Bishop laments ‘silencing of religious language’

http://www.religiousintelligence.co.uk/news/?NewsID=4565

[Religious Intelligence] 16 June 2009--The "language of God" - common in public life for centuries - "is now muted, if not almost silent," in this country, according to a leading English bishop.

The lament was voiced by the Rt Rev Martin Wharton, Bishop of Newcastle, who said the mood was famously summed up by Alistair Campbell, press aide to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, with the words "We don't do God".

This meant that if a politician referred to God at all it was in a "half-embarrassed kind of way," the bishop told his diocesan synod.

Bishop Wharton said: "Religion is seen as something which may be privately engaged in - but publicly irrelevant."

Or worse, it could been seen as "dangerous, emotional, and the cause of wars and terrorism," said the 64-year-old church leader, a former Bishop of Kingston-upon-Thames.