The Archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster are backing a new think tank to be launched tomorrow that will campaign for greater recognition of the role of religion in public life.

Dr Rowan Williams and the Roman Catholic Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor are expected to make the case for religiously-inspired activity in the public sphere in a report to be published by the new religious policy organisation, Theos, named after the Greek word for God.

The report, Doing God: A Future for Faith in the Public Square, by Nick Spencer, a researcher and writer on trends in faith, church and society, takes its title from the comment by Tony Blair’s former press officer, Alistair Campbell: “We don’t do God.”

Spencer argues in the report that in spite of the desires of the secularists to marginalise religion, it is not possible to take faith out of the public space.

He predicts that faith will in future play an increasingly significant role in public life. He says this will go beyond the obvious, such as the rise of radical Islam, and will take in the return of civil society, the pursuit of happiness and the politics of identity.

This report argues that that society can only flourish if faith is also given the space to do so.

Canon Lucy Winkett, of St Paul’s cathedral, said that Christianity today often finds itself on the back foot, defending what is caricatured as an infantile reliance on the supernatural.

“While I can’t imagine a return to the fourth century, where every market trader was arguing about the doctrine of the Trinity, I do think that what some sociologists are calling the de-secularisation of society is a trend we could spend time understanding.”

Writing on the Theos website, she said that secularism was in fact Christianity’s gift to the world because it created a “public space” in which political authorities were respected but challenged.

“Secularism in its infancy was not theophobic, as some modern secular interpretations are. On the contrary, it was a Christian understanding of dual citizenship: citizenship of this world and of the next. It is from this perspective, the perspective of eternity, that Christians comment, argue, and engage in public debate.”

She said that she hopes the new think tank will keep people talking to each other. “It seems, whatever the gloomy statistics of organised religion, most of us deep down, still do God.”

Dr James Hanvey, of the Heythrop Institute for Religion, Ethics and Public Life, said: “Too often our society thinks of religion as either a purely private matter or something dangerous and irrational in the public space. In marginalising religious vision and energy secular society impoverishes its own resources and diminishes the potential religion has for contributing to the common good of all citizens with compassion, insight and wisdom.”

The launch of the new body comes after controversy in recent weeks over faith schools and the popularity of militant atheist Richard Dawkins, the Oxford University professor whose book The God Delusion has been a best-seller.

The Government indicated last week that schools in England will have a duty to promote “community cohesion” following its U-turn over plans to force faith schools to accept more pupils from non-religious backgrounds.

Education Secretary Alan Johnson said there had not been “sufficient consensus” over the move to give councils the power to require new faith schools to accept up to a quarter of pupils from other faiths, or none.

Director of Theos, Paul Woolley, said the overall aim is to put God “back” into the public domain.

But Terry Sanderson, vice president of the National Secular Society, claimed religious engagement “in the public square” was “all-too-often divisive and discriminatory.”

He said: “Atheists or secularists may ask questions that archbishops would prefer not to hear, but religious intolerance in Britain, especially over freedom of speech, comes almost exclusively from Christian evangelicals and minority faiths. The more Britain becomes a society in which competing religions jostle for power and religious observance continues to decline, the greater the case for a secular society where everyone is treated equally, regardless of religion or none - especially by the State.”

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