‘Christianity underpins freedom and discarding it damages democracy,’ said Tim Farron on 28 November.
Farron, who up until recently was leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, outlined his views on how democracy is corroding: ‘Christians have more reason than most to be alarmed.’ Liberalism had ‘stopped being liberal’ and instead become the oppressor of free society. He described it as ‘eating itself’. Quoting John Stuart Mill in 1859, he said ‘liberty is at risk when we all feel a pressure to start thinking the same things’.
The myth of neutrality
Farron observed: ‘For many years, our culture has considered that the absence of faith is the neutral position, and that the holding of a religious faith is eccentric. But if your faith actually affects your worldview in any way that puts it at odds with the mainstream, then it is considered to be malign and intolerable.’
Commenting on the idea that secularism is ‘neutral’, he added: ‘This viewpoint is not only clearly prevalent, but staggeringly arrogant and obviously wrong.’
He continued: ‘If you believe that you have been saved by grace, by a God who commands that you then show that same selfless love to others, if you believe that God created every person of equal value and dignity and in his own image, and if you believe that you are answerable to that God, then that belief will not leave you unmoved.’
