IT WOULD have been incredibly easy for Nick Clegg to avoid outing himself as an atheist. Married to a Spanish Catholic, and with two Catholic children, he could easily have ridden on their coat-tails, alluding to his "beliefs" without ever committing himself to anything as specific as whether they involved an omnipotent deity and the need for prayer.
Many people do as much to secure a place in a faith school without the world batting an eyelid at their hypocrisy. Surely, a slight fudge would have been forgivable – what with Clegg's electoral appeal being at stake. Evasion is the politician's stoc
k-in-trade, after all. And there is a clear precedent for party leaders being vague when it comes to their religious beliefs.
Tony Blair may have finally converted to Catholicism on Friday, but throughout his time in office he kept the electorate guessing about the exact nature of his faith, insisting on his right to keep such matters private, and yet hinting at it coyly when it suited his purpose. He may, in retrospect, insist he didn't like to talk about spiritual matters in case he was branded a "nutter", but he nurtured the image of himself as a prayerful man, attending church with his family, sending his children to faith schools and allowing God to take the rap for his disastrous decision to go to war against Iraq.
On the other side of the Atlantic, George Bush – a born-again Christian – has no shame when it comes to using God to prop up his less popular policies. "I feel like God wants me to run for president," and "God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I struck them" are among his most commonly quoted remarks. But even he is cagey when it comes to the particulars, such as whether he believes the Bible should be taken literally, or if only Christians will go to heaven.
And, like Blair, he doesn't allow his religious convictions to force his hand when it comes to issues such as abortion. Gordon Brown and David Cameron, too, have perfected the art of referencing their religious backgrounds – Brown as a son of the manse with "a moral compass" and Cameron as "someone who believes in God, but doesn't go to Church as often as he should", without ever committing themselves to anything resembling a proper faith.
In the face of all this ambiguity, it was refreshing to hear Clegg give an immediate and definitive "no" when asked whether he believed in God. Refreshing, but not these days all that risky. This is not, after all, the US, where polls consistently suggest around 50% of the country wouldn't vote for a well-qualified atheist presidential candidate.
In Britain, things have changed since Neil Kinnock declared himself an atheist after becoming leader of the Labour Party and attracted scorn from the likes of Barbara Cartland, who declared a vote for him as a vote against God. Secularism is on the march: the humanist society is growing every year, nativity plays are banned in schools and poets are rewriting Christmas carols for non-believers.
It is a sign of how little religious conviction matters in a politician that what caused most of a stir was not the fact Clegg was an atheist (even the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams said it didn't matter as much as whether he was honest) but that he later appeared to back-pedal from his original comments. He qualified his position, pointing to his wife's Catholicism and insisting that despite not being an "active believer" (was his atheism now being watered down to agnosticism?), he had "enormous respect" for those with religious convictions. This upset hardline atheists, who revised their view of him from secular champion to gutless populist in the space of a few hours.
Why anyone should have expected Clegg to be more evangelical about his atheism is beyond me. He is a Liberal Democrat, after all, so all this wishy-washiness, this sitting on the religious fence, is completely consistent with his world view. Tolerance and inclusion are his watchwords. If Clegg had come over all fundamentalist – all Richard "there-is-no God, and-anyone-who-says-otherwise-is-a-retard" Dawkins – he might have won more respect from humanists, but he would clearly have been in charge of the wrong party.
In any case, what's so bad about admitting that your life is as complicated and contradictory as everyone else's; that you don't really believe in God, but you are not sure enough to close yourself off to the possibility forever; that you have married someone who does believe and are not so arrogant in your atheism as to denounce her or deny her right to her faith.
The greatest derision has been reserved for Clegg's decision to allow his children to be brought up Catholic. This has been interpreted as a sign of either weakness or hypocrisy, but could just as easily be read as humility. I can well understand why parents who don't believe in God would still want their children to be exposed to the possibility of a deity. In a secular world, it is easier to jettison religious beliefs you no longer have any use for in later life than it is to suddenly start to explore the possibility of the divine. Hearing Clegg talk about his particular brand of atheism won't make me any more likely to vote Lib Dem, but his tentative disbelief is infinitely preferable to Blair and Cameron's smugness and Brown's earnest puritanism.
The truth is I don't really care whether politicians believe in God or not, but I do require them to remain open-minded and receptive to alternative points of view. Because I can't help wondering if anyone so secure in their own beliefs that they have lost the capacity to wonder "what if?" possesses the vision, the curiosity and the imagination to govern the country effectively.
