Christianity, the Religion Which Dare Not Speak Its Name in Modern Britain

The wholesale transformation of Britain’s Christian chapels into mosques has, for the last few years, been proceeding slowly, quietly, and inexorably. There is an apparent and tacit agreement that this subject is not to be spoken of out loud, and so the entire programme, part of two seldom discussed trends in society, is conducted without any publicity. Of these two trends, the first is the strain of thought exhibited by many people that declares it wise and desirable for Christianity to be dislodged from its special position in the nation’s life. The second is that Christianity’s rapid decline is matched by the corresponding rise of Islam as Britain’s most important religion. At first sight, such a claim might appear a little far fetched and outlandish, but a closer look at some recent events will soon show that it is anything but.

Let us begin by looking at what is going on in chapels in hospitals, colleges, railway stations, and football clubs. Throughout the twentieth century, hospital chapels were Christian places of worship, in which people of any religion or none at all went to find solitude and calm. Patients and their relatives, together with visitors, would go to these chapels for reflection or prayer as the mood took them. There were similar places in other institutions; all Christian in nature but open to, and used by, those of any religion. 

At the turn of the last century, however, it was seemingly decided that such places were an anachronism and so they began to be replaced by so-called ‘multi-faith prayer rooms’. At first sight, this struck many people as very right and proper. After all, why shouldn’t chapels be open to those of all faiths or none? Of course, they already were, but this at least was the rationale behind the move. Whether those who initiated this process knew how it would develop, we will never know, but the results are now there for all to see.

It was not only in hospitals that chapels were undergoing this change; the same was happening in airports, railway stations, and further education colleges. Soon, it became clear that there was more to this business than first met the eye. At the beginning of this article may be seen the sign for the chapel at London’s Heathrow Airport, or rather the ‘multi-faith prayer room’ as it now is. In November 2021, a rabbi travelling from New York landed there and decided to conduct his morning prayers in said prayer room. Upon entering the room, a uniformed airport employee told him that he would have to remove his shoes, as is the practice in Islamic mosques. When the rabbi explained that this was not part of his religion as a Jew, the man insisted, and so the rabbi left. In short, Heathrow’s ‘multi-faith’ area is not a multi-faith area at all, but devoted specifically to those who practice Islam.

The Heathrow multi-faith prayer room is not the only mosque masquerading under a new name. Many such places in other public spaces have no chairs, and those praying there are expected to use one of the prayer mats which are provided. This hardly makes for a welcoming environment for anybody other than Muslims. At Birmingham New Street railway station, the multi-faith prayer room, which is listed as a mosque on various Muslim websites in the Midlands, even has washing facilities so that Muslim visitors may conduct their ritual ablutions before prayer. 

These types of uniquely Islamic measures in our ‘multi-faith’ prayer rooms can understandably be disconcerting for members of other religions. At the Redbridge campus of New City College, which runs a network of further education colleges in east London, a Christian couple attending a training course found that there was one such space. Assuming that the room was open to those of all religions, they thought it would be nice to pray together there at lunchtime. 

Of course, it was not a multi-faith prayer room at all, but a mosque, and there was no possibility of them praying together. There were in fact two multi-faith prayer rooms; one for men and the other for women. The room for men contained no chairs, a pile of prayer-mats, an advertisement for a Muslim charity, and some material in Arabic. Unable to pray in such an area, the Christian couple went to a nearby church instead.

The mutation of chapels into mosques is one aspect of the deliberately engineered decline of Christianity. Another is the determined effort to prevent any public display of the Christian faith from being acknowledged. The uniquely familiar symbol of Christianity, instantly recognisable to anybody of any faith across millennia, is of course the cross. Yet the sight of the cross today seems to have the same lethal effect on many left-wing and progressive people as it once did upon vampires in the old Hammer horror films. They shrink away from it in fear and disgust. 

This resentment and disgust has led to the cross’ removal not only from chapels but also from any public context; it is seen as particularly offensive when worn around the necks of practising Christians. Airlines and hospitals alike have driven people from their jobs for openly displaying this symbol of faith. Sikhs may wear the Kara, a steel bangle about their wrists to indicate adherence to their religion without comment, Jews may wear skull caps, and Muslims are free to adopt the hijab. Let anybody expose a cross to public view, though, and they are likely to run into difficulty from many employers.

