Jesus's most prominent opponents, the Pharisees, spent a great deal of time and energy telling their contemporaries who was and who was not a true Israelite.

Working on the Sabbath? You're not in. Mixing with the unclean? You're out. Not tithing your dill and cumin? You fail. Jesus himself was repeatedly faced with the same accusation. He couldn't possibly be a real Israelite, let alone a true prophet. Just look at what he did.
There is a pleasing irony, in the light of this, that the recent story about how many real Christians there are in Britain should emanate from Professor Richard Dawkins.

According to new research, commissioned by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and conducted by Ipsos/ MORI, a lot of nominal Christians in Britain are, well, nominal. Despite the fact that 72 per centof people ticked "Christian" in the 2001 census, only 54 per cent did in the Dawkins survey, and only 28 per cent of those did so "because they believe in the teachings of Christianity".

In actual fact, even seasoned religion watchers have been surprised by some of the results of the survey - not by how low they are but how high. Is it really the case that 44 per cent of "census Christians" believe that Jesus was "the Son of God, the Saviour of Mankind"? Or that 71 per cent think he "came back to life"? Or that nearly a third believes he was physically resurrected? Or that two-thirds think that the Bible is "a perfect" or at least "the best" guide to morality we have today? I would not have imagined the figures were so high.

The precise details of the survey aside, saying who is and who is not "really" Christian is a parlous business. Church history is littered with the corpses of those who weren't really Christian, at least according to others who judged them so. Passing judgement on another's religion is hazardous.

The Dawkins survey places great weight on what people believe and practise, over and above how they self-identify. He rightly implies that people who don't know much, believe much or do much in the name of their religion aren't really very religious (although the exact number who are so totally disengaged is very small).

Yet how you choose to identify yourself does matter. Several years ago I conducted some in-depth interviews with groups of people all of whom would have fallen into Dawkins's "not real" category. They were vague about their beliefs, never went to church and knew precious little about Christianity. Half, however, were census Christians and half were not.

The difference was not only noticeable but visceral. The census Christians were generally sympathetic and supportive of Christianity, in particular its role in moral formation and in public life, whereas the others were hostile to the point of being venomous. What you called yourself clearly did make a difference.

We would all do well to remember this when we feel like making windows into people's souls. Questions of whether someone is truly Christian, or Muslim, or Hindu, or, for that matter, secularist or humanist are rarely straightforward and to categorise the world into those who are the real deal and those who are not is to do a disservice to the sheer messiness of human nature.

Nick Spencer is research director at Theos, the theology thinktank.

www.newstatesman.com - Rush to judgement

If you're struggling to let that special someone know how you feel this Valentine's Day, look no further than these cards from illustrator Ben Kling. You can see more of his Dictator Valentine's here.

www.newstatesman.com - Love on the left

1. Moody's puts Britain on negative watch: this will strengthen George Osborne

The key point is that voters trust George Osborne more than they trust Ed Balls, says the Telegraph's Daniel Knowles.

2. How Obama's new budget fits into the UK debate

Coffee House's Jonathan Jones looks at where Obama now stands on deficit reduction, spending cuts, and debt.

3. Lib Dems go after high-earners' pensions

The FT's Kiran Stacey reports on how the Lib Dems are seeking to fund an accelerated increase in the personal allowance.

4. Richard Dawkins' MORI poll on religion

Over at UK Polling Report, Anthony Wells points out the difficulty of saying anything about ill-defined populations.

5. "Drop the Health Bill" e-petition gains 12,000 signatures in one day

Political Scrapbook notes that Ed Miliband's team have used Twitter to help this e-petition gain traction.

www.newstatesman.com - Web Only: the best of the blogs

While Tom Watson has urged Labour to endorse an expansion of Freedom of Information in its next manifesto, the government is heading in the opposite direction.

In a submission to the Commons justice committee, the Ministry of Justice has floated the idea of charging people for FoI requests. It's an odd move given the coalition's apparent commitment to open data and its ambition to be the "most transparent government in the world".

Andy Slaughter, the shadow justice minister, has neatly dubbed it a "a tax on transparency".

He commented:

It's alarming that this Tory-led government is looking at introducing a charge for submitting Freedom of Information requests. Labour introduced Freedom of Information legislation as a means of opening up the public sector and improving transparency in government. A charge payable for each freedom of information request is nothing less than a tax on transparency.

Freedom of Information is a step towards healthy governance. It permits scrutiny of those in power in central and local government and devolved administrations. Introducing a charge is a potential backward step, and will unravel Labour's drive to open up the public sector to wider scrutiny.

