If Mr Cameron’s Easter message was divisive then he has struck the right tone!

There has been some criticism of David Cameron’s assertion that this nation, Christian for over a millennium, remains Christian and that this is a heritage that is to be valued.  Apparently a number of self-appointed intellectuals regard this assertion as divisive.  First and foremost it seems difficult to argue with Mr Cameron in terms of the facts.  We have an established church, our national holidays, such as the recent Easter break, celebrate Christian festivals, not Islamic or Hindu festivals, the largest religious group in the nation remains Christian.  It is true that this current generation is making a hash of handing on this Christian heritage to the next, but that does not mean this inheritance is non-existent.  Perhaps this generation will fail to honour the trust it owes its descendants, but the inheritance will no doubt be rediscovered. 

Just as the monks during the Dark Ages, safeguarded this nation’s Christian culture, for it to be rediscovered by the converted Anglo-Saxon invaders much later, so a small number may keep this inheritance safe through the current tide of secularism, for it to be rediscovered in the future.  The inheritance exists, even if Polly Toynbee and Terry Pratchett are selfishly trying to deprive future generations of their right to it.

The criticism that actually needs to be addressed is not the absurd and laughable suggestion that this is not a Christian country, but the further assertion made by the pseudo-intellectual letter-writers to the Telegraph that it is bad for this nation to be Christian because it is divisive and impedes the progress of the ideology of relativist multi-culturalism.

Well just because something is divisive does not mean it is bad.  I am sure Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a divisive figure for Germans living under the Third Reich.  He, in following his Master, did not balk from divisiveness in his pursuit of what was Right.  Whereas multiculturalism may not seem as monumentally evil as Nazism, it is a sort of insidious nihilism, which eats away at our values.

Evil under multiculturalism is not organised by a tyrannical State, but it is permitted and never condemned, for fear of judging non-indigenous cultural values.  Let us remember that Christianity is supposed to be divisive.  Christ said he did not come to bring peace, but division.  He described Himself as coming into the world as a sword, to set people against one another, even within families.  Well the reaction of the letter writers is evidence that Christianity is divisive.  It is divisive because like a sword it sunders the gold from the dross, the good from the evil.  If Christianity were not true it could be compromised within a mishmash of other cultures in a grey and relativist nihilism.  It is precisely because Christianity is so clear that it is the only way that it will always divide people.  If we as a nation wish to aspire to truth and moral values, then we will inevitably find that some will disagree with us even violently.  That is not to say we have got everything right by any means as a country, but if we hold true to our inheritance of values then we will rightly be called divisive – and that is something to take to our credit.