David Cameron’s Christian Country

shutterstock_145450387I don’t really care about the semantics, although it seems to me from every statistic I have seen that we are not really a Christian country; more a country which has been heavily influenced by Christianity.

Hopefully, at some point we will look forward rather than backward, disestablish the Church, get the priests out of the House of Lords and get the Queen to give up her role as head of the Church of England. Let’s get rid of state funded faith schools while we are at it.

That said, I do think it’s important that politicians come clean about their religious beliefs. It’s no good pretending that your religious beliefs don’t affect your world view, which in turn will affect your views on society and policy. They simply cannot be separated.

In the US, knowing that Mitt Romney was a Mormon would certainly have influenced me if I had been an American citizen. Surely you have to doubt the judgement of anyone who believes that Jesus magically went from the Middle East to America to spread the word and that the 10 lost tribes of Israel will one day come back and gather in Missouri!

So I am grateful to David Cameron for showing his Christian hand. I wish Tony Blair had been more open about his faith. Had I known how much he thought God was on his (and our side) I would have been even more suspicious about his foreign policy, his ideas on family and education. I am sure he is a decent man and a great believer in peace but like all religious leaders, peace only comes on Gods terms and if you don’t see the world in the same way as ‘my God’ sees it you may have a problem.

So David, we know you are a Christian and you see this as a Christian Country, now tell us how you see this influencing policy.

Specifically:

Constitutional reform
The monarchy
The justice system
Family and taxation
Discrimination laws
Foreign policy, particularly in countries where religion is the problem
Education and faith schools
Defence
Foreign Aid
Environmental policy

I’d also be interested in Gods’ views on all of the above.

If a pharma company had discovered alcohol

Imagine if alcohol had been discovered by a pharmaceutical company.

This is what I imagine.

A chemical called ethanol was discovered by scientists at a leading, global, pharmaceutical company.

It seems to be very effective at reducing anxiety and aiding sleep. In trials nothing turns up to prevent it going to market.

Only when it has been on the market for a while do they discover that at high doses it has a very different effect. It makes people incoherent, tense and aggressive. Worse than that it irritates the stomach, causes dehydration and leads to severe headache.

Subsequently it is discovered that in overdose it can be fatal and long term use causes brain, skin and liver damage.

The nail in the coffin is when they discover it is also highly addictive.

The pharmaceutical company withdraws the drug from the market but the damage is done. Hundreds of thousands of people sue the company and the costs become so enormous the company has no choice but to close.

It goes down as the most dangerous drug ever licensed by the pharmaceutical industry. The result is all future trials are faced with new regulation to prevent the same mistake ever happening again.

Could this have ever happened? I think it could.