Religion should play a bigger role in public life, says British MP - Herald Sun

EUROPE is threatened by a wave of ''militant secularism'' and religion should play a bigger role in public life, a British Cabinet minister says.

''Europe needs to become more confident in its Christianity,'' Sayeeda Warsi said.

''You cannot and should not extract these Christian foundations from the evolution of our nations any more than you can or should erase the spires from our landscapes,'' she said in an article for the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

''My fear today is that a militant secularisation is taking hold of our societies,'' she said, accusing some atheists of having the same intolerant instincts as authoritarian regimes.

Ms Warsi, a Muslim who is a prominent member of the Conservative Party, is leading a delegation of British government ministers to the Vatican this week.

The group is due to meet Pope Benedict XVI today.

Just under 72 per cent of respondents to the 2001 British census - the last for which full results are available - identified themselves as Christian.

But most Britons are not regular churchgoers, and religion is not considered a vote-winning issue.

For years political leaders have largely heeded the famous advice of Tony Blair's spin doctor, Alastair Campbell: ``We don't do God.''

But there are signs of change.

Prime Minister David Cameron recently urged the Church of England to lead a revival of traditional Christian values to counter the ''slow-motion moral collapse'' that led to the August riots in England.

Ms Warsi said religion had been ``neglected, undermined - and yes, even attacked'' by recent British governments.

In extracts from a speech she will deliver in Rome, she said that spirituality had been ``suppressed,'' and Britain had become a place ''where, in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury, faith is looked down on as the hobby of 'oddities, foreigners and minorities.''

The British Humanist Association yesterday condemned Ms Warsi's comments as ``chauvinist and unnecessarily divisive''.

''In an increasingly non-religious and at the same time diverse society, we need policies that will emphasise what we have in common as citizens rather than what divides us,'' said its chief executive, Andrew Copson.