An important conference ...

...organised by Aid to the Church in Need, on the subject of religious freedom. Among the speakers was the excellent Ann Widdecombe,and you can listen to her speech here.

For some years, as a Catholic journalist, I was writing about the position of Christians in the USSR,the Baltic states and in Eastern Europe, noting their struggles in the confusing network of laws that restricted religious freedom in all sorts of ways. This was the late 1970s and early 80s, with wrangling about children having the right to attend religious education classes, and people struggling to get jobs or degrees once it became known that they were regular churchgoers or had written religious poetry or contributed to magazines featuring essays on religious themes...and it felt somehow safe, writing about it all in London, secure in the knowledge that one was British and away from all that sort of thing...

...And now, in a most uncomfortable way, I'm reading about Christians in Britain getting into trouble at work because they have written in support of Christian marriage, and Christian sexual morality.