Do you share my values? Do I share yours? You might take one look at my picture and say “definitely not!”. But I hope you might at least leave the possibility open that if we had a chat over a cuppa or a pint, we might find some shared belief, even if were to agree to disagree.

Last week in this column, the Reverend Jane Sherwood wrote eloquently about David Cameron’s Easter statement about Britain being a Christian country.

I must admit to reacting cynically to his remark at first, as did a fair few other Christians, sharing the feeling of one’s faith being used for political leverage.

And yet, did Cameron not have a point?

The response by members of the British Humanist Association was surprisingly lightweight - more of a pantomime “oh no it isn’t!” than a reasoned engagement. What then followed were some more thoughtful takes on the issue: former archbishop Rowan Williams speaking of Britain as “post-Christian” and a number of leaders of other faiths? Hindu, Jewish, Muslim? speaking about how they appreciate the role that Christianity has played in giving Britain an ethic of respect and hospitality, in which other religions can flourish.

For the first four centuries of Christianity, the faith was persecuted and misunderstood by the establishment, with martyrs following in the footsteps of Jesus. Then came the sea change of toleration and suddenly the establishment of Christianity throughout the Roman world and beyond.

This new state of Christendom perturbed some old Christians of the time. We have eyewitness accounts of how many felt uncomfortable with the transformation of this or that palace from a place where Christians were tortured and killed to becoming a church.

Did the church win control of the state, or was it the other way round? I think it is fair to talk of our age as ‘post-Christendom’: the faith is still strong (and faith is perhaps best not measured by census), yet there is no longer a sense of church and state forming a homogeneous unity, and quite rightly so. Much of what goes by the label of “secular” actually is the fruit of Christian action to untie the chains of Christendom.

The Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829, which allowed Catholics to become MPs, is the milestone of Britain as a secular society, and rather than casting out religion, it enabled greater freedom of religion. Thus, the roots of our secular society have their beginnings in Christian diversity.

Just over 100 years ago, Émile Durkheim published The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Against popular assumption, he did not think that religion was all about personal beliefs, but about shared values.

He saw that religion played a vital role in holding a society together.

Together with this, he reinterpreted the concept of “the sacred” as that which brings out our deepest emotions, morality and conviction. I love the idea that religion is not mine or yours, but always has to be something that happens between people, and the sacred is something we might encounter in an ordinary setting tomorrow.

Perhaps, in the past, it would have been easier to say that this is a Christian country.

Yet, in a democratic society, our shared values are the distillation of millions of individual voices.

Our democracy is certainly not perfect: wealth and power give one a louder voice, and many are so marginalised that they feel unable to contribute.

Jesus said: “My kingdom is not of this world.” As a Christian, I do not want to stick a flag in Britain and claim it as a Christian country (I already believe the “whole world’s in his hands”) because it is not about the label, but about those values that we share together.