The highly vocal Christian lobbyists who keep screaming 'Persecution!' every time they are required to follow the same law as everyone else have given Christians a bad image. They have made them seem mean-spirited and self-righteous and petty and bigoted.

I do wonder whether there are some christians out there, perhaps a significant number, who feel somewhat conflicted in their convictions because of this. They are not bigoted and do not hold similar views to the vociferous mouthpieces like Stephen Green, but since those people get most of the coverage (not to mention the firm stances of the catholic hierarchy, the Africans in the anglican communion and the US evangelicals), there must be a certain nagging sense in which they feel they're not being proper christians by behaving in a humane, secular and civilized way. Many would indeed shake their heads or get angry at being misrepresented thus, but I suspect many others may instead feel that they're not doing it properly, and may worry that their liberal views are a personal indulgence at odds with how they should be behaving.

Furthermore, I wonder whether the figures in the survey might be ever so slightly skewed AGAINST showing christians to be as secular-minded as the rest of us because of this assumption. The respondent, presumably, knows that they are being interviewed because they claim to be a christian, so to what extent are they thinking "I should answer as a christian would answer" and having to wrestle with this widespread cultural assumption that homophobia, conservative morality, pro-church policies and the like are the natural christian things to support?