Beliefs make a huge difference to the societies which hold them. Whatever you think about faith, it is obvious that the Christian and Muslim worlds are deeply different from each other in law, custom and social fabric.
In Asia, the divides between Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam are just as striking. And where religion was suppressed or persecuted, as it was in the Soviet Empire, the society that had previously existed was swept away by new rules and priorities which hurt many.
This United Kingdom has been Christian for well over a thousand years. This has not just formed our ideas of right and wrong – although it has.
It has decided the shapes of our families. It has fashioned the language we speak, through its scriptures and prayers. It has helped to define our landscape, our music, our literature and our architecture.
Perhaps most of all, it has moulded our laws and government.
The idea that God is above all human authority led to the belief that law stands above political power – and so helped create the great binding contracts which assure our freedom, from the Magna Carta to modern ideas of human rights, which embody largely Christian principles.
In the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey, Christian scriptures are displayed on the walls and above the main street entrance. A statue of Christ stands high above the door of the Royal Courts of Justice.
As for the Houses of Parliament, they are filled with Christian imagery, including murals in the Central Lobby of the patron saints of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
In a tradition dating back to the 16th-century, each Commons sitting starts with private prayers read by the Speaker’s Chaplain
Starting the day with private prayers is a parliamentary tradition dating back to 1558
The quarter-hour chimes of Big Ben are based on the air from Handel’s Messiah, ‘I know that My Redeemer Liveth’ – itself a quotation from the Bible.
And anyone who doubts the Christian roots of our constitution could hardly have missed their importance in the 2023 Coronation of King Charles III. The King himself also referred directly to the Christian Gospels in his recent Christmas broadcast.
Whether you like this aspect of our country or not, nobody can deny that it is there, and that it would make a huge difference if we were to abandon it. This is not just a matter of taste or preference. It is a major political, social and moral issue.
But now we learn that some new Labour MPs wish to dispense with the prayers which, each day, begin the sessions of the House of Commons. They say the prayers are ‘archaic’. By this we can guess that they mean they do not like them.
People in general do rather like old things, as the enormous number of visitors to museums and National Trust properties demonstrates – likewise, the popularity of our most ancient towns with tourists. Why would these MPs care enough to get rid of this small tribute to history and faith?
The prayers are anything but compulsory. No MP has to attend them. The requirement for MPs to take religious oaths was dropped long ago.
But the Commons’ prayers connect the Parliament of today with a great procession emerging from this country’s remote past: a procession towards liberty under the law, freedom of speech and thought, and limited government.
Perhaps above all, they remind today’s politicians that they too will one day be buried under thick layers of history, and that they are bound and limited by traditions which are often wiser than they first appear.
Leave these prayers alone. Very probably, as these new MPs learn the well-worn ways of Westminster, some of them will come to respect and value what they now wish to remove.