In 2003, Vanity Fair carried an interview with the then British prime minister Tony Blair. When the journalist broached the subject of his faith, Alistair Campbell, his spin doctor, interjected. His objection was simple: “We don’t do God.”

In his published diaries Campbell reveals that Blair did, however, “do God”. He had been trying to prevent Blair from openly talking about his faith ever since his election as leader of the Labour Party. He managed this successfully partly because Blair had a Teflon personality and an apparent amorality which masked any supposed conviction he held.

He is not the only British prime minister to hold strong religious convictions. Gordon Brown is the son of a Presbyterian clergyman while Theresa May is the daughter of an Anglo-Catholic vicar. Both are regular churchgoers. Margaret Thatcher was a practising and devout Christian. Harold Macmillan was equally committed to his faith.

Future politicians will, however, find it hard to be open about their religious convictions. In the wake of the last British general election, the leader of the Liberal Democrats Tim Farron, tendered his resignation.

This resignation was not prompted by failure at the polls. In a short two-year period, the Liberal Democrats increased their number of seats in the House of Commons and regained their place as the third largest party in Britain in terms of votes cast.

Rather, Farron had to resign because of his Christian faith: “To be a political leader – especially of a progressive, liberal party in 2017 – and to live as a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching, has felt impossible for me.”

Progressive and left-wing parties have long been going through a silent but steady purge of anything remotely resembling religious faith. The growing hostility is aided by those who seek to portray faith purely as ‘tradition’ – a curious, if quaint and archaic, expression of folklore rather than something living and challenging.

Farron’s statement would have been unremarkable were it not for his more important observation on how he was treated publicly: “I seem to be the subject of suspicion because of what I believe and who my faith is in. In which case we are kidding ourselves if we think we yet live in a tolerant, liberal society.”

The outgoing leader has every reason to be concerned. His voting track record confirms that he is anything but illiberal. He never questioned the role of a pluralist and secular society. There was nothing in his voting record to suggest that Farron was not suitable to lead a progressive liberal party.

The hostility he faced had very little to do with any legislative action he took. Rather, it referred to some thought crime he is supposed to have committed; not only did Farron embrace Christianity but he had the nerve to express his view in public.

While it has almost become acceptable or even expected to drive faith out of public life, the consequences can be far-reaching. This deliberate exclusion is not a sign of secularism but a result of ingrained institutional intolerance.

The late sociologist Peter Berger provides some insights into secularism which can be useful in this debate. He rejects the widespread view that secularism is a product of modernity. Instead, Berger suggests the natural outcome of modernity is pluralism.

He argued: “Modernity is characterised by an increasing plurality, within the same society, of different beliefs, values, and world views. Plurality does indeed pose a challenge to all religious traditions – each one must cope with the fact that there are ‘all these others’, not just in a faraway country but right next door.”

When writing about Christianity, he contends that “the Christian Church, long before the advent of modernity, provided a prototype of religious specialisation – the realm of Caesar separated from that of God. What modernity does is to make the differentiation much ampler and diffused”.

This differentiation should not morph into open hostility towards both public and private expressions of faith. Unfortunately, this seems to be the trend which Europe is moving towards.

To exclude someone from occupying public office due to their faith (or lack thereof) is to betray the same principles of pluralism which are the bedrock of liberal democracy. It undermines the principles of freedom of expression and freedom of worship; it is a mindset which is closer to liberal fascism than liberal democracy. How can pluralism thrive if one ignores something which is so important to so many individuals?

A more dangerous threat comes from treating religion as a subculture. While many surveys in the West point to a general decline in mainstream religious practice, expressions of faith on the margins are thriving.

Jihadi movements draw strength and legitimacy from fringe narratives of Islam. Others groups may be pushed to the margins or driven underground when faced with hostile reactions. In his prophetic lecture at the University of Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI legitimately observed that the attitude “which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures”. I would hazard to guess that we are now incapable of entering into such dialogues.

A cursory look at the way faith issues are discussed in the public sphere reveals an inability to interpret or engage with religious matters. By ghettoising religion and faith, we have robbed ourselves of the ability to analyse both its positive and negative aspects.

We have lost the ability to decipher what good can come out of expressions of faith – of the conviction which inspired the freedom movements in Eastern Europe and Russia and of the teachings which can inform our view of the individual, family and the common good.

More worryingly, we are unable to understand why some find comfort and hope in hard-hitting and uncompromising dogmatism. Our lack of knowledge on religious matters drives us to use political terms (such as ‘extremism’, ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘radicalism’) for complex theological standpoints.

Likewise, we seem to be unable to differentiate between violence committed in the name of religion – such as the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East – and other forms of violence perpetuated by religious figures for non-religious reasons – such as the clerical abuse scandal which still haunts many dioceses around the globe.

Rather than accept the conventional hostile attitudes towards faith in public life, we should truly question whether such attitudes are creating more illiberal, intolerant and less intelligent societies.

andre.deb@gmail.com