Tim Farron: Christian Canary In The Coalmine, by Rod Dreher.

Tim Farron resigned his post as leader of the UK’s Liberal Democratic party. You might say that he quit because the party took a walloping in the recent election, which it did. But Farron quit because the UK’s secular establishment hounded him constantly about his Evangelical Christian faith.

From his resignation speech:

To be a political leader – especially of a progressive, liberal party in 2017 – and to live as a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching, has felt impossible for me. …

I seem to be the subject of suspicion because of what I believe and who my faith is in.

In which case we are kidding ourselves if we think we yet live in a tolerant, liberal society.

That’s why I have chosen to step down as leader of the Liberal Democrats. …

Dreher comments:

Farron supports same-sex marriage and supports abortion rights, but that was not enough for his media inquisitors. They wanted to know if he thought those things were sinful. It wasn’t enough for him to pledge to defend gay rights and abortion rights. It wasn’t even enough for him to clarify that no, he doesn’t think that gay sex is a sin (a heterodox position for a Christian to take, but he took it.) No, Farron had to think correct thoughts, and to have thought them at all times, clearly, or be shamed and hounded out of public life. As he has been.

At least in the end, he learned that it profits a man nothing to gain the world if he loses his soul. …

PC or the highway. Tolerance for non-PC views by the media-bureaucratic-academic complex is fading fast:

Is it possible for any [US] Democrat to succeed in national party politics without being 100 percent on board with every gay rights claim, even those made at the expense of religious liberty?

If it is, it won’t be much longer. There are no restraining forces in liberal politics, or in the institutions of liberalism (media, academia, etc).

hat-tip Stephen Neil