EASTER is a time for love, peace, joy and the celebration of life. So naturally every year there’s a row. This Easter it’s the turn of George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, to drop the incendiary bombs. He has accused David Cameron of “aiding and abetting” the persecution of Christians in Britain.

He says: “It’s a bit rich for the Prime Minister to tell religious leaders to face down secularisation.

I like David Cameron and believe he is sincere in his desire to make Britain a generous nation where we care for one another and where people of faith may exercise their beliefs fully. But he seems to have forgotten that, in spite of his oft-repeated support for the right of Christians to wear the cross, lawyers acting for the coalition argued only months ago in the Strasbourg court that those sacked for wearing a cross against their employer’s wishes should simply get another job.”

As a priest for more than 40 years, I suppose I ought to have some sympathy with Dr Carey’s protest, and I do – up to a point. Mr Cameron’s trendy introduction of same-sex marriage amounts to a gay pride march on the lawn of Lambeth Palace, but actually no one inside the palace cares very much one way or the other. In fact, the bishops, the synod and most parish priests throughout the land are not opponents of the secular establishment but fully paid up members of it.

They have supported every innovation in “progressive” social policy since the 1960s.

The old jibe that the C of E is the Tory Party at prayer has not applied for decades. It’s more like the Liberal Party on the protest march or a shoal of hippies at a sit-in.

The new secular establishment is tolerant of every opinion – except of course those of Christians. But political correctness and “diversity”

are only the latest symptoms of the degenerative disease of secularisation which unfortunately set in a long time ago.

O come, Mullen – show a bit of balance.

Okay: the fruits of the progressive policies which we all now enjoy are a welcome loosening of the straitjacket of an outmoded religious conformism. Right on, Peter. That’s more like it. If you’d expressed views like those when you were a bit younger, you might even have been made a bishop.

The fact is that Christians and social conservatives of all religious hues must realise that the culture wars have been lost. The triumph of secularism and progressive policies is complete. Christianity is dying out everywhere.

Except of course this isn’t true. Christianity is dead on its feet only in Europe – the continent which was created by the Christian faith. In most of the rest of the world Christianity is burgeoning and there are today more Christians than ever. For example: one-and-a-quarter million Roman Catholics; 300 million more Christians in sub- Saharan Africa over the past ten years alone; millions more finding liberation from drugs, crime and prostitution in Central and South America through the Protestant Pentecostal churches; the faith is often strongest where its adherents are persecuted – throughout Africa, the Middle East and especially Pakistan where Christians are slaughtered and churches burnt to the ground every week.

Christians shouldn’t complain about persecution.

Jesus told his followers that when they are victimised, they should rejoice -– “For so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.” Christians should take that saying of Jesus at face value and remember what the great Tertullian said: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”