Are Christian MPs being silenced by the ‘secular inquisition’?

The BBC and the secular establishment don’t make life easy for Christian MPs. When Carol Monaghan, a Catholic Scottish Nationalist MP, turned up to a Parliamentary committee last week with an Ash Wednesday cross on her forehead, both her colleagues and the Beeb treated her as if she was wearing a Halloween costume. My colleague Stephen Daisley wrote about the incident for Coffee House, reflecting on the ‘secular inquisition’ that ostensibly Christian politicians must now face if they openly profess their faith.

But do they even want to? Many Christian MPs are as reluctant as Tony Blair to ‘do God’ if the media are listening. In this week’s Holy Smoke podcast Stephen Daisley and James Forsyth, The Spectator’s Political Editor, join me to discuss the steady secularisation of British political life – and unexpected parallels with the United States, whose supposedly robust Christian political culture is vanishing in front of our eyes.