Just before Christmas, the new leader of Britain’s Liberal Democratic Party, Nick Clegg, caused a minor stir by confessing he did not believe in God. Though Britain is generally reckoned to be an increasingly secular society, Clegg soon discovered that his frankness was proving more controversial than he might have wished. Before long he felt obliged to issue a second statement affirming that he himself is married to a Catholic and that he would hate to be thought to have a closed mind where religious belief is concerned.

If anything, Britain’s former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has had to contend with the opposite problem, being commonly regarded not as too little of a believer but as altogether too much of one. Blair’s long-anticipated conversion from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in the run-up to Christmas may have grabbed the headlines but has hardly helped to restore his battered moral standing. Indeed, many are appalled, if not nauseated, that he should be flaunting his holiness when he was responsible for committing Britain to a war of aggression that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people — deaths for which he has yet to display the least public regret, let alone contrition. In truth, Britain is a place where loud declarations of belief (or the lack of it) are felt to be somehow unseemly. In matters of religious faith, as in much else, the old country which has made a fetish of obfuscation prefers to keep things vague, indistinct, private. It is the legacy perhaps of the bitter centuries during which for the inhabitants of what became the United Kingdom the issue of religion was inflammatory in the extreme. From the time of the Reformation in the 16th century when under King Henry V111 England broke away from Roman Catholicism and established the Church of England, to be an English Catholic was to be seen as a potentially dangerous subversive, an enemy within, and the fear, which was by no means without justification, that Catholic Europe might conspire with indigenous Catholics to reclaim England as a Catholic country became endemic.

In the 17th century, the conflict between English Protestantism and Catholicism led to regicide and a bloody civil war. Such was the suspicion in which Catholicism was held that its adherents were encumbered by civil disabilities until 1829. The vast numbers of Protestant Britons who in earlier times viewed Catholicism with alarm and distaste, associating it with deceit, corruption and priestly mumbo-jumbo, would be horrified that latter-day Britain has not only been led by a prospective Catholic convert but is now — thanks in some measure to great numbers of Polish immigrants — home to more practicing Roman Catholics than it is Anglicans. Alert to national sensitivities, Blair himself grasped that for the prime minister of Britain to parade his religious convictions was ill-advised — which was why, during his time in office, he played down his own religiosity, acknowledging that he was a devout Christian but leaving people to reach whatever conclusions they wished about the precise character of his religious convictions. When he was quizzed by the BBC presenter Jeremy Paxman as to whether he and Bush had prayed together prior to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, Blair was quick to pour scorn on the very idea, though his disclaimer was less than convincing. If he was ever tempted to disclose the depth of his Christian commitment, he was promptly restrained by his watchful adieutant, the New Labour director of communications, Alastair Campbell, who famously announced that the Blair government did not ‘do God’.

Once out of office, however, and no longer needing to bother about expedient electoral calculations, it was to be expected that Blair would sooner or later take the step that he had long been rumored to be contemplating: Blair’s wife, Cherie, and his children are after all Roman Catholics, and for many years he has been openly attending Catholic mass with his family while also, rather more discreetly, often attending mass and improperly receiving Holy Communion by himself. It was likewise to be expected that this most narcissistic of public figures would make sure that his conversion was carefully choreographed. That it took place at a time of year which is often a dead time for news and when it was guaranteed to generate the maximum possible coverage was entirely in keeping with Blair’s compulsive exhibitionism.

Widely seen as a confidence trickster who has lied and deceived with complete impunity, Blair has done much to discredit the whole business of politics. It seems safe to say that he is now making no small contribution to discrediting Roman Catholicism, if not Christianity in general — though the Catholic Church has not distinguished itself either by the blatancy with which it has sought to exploit the massive publicity that has attended the conversion of one of the world’s most prominent statesmen. Indeed, many are bound to suspect that the only thing in which Tony Blair can truly be said to believe is Tony Blair. The circumstances of his conversion — the fact that it took place in the full glare of the international media and was heralded last summer by a high profile audience with Pope Benedict XVI — have underlined how utterly devoid he is of that pre-eminent spiritual quality, humility. It seems especially fitting that he has become a convert to a brand of Christianity so much identified with show, with gaudy ritual and theatricality. The impression is that for Blair being religious is an aspect of celebrity culture. It is striking that he seems to have had no qualms whatsoever about joining a church that is dogmatically opposed to many things — abortion, embryonic stem cell research, civil partnerships between gay couples — that as a crowd-pleasing ‘progressive’ politician he seemed happy to endorse.

Blair’s indulgent biographer Anthony Seldon has ominously remarked that we have not heard the last of religion and Blair. This year the war-monger who has seemed to be reviving the Christian crusades of yore and whose main preoccupations appear to be fame and money will launch his Interfaith Foundation, with the objective of encouraging dialogue between the world’s religions. The more cynical may feel that there is no limit to Blair’s humbug. They may feel, too, that the chief motive for his conversion is that Roman Catholicism sets special store by the confession and forgiveness of sin, enabling even mass murderers to believe that they can be absolved of their crimes.

— Neil Berry is a freelance journalist living in London. In 2002, he published a book, Articles of Faith: the Story of British Intellectual Journalism.