LONDON – For a nation shaped by an overtly Christian heritage, Britain has apparently become a difficult place to be overtly Christian.

The conservative press bewails a steady erosion of Christian values. A member of Parliament has called for debate on "systematic and institutional discrimination toward Christians." Even former Prime Minister Tony Blair recently let slip how aides would brusquely suppress any instinct he had to bring his faith into public view.

Now, a succession of ordinary Christians are finding this rule applies to them, too.

Earlier this month, Caroline Petrie, a nurse, was suspended for offering to pray for a patient. The case echoed another incident in which social worker Naphtali Chondol was fired for giving a Bible to a client.

Elsewhere, a teen was prohibited from wearing a chastity ring in school in a case redolent of British Airways's move to forbid a check-in worker, Nadia Eweida, from wearing a cross. A university Christian group was banned for requiring that members attest to their belief in God. The requirement was considered discriminatory.

"There's going to be lots more cases like this," says Paul Diamond, a barrister specializing in religious liberties cases who represented both Ms. Petrie and Ms. Eweida. "Christians are a soft target – it's easy to be nasty to them."

He says Christians are a victim of an overcorrection. Once, the Church of England and its mores predominated. Now, the pendulum has swung decisively in a secular direction.

"It's important that the state is neutral [but] the issue is slightly more complex because religion goes with culture and values and therefore we are saying we will have no values in the public domain," he adds.

The Christian complaint is generally twofold: that other faiths are treated more favorably and that the dilution of Christian values in a soup of secularism has eroded the core morality of the nation.

Nonsense, say secularists, who argue that Christians do not have a monopoly on morality. With church congregations generally in decline and Britain a patchwork of different faiths (there are some 2 million Muslims, for example), they argue that reining in expressions of faith are a necessary compromise in a multicultural society.

Philosopher A.C. Grayling says that ever since 9/11, a "bad-tempered quarrel" has broken out between those of Christian, Muslim, and other faiths and those who think religion has more influence on modern society than it should. He says that to avoid culture wars, the public space cannot be seen to favor one creed over another.

"It's in the interest of all religious communities that the public domain should remain neutral," Professor Grayling says.

Christians like Eweida say this is "political correctness gone mad." In her case, which she intends to appeal later this year, British Airways was allowed to decide which accessories of faith were acceptable and which were not.

The outcome? A more lenient approach to Muslims and Sikhs than toward Christians, she says.

"They deemed it mandatory for Muslims to wear hijab, but not for Christians to wear a cross," she says. "What right have they got to tell me as an individual how to manifest and proclaim my personal faith? I was brought up in Egypt, and Christians there are allowed to wear crosses. Why should I feel ashamed to hide my faith and my cross because I believe in the word of God?"

The Church of England has begun weighing in on the debate. The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, said that asking someone to leave their faith at the door of their workplace was "akin to asking them to remove their skin color before coming into the office."

Yet gloomy intimations of Christian persecution may be overblown. The church remains part of the British establishment, and enjoys formidable privileges. Britain, for example, is the only mature democracy where bishops are elevated, unelected, to a legislative chamber, the House of Lords.

The established church plays a key role in education, running thousands of schools and dictating admissions policy.

It is this privileged status of the established church that may be backfiring on individual Christians – a general wariness that the majority creed shouldn't get any more favors than it already has.

"We have an established church, and so people feel that Christianity is privileged and therefore oppressive and people see it more negatively," says Theo Hobson, a theologian. "It might be healthier if we had a secular state in which religion was more tolerated."

Christians should also be mindful of how they would feel if roles were reversed, says Simon Barrow, codirector of the theological think tank Ekklesia. How would a Christian feel if, for example, a nurse offered them an Islamic prayer?

"People are nervous about overenthusiastic public expression of belief of any kind," Mr. Barrow says. "There is a great desire for people not to tread on one another's toes."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090226/ts_csm/ocomplain;_ylt=AnUU33J8vgC1Yq3jkNm8bj07Xs8F

Note: Don't think on what is happening, but WHERE this is happening.

You miss the point.
It's not "where" it is happening because it is actually occuring all over the Christian West.

The questions you should be asking are "why" it is happening and what will be the outcome.

The answer to why is that Western governments fall over themselves not to offend their Islamic communities; often to the detriment of their own indigienous population. In a way this is understandable as the tiniest perceived slight against Islam is met by outrage or violence by those Muslims in our communities and then translated to the Islamic world as a whole and giving fuel to fundamentalism. By giving Islam what it wants, Western governments are hoping they can keep a lid on it's excesses. But the problem is that they are just creating excesses within their own populations.

The outcome is that there is now a big sceptic pimple of hatred boiling away and aimed at Islam from those populations in the West who are believe that all they are seeing is Islam ride rough shod over their own personal liberties.

The article doesn't make for happy reading for any religion.

@Bastage

I dont think Auwal has said anything wrong by asking where it is happening. Neither is there a difference between "christian west" you talked about and what he asked. The comment "you miss the point" i think is uneccessary.

christianity in the UK is now a joke.
I watched one of the big News channels (can't remember which) during the Obama Innauguration. As he ended his speech he like most americans said 'God Bless America'. 2 of the commentators and other political analysts in the studio thought it was wrong to say such. They almost made that statement the subject for discussion.

I think it is absurd that the UK built with/on christian values has opened its legs wide enough for the 'political correctness (pc)' train to go through her.