Nadia Eweida was on Radio 4 a few minutes ago. Very articulate and sensible-sounding. Followed by an interview with Bishop Pete Broadbent , who did rather well I think and correctly identified the problem as incompetent and poorly-thought out secularism rather than any desire by BA to do down Christianity. And then a Muslim woman whose name I missed, and the philosopher Anthony Grayling (who works at the same college as me) holding up the secularist end. All the speakers seemed deep down inside to disagree with British Airways and agree with Mrs Eweida in her desire to wear a cross. Even Dr.Grayling, though he couldn't quite bring himself to say so. He correctly identified the wearing of a cross with political speech, pointed out that we do ban some political displays, and couldn't quite bring himself to say that this little cross went that far.
Her argument is exactly about visibility. Its not that she has some superstitious or sentimental need to wear a cross, or that she is a member of some sect that tells her to wear a cross. She explicitly wants to find a way to be known in public as a Christian, and chooses to use a cross to do that. Or that's what she said on the radio tonight anyway. A Sikh man who wears a turban and a long beard (and most don't) or a Muslim woman who covers her face (and in Britain at any rate most don't) is publicly marking themselves as a Sikh or a Muslim. She wants to be known as a Christian just as a Muslim woman has a way to be known in public as a Muslim. So its a matter of freedom of speech and equality.
But her employers can't handle that.
The contemporary secular hegemony looks on religion as a private choice, a matter of fashion, or as something cultural. The overwhelming majority of politicians and journalists active in Britain today, even - especially - on the Right, subscribe more or less unknowingly to a progressivist Whig view of history.
That is why they can talk such nonsense about Islam being "pre-enlightenment" or "not having been through a Reformation" or needing to "modernise" as if the historical trajectory of Western European Christianity was somehow normative, and all other cultures and religions need to follow in its tracks.
The secular nation state is seen as normal, desirable, modern, advanced, progressive. Grown up. Adult. Muslims, especially women, are imagined as constrained by traditional culture. They are old-fashioned. They have funny eating habits or wear odd clothes because they are expected to by their "culture" - it is nothing to do with their choices or any rational belief in a God who is external to their culture. One day they will grow out of it.
Cultures are seen as mutually exclusive things which explain all sorts of deviant behaviour. This deviancy can be tolerated precisely because it is "cultural", quaint, specific to one group. It is in the long run non-threatening because it will inevitably be replaced by standard behaviour. Even if it can be disconcerting or threatening or destructive in the short term or on a local or individual scale such religious weirdness from the backward castes (Muslims, Africans, Poles, Irish) will in the end will be replaced by our by advanced, secular, modern, serious, grown-up culture.
That is the Free Market, liberal capitalism, secularism, and the nation state. Which in fact isn't really a culture at all, but is beyond culture, because it is seen as natural, inevitable. You Can't Buck The Market. Its a force of nature, more than that, a universal law. It isn't just a human arrangement, a way people choose to behave, as if they could choose to behave differently. Here, at the End of History, we've got beyond all those merely contingent human arrangements.
Public expressions of Christianity no longer fit into that model. Its OK for black people and little old ladies, and the Irish, and red-necks, and Fundamentalists, and Southern-state Americans. But well-educated white middle-class European people are meant to have outgrown it. They are welcome to be Christians of course (or Buddhists, or Satanists, or neo-Pagans, or anything else) as long as they keep it is private. Sneaking off to a lunchtime Mass in a quiet church is great. Standing in Oxford Street trying to preach to the people isn't.
The argument is not about wearing a cross. It is about being known as a Christian in public. Its about being a Christian at work, being a Christian and an employee at the same time. Hobbyist religion is fine - incarnational religion is not.