Archbishop Vincent Nichols has now given his seal of approval to David Cameron’s recent attempt to get the Christian vote onside. So, here is a question: do you really think the archbishop should have done that? Or are you, like me, more than a little sceptical about the sincerity of Mr Cameron’s recent words? Pumping his fist in the air, apparently, he said: “I think there's something of a [Christian] fightback going on, and we should welcome that. The values of the Bible – the values of Christianity – are the values that we need.” He referred to former Archbishop George Carey’s warning that Christians face gradual marginalisation, which he uttered after Bideford town council had been banned by a court order from opening its proceedings with prayer. Referring to this case, Mr Cameron pointed out that the Government had responded by amending the law. He also indicated, very interestingly, that if necessary, the law might be changed to allow Christians to wear the cross and crucifix at work. Does this mean that he is in the process of executing a new U-turn, having given the strong impression that his Government was becoming, in the words of the splendidly named Daily Mail columnist Alexander Boot, “the most aggressively atheistic government in our history”? I hope so, of course: but if so, he had better begin by telling the Home Office to stop opposing the BA check-in clerk Nadia Eweida and the nurse Shirley Chaplin who have gone together to the European Court of Human Rights to claim that they were discriminated against when their employers barred them from wearing the cross. Cameron says that “if the ECHR does uphold the ban we will consider what further action we must take. We could potentially change the law, though our view is that the existing Equality Act gives people the right already.” Well, if he really thinks that, why are Government lawyers opposing these women in Strasbourg? Is this a case of the right hand (Tory) not knowing what the left hand (Lib Dem) is doing? Or is he speaking with forked tongue? Sorry, I don’t buy this great pro-Christian declaration of the Prime Minister’s. Someone compared it last week with George Galloway’s successful attempt in Bradford to exploit the Muslim vote by strongly implying that he was himself a secret Muslim. One of his leaflets began thus: “God KNOWS who is a Muslim. And he KNOWS who is not. Instinctively, so do you. Let me point out to all the Muslim brothers and sisters what I stand for.” This really does look to me like Cameron pointing out to all the Christian brothers and sisters what he stands for: just the same as them, really. The difference is that Galloway got away with it. It seems to me that Christians have to make sure that Cameron doesn’t. If he allows us to wear the cross in public, that’s fine. But the institution of marriage is entirely another matter, and it’s on a quite different level of importance. He recently told church representatives gathered at Number 10: “I hope we won't fall out too much over gay marriage. There'll be some strong arguments and some strong words.” Well indeed there will. This is where it matters. Throwing us a little tidbit here and there is not, I sincerely trust, going to buy us off, despite Archbishop Nichols’s welcome for Cameron’s smooth overtures. I prefer the stance of another bishop, Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury, who got much nearer to the root of the matter when he said at his Chrism Mass last week that “The laity [that’s us] … have an enormous task of transforming a society marked by a ‘dictatorship of relativism’, of which the attempt by the Government to redefine marriage was one of the latest signs.” This was, of course, a reference to the former Cardinal Ratzinger’s famous last sermon before he was elected Pope, the following extract from which, with all due humility, I diffidently suggest to Archbishop Nichols as being a passage he might well with profit read, mark, learn and inwardly digest: