While the Archbishop of Canterbury is making tortuous speeches which may or may not be an excoriating attack on the government and the Iraq war, the destruction of the Christian base of this country continues apace. The Chief Inspector of Schools, David Bell, has said schools should no longer be made to hold daily religious assemblies, as they are currently required to do by law. His reason is that three quarters of schools ignore this requirement.

'Mr Bell said it was difficult to justify daily religious worship in schools when society had changed so much. “I struggle, as do my inspectors and most secondary schools, with the requirement that the school day shall include an act of collective worship,” he said. “How many people in this country, other than school children, are required to attend daily worship with others in their community?” '

This follows the modern principle of government, that if enough people thumb their noses at the law the remedy is simple -- get rid of the law. This is a principle that has been used to good effect over other issues -- for example the blind eye turned to under-age sex and the promotion of drug-taking. The idea that possibly the law should be enforced rather more rigorously is considered 'authoritarian'. So the Christian nature of this country is knocked away, along with the social norms it once underpinned. The fact that schools with a religious ethos do very much better than schools without, and that as a result droves of parents fight to get their children into faith schools regardless of whether or not they themselves ever go to church, is swatted aside by our secular evangelists and cultural appeaseniks as irrelevant.

This is the way a culture ends, with a whimper as well as a terrorist bang.