In 2020, 61-year-old theatre nurse Mary Onuoha was forced out of her job with Croydon University Health Services Trust in south London after complaining about the way that she had been treated for wearing a small gold cross around her neck in virtue of her Catholicism. Although every other outward sign of religious faith had been tolerated in the operating theatre, it was felt that Mary Onuoha’s cross was a danger to patients because it might harbour germs. Other staff during surgery wore lanyards around their necks and bunches of keys, but it was only the cross thought by senior staff to be a potential source of infection. An employment tribunal decided in 2021 that the nurse had been victimised and, in the words of the final judgement, “stopping Christians from displaying the cross has been a feature of wider persecution campaigns.” In other words, they felt that an outstanding nurse had been driven from her job because she insisted on proclaiming her Christian faith to the world.

There have been a number of cases similar to that of Mary Onuoha in recent years, and the message seems to be fairly clear. The outward display of the symbols of Islam or any other religion is fine, but the cross must be kept out of sight. Below may be seen a section of a leaflet about religious toleration and spiritual care produced by the Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust. Here we find a wonderfully diverse collection of religious symbols, ranging from Judaism’s Star of David to the crescent and star of Islam, from Hindu and Buddhist signs to that which is sacred to the Sikhs. There is, however, a glaring omission: the cross. Instead, in much fainter print than any of the others, is the Ichthys, which is a special sign used by some Christians to indicate their faith. This is not usually recognisable though to members of other religions and most Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs will not realise that the insignificant little symbol which looks a little like a child’s drawing of a fish is in fact meant to signify Christianity. This too is part of the same determination to avoid any obvious signs of the Christian faith appearing openly.

When viewed in conjunction with the precipitous decline in church attendance across Britain over the last 30 years or so, it is clear that the various incidents at which we have been looking suggest that Christianity is on the decline in the country. Some see this as a move towards the secularisation of Britain and think this to be a desirable trend. They feel that having Christianity as a state religion — the head of state in Britain is also the head of the Anglican Church — is needless and archaic and that separating religion from the state is a natural development in the modern world. This though is not at all what is happening. It is not that Christianity is losing ground and being replaced by humanism. Rather, as Christianity fades, another religion is waiting in the wings to take its place upon the stage. This can be seen with great clarity when we look at what is going on in schools.

The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 required every school to conduct an act of daily, collective worship “of a broadly Christian nature.” When the head of Ofsted announced in 2004 that assessing this act of collective worship would no longer form part of Ofsted’s report on a school’s standards, he said that he believed that more than three-quarters of secondary schools did not comply with the law in this respect. In other words, most schools refused to conduct a daily act of worship of a Christian nature. Fast forward a few years, and we may observe Aureus School in the Oxfordshire town of Didcot’s declaration that they would only be serving Halal meat at school dinners. According to the last census, there are 16,000 Christians in Didcot, and a mere 203 Muslims, so it is not that there is a great demand for Halal food. As stated by the school, though, they took this step to “celebrate the diversity of our country’s culture.” Of course, the preparation of Halal meat must be supervised by a Muslim cleric, and part of the procedure involves prayers being said. So, what we find is a school that has abandoned the daily act of collective worship of a broadly Christian nature to instead provide food over which Muslim prayers have been said.

The trend for schools to provide only Halal food for school pupils is now widespread, from London to Liverpool and from Yorkshire to Oxfordshire. Christian prayers before meals, in the form of the grace which was once commonly said before pupils ate, is definitely out, but Muslim prayers over the food which they eat are quite acceptable. This is a very strange state of affairs. Many people who strongly disapprove of religion being forced down people’s throats, or so they assert, are perfectly happy to watch schoolchildren and hospital patients unwittingly eat food that has been blessed by the practitioners of religion just so long as the religion in question is not Christianity. Their desire to express disapproval of religion in this case is trumped by the need to show enthusiasm for diversity and to avoid at all costs the faintest hint of Islamophobia. Mocking and deriding Christianity and opposing any visible manifestation of this traditional British faith is fine, but no right-thinking and progressive person would wish to say or do anything which might lead anybody to suppose that one is not perfectly accepting of Islam.

Many attempts have been made to suppress religion in various countries, most notably those belonging to the communist bloc before the fall of the Soviet Union, and also in modern-day China. The left-wing drive in Britain to remove the state religion from its preeminent position is qualitatively similar to such efforts, although, like them, has not wholly succeeded in its aim. Instead, the law of unintended consequences has kicked in and the removal of Christianity from public life has simply allowed another religion to move in and replace the old faith. This was not at all what was intended, but the combination of virulent opposition to organised religion, on the one hand, combined with an obsessive fear of upsetting the sensibilities of immigrants on the other, has made such a development inevitable. Conditions have thus been created that practically guarantees the rise of Islam in this country.

Simon Webb is the author of many books on social and military history. He also runs the History Debunked YouTube channel.