Secular values are supplanting Christian ones and everyone should know how “narrow minded” these new forces are, warns a national newspaper columnist.
Stephen Glover, writing in the Daily Mail, says secular values have even been accorded the status of a religion.
His comments came after an equality ruling said the beliefs of an animal rights activist should be protected from discrimination at work in the same way as a religious belief.
And last week it was revealed that a ‘warlock’, punished for carrying a five inch knife, is to be relieved of his overnight curfew when there is a full moon so that he can perform Pagan ritutals.
Secular
Mr Glover said the courts were dismissing Christianity and the case of the animal rights campaigner illustrates an extraordinary new phenomenon.
In the eyes of the courts, he said, secular values have been “accorded the status of a religion”.
He called on Christians to “wake up and grasp that many of their values are being challenged and replaced by secular ones.”
“And all of us, Christian or not, should understand just how blindly intolerant and narrow-minded these forces of a new secular religion often are”, he added.
Erosion
Mr Glover lamented at the erosion of Christianity in the media. He said: “The BBC has steadily reduced the amount of religious broadcasting.
“Christian speakers have been progressively edged out on Radio Four’s daily avowedly religious Thought for Today slot at the expense of Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist ones.
“Though these religions have many fewer adherents in this country, they are virtually accorded equality by the secularly-minded BBC”, he blasted.
Floodgates
Joe Hashman, a 42-year-old animal rights campaigner, claimed he was sacked from his job at a garden centre because he was against hunting.
The judge ruled his anti-hunting views were a “philosophical belief’ under employment law, in a decision which is expected to open the floodgates to similar claims.
Mr Glover concluded that “Mr Hashman’s beliefs, whether anti-social or otherwise, are not religious, and until the court establishes the truth about his sacking, it is very hard to see how he has been the victim of discrimination.”
Neutrality
In September a top media commentator warned that the rising tide of secularism is not a state of neutrality but an attempt to get rid of religion and enforce its own values and beliefs.
“The public sphere is conceived as being neutral and neutrality is interpreted as being without religion”, Melanie Phillips told the Church of England Newspaper.
“I believe that in fact there is no neutrality in the culture wars.” She says that secularism is often presented as neutral, “but to be secular is to embrace certain values and beliefs. Instead of neutrality there is an attempt to get rid of religion and to promote something else instead.”