David Cameron once described his Christian faith as something like the reception for Magic FM in the Chilterns, it comes and goes. By 2014, in a Guardian article, he was speaking rather differently, urging Christians to be more evangelical about their beliefs and to get out and make a difference in peoples lives.
It was Camerons third public statement on his faith that week, part of a broader push to give religion a bigger role in what he called a Christian country, and to encourage believers to be more confident about voicing their views rather than treating faith as a private matter. He had already praised Christians contribution to public life, referred to Jesus as our saviour, and described the moments of greatest peace he said he experienced at the Eucharist.
The context mattered. The comments followed friction between the coalition government and the church, including a letter from 40 Anglican bishops and 600 church leaders that week urging all political parties to address the causes of food poverty, alongside earlier tensions over Camerons introduction of gay marriage and welfare cuts. Tony Blair, by contrast, had been urged by his own communications chief to keep his faith largely private, on the theory that in Britain we dont do God.
Those close to Cameron said his faith was real if understated, and that it had helped him process the death of his eldest son. Whatever the political calculation behind the timing, the substance of the claim, that Britain remains a country whose institutions and public life carry a real religious inheritance even as regular church attendance declines, is one polling on belief and belonging in Britain has continued to bear out in different ways since.
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