HAVE you noted yet the worm in our seasonal Christian bud? Whenever David Cameron is seen across media channels calling for a return to traditional Christian values, he is followed by an atheist proclaiming that since there is no God there is no Christian tradition.

I have no problem with the views of Richard Dawkins and his atheist cronies. What sticks in my craw is that political correctness has advanced to the point where no Christian can mention his or her beliefs without an atheist popping up with a denial.

We’ve been a Christian country since (forgive the pedantry) Alban, our first British martyr, was slaughtered by our Roman masters in about 304AD, near the town today known as St Albans. Other chaps like David, Patrick and Ninian preached sporadically across our islands until the first official Christian inroad came with Augustine’s landing in Kent in 597.

We remain a Christian country. Elizabeth II heads the established Church of England. The Almighty is invoked at coronations and humble baptisms alike. Pregnant brides still waddle to churches they’ve not visited since their own christenings because they have a gut feeling that keeping in with the Man Above can’t be a bad thing, can it?

So why, over the last few years, have we allowed such credence to be given to atheists? We know their views. We know they ridicule men and women of faith, any faith. If they are, indeed, as worried by us, and for us, as they allege, then they are saints in the making, bursting with love and fuelled by a desire to show us the folly of our ways.

In all honesty, though, they disguise this charity well. They carp. They deride the faithful as simpletons.

Which is odd. Because we couldn’t live without varying types of faith.

I have visited neither the North Pole nor Australia but I believe these areas exist because I’ve seen the photographs and watched the television programmes. I have sufficient faith in these sources to believe these lands exist.

“Ah,” say the atheists, “But there’s no such proof there is a God.”