recent news report that a newspaper somewhere in the North of England refused to run an advertisement in their ‘Situations Vacant’ page. The ad said something like ‘... only suitable applicants need apply.’ A spokesman for the newspaper was concerned that it might break the law by discriminating against those who were unsuitable.

 

There’s an interesting row brewing at the moment about some of the comments Pope Benedict has made about equality, or the lack of it in British society, and the man has a point; things have got a bit absurd. For example, there was a couple of old sisters who lived together in their family home for sixty years. When one of them died, the surviving one had to move out because she couldn’t afford to pay the Inheritance Tax. Two lesbians in the same circumstances would be exempt from the tax. Now by any standard of equality, that’s wrong.

 

Could you imagine a member of Sinn Féin applying for a job in the publicity department of an extreme Protestant organisation and crying foul if he didn’t get it? How might the Labour Party react to an application for a job from Nick Griffin, Chairman of the British National Party? And yet if Harriet Harman’s Equality Bill had been passed, if a Rastafarian was refused a job in one of the mainstream denominations on the grounds that he doesn’t share the aims and objectives of that church, he could sue on the grounds of unfair discrimination.

 

What’s it all about? I don’t think it is scare mongering to see it as an attempt to create a secular society that has no strong views about anything. A society in which you don’t take a stand on a moral issue in case you offend somebody. British Airways could fire one of their staff for wearing a crucifix on her necklace. Gideon Bibles would be removed from hotel bedrooms, crosses would never be seen at the entrance to a cemetery, Christmas would be renamed ‘Winterval’ and Easter would have no significance apart from bunnies and chocolate eggs. In other words, Christianity would be squeezed out in the name of equality.

But the real question that’s running around in my head is this. To become a minister in some of our mainstream denominations you must confess that you believe the Pope is the anti-Christ. Why the thunderous silence in those quarters as a tidal wave of secularism would neutralise the church by reducing morality to the lowest common denominator? Are they so blinkered by their narrow Evangelical Protestantism that they leave the tough job of ‘Seeking first the kingdom of God’ to their sworn enemy, the anti-Christ?

Thankfully the Bill was defeated in the Lords, but it is deeply disturbing that the lady who did her best to make it law is the second most senior politician in Westminster. And she was enthusiastically encouraged by the most senior politician in the country - a staunch Presbyterian!

 

I fear my old friend Brother Andrew was right when he predicted the demise of the Christian religion in Britain, ‘...not because our adversary is strong, but because we are feeble.’

Time to wake up and smell the coffin!