Will Theresa May restore religious liberty by adopting reasonable accommodation?

Dec 6, 2016 by Jill

by Archbishop Cranmer:

Theresa May is an Anglican, and her faith appears to be sound and secure (ie, it doesn’t fade in and out like Magic FM in the Chilterns). A few articles have pondered the precise cut of her Christian jib: Giles Fraser was first off the mark, with a tender dissection of her High Church upbringing, with its “unflashy service, community, warts and all, and personal sacrifice”. For him, she is the real thing: “her faith feels entirely convincing to me,” he observes. More discursively, not to say vaguely, James Macintyre talks of her being “a quiet Christian from the heart of middle England”. That tells you a lot. Then there’s Harriet Sherwood‘s churning of everything we already knew, garnished with a quote from ubiquitous Anglisceptic Linda Woodhead: “She is a genuinely devout Anglican, and has real convictions about the common good, duty, service – those traditional Anglo-Catholic virtues.” And then there’s Theo Hobson, the Speccie‘s resident disestablishmentarianist, who is reassured that the Prime Minister is “a good, solid, unashamed, unflashy Anglican, whose allegiance has not wavered since childhood”. It isn’t clear how exactly he knows this. Perhaps he judges whole lives by stony faces and determined inflections:

But when she actually says anything about her faith, she doesn’t come across very well. She sounds nervous of saying the wrong thing, which is fair enough, as horrid bloggers are waiting to pick and sneer at her words.

And so he proceeds to pick and sneer at her words, referring to her “dry sociological comment”; of sounding “slightly ungracious”; being “a bit of a moaner”; and of making Christianity “sound rather grim and joyless”. He muses: “Perhaps she has been badly advised to sound coldly dutiful if asked about religion.” This is precisely the sort of picky, sneery thing that really horrid bloggers say, made all the more sneery because it impugns the faith of her adviser Jonathan Hellewell LVO, whom the Catholic Herald notes is “the first SPAD with a faith brief to work directly for a PM”. Yes, Theresa May cares so much about matters of religion and belief that she has appointed an eminently qualified and knowledgeable Christian to guide her in these matters: “Intensely religiously literate, he is politically astute, organisationally effective, discreet and senior.” But, for Theo Hobson, the advice amounts to having to sound “coldly dutiful”. He probably thinks that’s clever, but it is simply cynical picking and sneering at someone who doesn’t express their Anglican faith with such happy-clappy disestablishmentarianst zeal as he does. The CofE is a broad church, Theo, and some Christians are serious about their faith and the mission of their church. They can’t help it.

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