The Fallacy of Private Religion

BETHEL MCGREW JULY 9, 2025

Catholic Twitter recently enjoyed a rare moment of unity when Labour MP Chris Coghlan used the platform to announce his own excommunication. The politician had been warned by his priest, Fr. Ian Vane, that a vote in favor of the U.K.’s assisted suicide bill would remove him from a state of grace in the eyes of the Church. Coghlan ignored the warning, and Fr. Vane accordingly denied him the sacraments. The priest rebuked Coghlan by name before his congregation, which provoked this much more public counter-announcement. At the top of Coghlan’s mind (apparently much higher than any thoughts of self-examination or repentance) was the fear that Fr. Vane would no longer sign off on his children’s Catholic education. But he wished to assure everyone that “My private religion will continue to have zero direct relevance to my work as an MP representing all my constituents without fear or favour.” 

If Coghlan was expecting sympathy from the public, he was sorely disappointed, though it appears his bishop has gone into damage control mode. Not much has changed since 2014, when the English and Welsh bishops’ conference scrambled to reassure parliamentarians that there were no plans to deny the Eucharist to any MP voting in favor of same-sex “marriage.” In an ideal Britain where the Church had its house in order, Fr. Vane’s decision wouldn’t have made news. 

What does “private religion” consists of in Coghlan’s mind? Clearly it does not extend to the defense of such complex doctrines as “Don’t poison the terminally ill.” Coghlan also chose to abstain from voting altogether on a bill legalizing abortion up to birth, which was apparently just too knotty for him to work out a firm position either way. “Religion,” for Coghlan, appears to be little more than aesthetic window dressing around his true identity: a politician who tells people exactly what they want to hear.

But this is perfectly consistent with liberal individualism, which, as Conservative MP Danny Kruger has observed, is now England’s de facto “governing faith.” Kruger provides an apt contrasting case study with Coghlan, as an adult convert to evangelical Christianity whose “private religion” very much has “direct relevance” to his work. From the beginning of his career, which began only after years spent running a charity for ex-prisoners, Kruger accepted matter-of-factly that he would be “unfashionable.” He has even faced public ridicule for being at odds with his own mother, Great British Baking Show judge Dame Prue Leith, on assisted suicide. Such is the price of carrying a fully integrated faith into the public square.

Coghlan’s hackneyed relegation of religion to the “private” sphere implies that religion is fundamentally irrational, its moral strictures purely arbitrary. If a Christian MP like Kruger takes a stand against abortion or assisted suicide, it is presumed that he has allowed his faith to blind his reason. Politicians like him are thus placed under pressure to “come out” and admit this, as if it constitutes a damning conflict of interest. But as Kruger wrote in an eloquent short reflection for the Spectator, the reasons for his pro-life stance are, as it were, open-access. It’s not difficult to form a natural law argument against euthanasia, and Christians shouldn’t make it so by causing the good sort of atheist humanist to second-guess himself. And indeed, some atheists have ironically seen the argument with clearer eyes even than some faithless clerics.

But what is epistemically open to the atheist may still depend on theism for its ontological grounding. And when that religious foundation is removed from under a society, abandoned even by its men of the cloth, the house collapses. Hence, Kruger’s warning about what is being irrevocably lost as England wanders ever further from its Christian mooring posts. It is possible for someone of no faith to swim against the current and choose life, but it requires levels of toughness and intellectual integrity that are in scant supply, as Coghlan’s case illustrates. When liberal individualism becomes the state religion, few people will be motivated to defect unless they can link arms with a large body of fellow defectors. This was why Michel Houellebecq found himself almost exclusively in the company of Christians when he made his own iconoclastic case against euthanasia. There is only one Michel Houellebecq, but there are many Christians.

Siding with Coghlan’s priest, Melanie McDonagh writes that “any conscientious individual” could have pushed back against the suicide bill “on prudent and rational grounds, without any spiritual motivation whatever, unless we are to assume that concern for vulnerable people is a Christian prerogative.” It may not be a Christian prerogative, but it is often the purview of Christians in practice. The uncomfortable question asks itself: Why? Apparently not a question that will trouble the bureaucrats potentially in charge of shutting down Britain’s Catholic hospitals that defy the secular state’s holy writ. 

“Here is our enemy,” Kruger writes in an echo of Evelyn Waugh, “all disguise cast off.” Here now is the politics of “progress” come to full fruition. Against this new creed, only the old creed will suffice.