Roamer's column

There seems to be a move, nutty in the extreme, to nudge our faith out of the social dialogue that determines legislation. The strangled cry, once it is deciphered, oftentimes lashed out with more than a rash of hysteria, would have it that religion has its place and the public square is not that place.

"Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan. Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. To say that men and women should not inject their 'personal morality' into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."

Guess what manic fundamentalist said that? Intellectuals, pseudo and otherwise, philosophers, priests even? I never thought I would have to use him on my side, but the wacky fundamentalist is nobody else but wait for it! - an American politician known to be even more liberal than Chappaquiddick Kennedy. Ladies and gentlemen, the darling of the world and liberals everywhere, Barack Obama.

Senator, as he then was, Obama spoke those words in a keynote address for a Call to Renewal speech in June 2006. How much he meant what he told his audience, whether he used the occasion cynically before he made his bid for the Presidency of the United States to keep religionists on his side, I know not. Time will tell and that time not too far in the future.

The point I am making is that our religious leaders in particular, much of our media, our political leaders and representatives, those of them who hold and keep the faith, should not worry the least bit if occasions arise when they are called upon, expected to "inject their 'personal morality' into debates on public policy".

They should treat with a certain vigour assertions made to the contrary and make their own what has always been theirs, Obama's no-nonsense approach to religion, faith and public policy as he verbalised it in June 2006: "Our law is by definition a codification of morality. Much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."

You would think, when you listen to, or read, some of the wilder statements that are made by the so-called liberated, that that tradition is a no-no in the 21st century, way past its sell-by date. But in reality it is a yes-yes; which is why in four days' time we celebrate the birth of a Jew and the Incarnation of the first Christian. And the only reason why we wish one another a happy Christmas.

The return of GKC

"Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Camden Hill, Kensington; and baptised accordingly to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St George opposite Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge. I do not allege any significance in the relation of the two buildings; and I indignantly deny that the church was chosen because it needed the whole water-power of West London to turn me into a Christian".

Thus G.K. Chesterton's first paragraph of his autobiography; but if you wish to learn more about Chesterton's life you must go to Maisie Ward's biography of this extraordinary and gifted author. At least you did up to now, for what is being described as a definitive bio of the man has recently been published.

The author, William Oddie, "has presented us" a reviewer wrote last week, "with a far greater surprise: he has shown Chesterton to be even more Chesterton than we thought he was, to be even more worthy of the love and admiration he has received from so many in the last hundred years". The publication comes a century to the year after Chesterton wrote what many consider to be his greatest work, Orthodoxy, a book that made him a Catholic in heart and mind and spirit long before he formally became one.

A close friend of mine recently sent me a Chesterton quote (Dale Ahlquist maintains that, with Shakespeare, GKC is the most quoted man in the English language - you can Google into some of these when you have a spare moment and I guarantee you will not look away from your computer until you have been through what is available on the GKC website). It was vintage GKC. "Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian... any more than standing in your garage makes you a car." Of course, not going to church makes you less of a Christian; rather like not going into your garage where your car is and expecting to find it elsewhere.

There are times when his autobiography reads like a biography of other men's lives. One delightful story may be jotted down, here, the occasion Hilair Belloc's 60th birthday dinner party. "It was specially impressed upon me, that there were to be no speeches", but as he was presiding over the evening he was permitted to say a few words, which he did.

Belloc acknowledged it briefly... saying he found that, by the age of 60, "he did not care very much whether his verse remained or not. But I am told" he added with suddenly reviving emphasis, "I am told that you begin to care again frightfully when you are 70. In which case, I hope I shall die at 69".

The dinner that was to have had no after-dinner speeches ended with everybody making one. It was the only dinner he had ever attended, Chesterton remarked, "at which it was literally true that every diner made an after-dinner speech". His only regret was that he had not dedicated to the Very Important Guest a verse a Victorian poet had written: Not without honours my days ran,/Nor yet without a boast shall end;/for I was Shakespeare's countryman/ And were you not my friend.

Wait for it!

This sub-head may become a regular feature. Last week I asked you to wait for the strange decision taken to publish a children's dictionary minus many words to do with Christianity. This week I came across two items that require a similar state of anticipation.

The first was a sample poll of under-10s who were asked, among other questions, "Who is the most famous person in all the world?" It is not certain that a multiple choice was included but in the event, Simon Cowell was top of this poll, with God second and the Queen third.

But wait for it! Take heart. Asked what rules they would make if they were king or queen of the world, their Godly and Number One response was "to ban divorce"! It pushed a ban on guns and knives off the top spot and reflects, surely, the deep unhappiness for children that divorce causes. "Out of the mouths of ..." - and perhaps indigestible food for thought for those who tend to discard the trauma visited upon children by divorce.

If you take into account that these same kids placed "good looks" at the top of the "very best things in the world", it is possible to venture a conclusion that those polled are essentially avid box-watchers. This makes God's place in their minds - God is not seen by producers as good television - all the more interesting; God's law even more so. Given the media concentration on glamour, looks, weight, the God who has so little time and space on Big Brother television, managed an astounding result.

The second item is to do with the verbal banditry employed by Daniel Cohn-Bendit a fortnight or so ago. D. C-B is the Greens/EFA co-president. He was, of course, an anarchist in his young days and known, then, in the time of the Troubles of 1968, as Dany le Rouge.

Now a member of the Conference of the Presidents of the European Parliament, he berated the Czech President (the Czech Republic takes over the six-month presidency of the EU next month) on subjects ranging from climate change to the work directive, the Lisbon Treaty - "I don't care about your opinions on it. I want to know what you are going to do if the Czech Chamber of Deputies and the senate approve it" -, and the Irish 'No' vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum: "I want you to explain to me what is the level of your friendship with Mr Garney from Ireland".

Understandably fazed, the Czech President remarked: "I must say that no one has talked to me in such a style and tone in the past six years. You are not on the barricades in Paris here. I thought that such manners ended for us 19 years ago". Bendit of the Sixties, equally unfazed, retorted that that was, "Because you have not experienced me".

Old habits, especially insolent ones, die hard; none greener in their manners than the Greens.

Happy Christmas.