Government favours Islam over Christianity, says CoE report

A hard-hitting Church of England report is expected to accuse the Government of favouring Islam and other minority faiths while paying only 'lip service' to Christianity.

The study, published Monday, will accuse the Government of 'religious illiteracy' and call for the appointment of a minister for religion.

While praising the Conservative Party for its 'strident' plans to tackle poverty, the report will say the Government has ignored social breakdown and failed to recognise the Church's potential contribution to public affairs.

The report was commissioned from academics at the Von Huegel Institute at Cambridge University by the CoE's Bishop for Urban Life and Faith Stephen Lowe, the Bishop of Hulme, who will deliver the Church's response.

Its findings have already been challenged by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears as 'an unfair attack on the Government.'

The report - entitled Moral, But No Compass - in a clear reference to Prime Minister Gordon Brown's frequent invocation of his own 'moral compass' - is expected to say: 'We encountered on the part of the Government a significant lack of understanding, or interest in, the Church of England's current or potential contribution in the public sphere.

'Indeed we were told that Government had consciously decided to focus... almost exclusively on minority religions.'

It adds: 'The Government has focused so intensely on minority faiths that it has failed to develop a coherent evidence base for the largest religious body in the UK, the Christian church.'

The report's authors Francis Davis, Elizabeth Paulhus and Andrew Bradstock will challenge the Government to recognise the Christian churches' involvement and potential in public service reform, and call on the churches to commit to mobilise even more resources.

Ms Blears said: 'This is an unfair attack on the Government. We engage with the Church of England on a regular basis as we do with all other faiths.

'In fact we met with them only recently to discuss faith work and I met with the Archbishop of Canterbury only a few months ago when he helped us to launch our inter-faith strategy consultation.

'The Government recognises and welcomes the great contribution made by people motivated by their different faiths and our new inter-faith strategy, to be published in July, will set out further our commitments on this important agenda.

'In addition, we will be looking at the important role of faith groups, including Britain's churches, in our forthcoming White Paper on Community Empowerment."

Conservative charities spokesman Greg Clark said: 'Britain's churches are literally at the centre of their communities - they know intimately the problems people face, and have a deep commitment - and track record - of taking action to help them.

'So it is madness, as well as grossly unjust, for the Government to have this sniffy attitude towards what the churches can do for society.

'It is typical of the Government's patronising and bullying approach to voluntary groups more generally. They put them under constant pressure to operate in the Government's own preferred way. This is bitterly resented by voluntary groups, and especially so by the churches.

'In the Green Paper on Voluntary Action which David Cameron and I published this week we show how a Conservative government would back the outstanding work done by churches and other voluntary groups without expecting them to dance to the Government's tune."

Andrew Copson, director of public affairs of the British Humanist Association, said: "The Church of England is already given a prominence totally out of proportion to the low number of citizens who support it and participate in it.

'Even though fewer than a tenth of us worship in its churches on a weekly basis, it runs almost a third of England's state-funded schools, entirely at public expense, while reserving the power to select pupils and staff on religious grounds; it exercises political power through Bishops in the House of Lords and it lobbies for and frequently achieves special treatment in myriad ways.

'In a Mori poll of 2006, religious groups and leaders topped the table of domestic groups which citizens think have too much influence on Government in Britain. The Church's report is not just special pleading of the most blatant sort, it is also totally counter to public opinion.

'Far from giving this unrepresentative institution more influence in British life, the time has come to disentangle the state from the Church and make Britain a modern open society with no privilege for any one religion and all citizens being treated equally regardless of their beliefs.'