Historian Philip Jenkins tells a perceptive parable about militant secularist Britain today

As an ancient Christian minority in a mainly Muslim society, Coptic Christians have often been persecuted and marginalized.

Even so, Coptic believer Nadia Eweida was startled at the blatant discrimination she encountered in her job at the national airline. While Muslim women around her freely wore headscarves to fulfill their religious obligation, she was forbidden to wear a cross openly while working.  Even Jews and Sikhs received more consideration: the policy was directed solely and explicitly towards Christians.  When Nadia complained, political authorities and news media were grossly unsympathetic.

We might wonder why Nadia did not simply give up the unequal struggle, and move to a country like Great Britain, where Christianity is not just tolerated but which actually has an established national church.  Why would she continue to tolerate the systematic injustice of an aggressive Islamist regime . . . 

Oh wait, my mistake.  Is my face red!

It turns out that although Nadia Eweida really is a Coptic Christian, she was living in England at the time, rather than Egypt, and that her job was with British Airways, at Heathrow.  It was her British employers who concluded that public expressions of Christianity were unacceptable, in a land where the Queen is head of state, and the Supreme Governor of the Church by law established.  British government lawyers defended that situation before a European court.  One suggested that if Christians did not like the situation, they should find other employment.  And why so much fuss about the cross, they objected?  Wearing it is not an actual requirement of the faith, as opposed to an individual whim, so you can’t insist on any right to do so.

. . . in contemporary Britain, aggressive secularism on a wide variety of fronts is making life very difficult for conservative or traditional-minded Christians. Notionally, such an anti-religious campaign should be targeting all supernaturally-based faiths equally, but British secularism is accompanied by a multi-cultural principle that acknowledges some religious expressions as legitimate manifestations.  Hence the tolerance for Muslim headscarves or Sikh turbans in the workplace.

Unfortunately, that respect does not extend to the beliefs or practices of Christians.

Read the whole article here.  It’s well worth a few minutes of your time.