Then again, given that Tony Blair, the man George Osborne refers to as "the master", named the FoI act as one of his biggest regrets in A Journey, perhaps it's no surprise that his "heirs" are seeking to water it down.

www.newstatesman.com - Coalition considers charging for FoI requests

As expected, inflation has fallen to its lowest level for more than a year after the VAT rise was stripped out of the calculation. The RPI rate fell 0.9 per cent to 3.9 per cent and the CPI rate fell 0.6 per cent to 3.6 per cent (see graph).

The latter is still significantly above the Bank of England target rate of 2 per cent, so Mervyn King has had to write George Osborne a decidedly unromantic letter. But even with another £50bn of quantitative easing, it looks likely that inflation will be back on target by the end of this year as commodity prices ease and wage growth remains low.

Indeed, some on Threadneedle Street believe that further QE is essential to avoid a Japanese-style deflation spiral. Since many shops didn't pass on the VAT increase until the end of last year's January sales, there should be another steep fall in February.

For David Cameron and George Osborne, who describe themselves as fiscal conservatives but monetary activists, the fall in inflation is politically useful. It strengthens the case for further monetary easing, in the form of more QE and sustained low interest rates, to stimulate the economy in the absence of higher government spending.

www.newstatesman.com - Chart of the day: inflation plummets

Hat-tip: Guido Fawkes

www.newstatesman.com - Video: a love song for Sarah Teather

So much for George Osborne's claim that the UK is a "safe haven". Moody's decision to place Britain's AAA credit rating on "negative" watch explodes the Chancellor's delusions. There is now roughly a 30 per cent chance that the UK's credit rating will be downgraded in the next 18 months. Given that Osborne chose to make our credit rating the ultimate metric of economic stability, this is, to put it mildly, politically awkward for him.

Just ten weeks ago, in his autumn statement, while announcing that the UK would borrow £158bn more than forecast a year ago, Osborne boasted that "we are the only major western country which has had its credit rating improve" (i.e. come off negative outlook). He said:

Last April, the absence of a credible deficit plan meant our country's credit rating was on negative outlook and our market interest rates were higher than Italy's.

By his own logic, therefore, his deficit plan is no longer credible. When Britain was first put on negative outlook by Standard & Poor's (S&P) in May 2009, Osborne declared:

It's now clear that Britain's economic reputation is on the line at the next general election, another reason for bringing the date forward and having that election now ... For the first time since these ratings began in 1978, the outlook for British debt has been downgraded from stable to negative.

And when the UK was taken off negative watch by S&P in October 2010, he boasted of "a big vote of confidence in the UK, and a vote of confidence in the coalition government's economic policies".

The Chancellor has been hoisted with his own petard.

The economic consequences of a downgrade need not be disastrous. France and the US have seen little rise in their borrowing costs since losing their AAA ratings. Indeed, France has just held its most successful bond auction for some time. But politically speaking, this could not be more uncomfortable for Osborne.

Yet if Moody's decision is awkward for the coalition, it offers scant comfort for Labour. Although the agency echoes Ed Balls's concerns about the lack of growth in the UK economy (it refers to "the materially weaker growth prospects over the next few years"), it does not accuse Osborne of going "too far, too fast". Indeed, it praises the government's "commitment to restoring a sustainable debt position". If anything, its complaint is that the Chancellor has been too timid.

As for the fiscal stimulus demanded by Labour, Moody's is clear that, in its view, this is not an option. Under the sub-head "What could move the rating down?", it cites "reduced political commitment to fiscal consolidation, including discretionary fiscal loosening". In other words, were Labour in power, the UK would almost certainly have already lost its AAA rating.

But then why we should listen to Moody's, the agency that gave AIG an AAA rating just a month before it collapsed? The answer is simple: we shouldn't. But this doesn't alter the fact that Osborne did. For political purposes, he used Britain's credit rating as a stick to beat Labour with. He can hardly complain if others now use this move against him. The hunter has become the hunted.

www.newstatesman.com - Osborne hoisted with his own petard

1. No one is above the law - and that includes The Sun (Independent)

Politicians are still in awe of newspapers, fearful of them like children in the playground, writes Steve Richards.

2. Any strategy for growth must include decent childcare for all (Guardian)

Reversing our dwindling birthrate would do much more for the economy than making people work longer into old age, says Polly Toynbee.

3. Germany faces a machine from hell (Financial Times)

The actions urged on Berlin are unreasonable, says Gideon Rachman. Its own solution - structural reform now, political union later - is unworkable.

4. Osborne is a superb cook, but the Budget cupboard is bare (Daily Telegraph)

The Chancellor has limited ingredients with which to create the feast demanded of him, writes Bruce Anderson.

5. Our laws are to blame for Abu Qatada's release (Times) (£)

We should follow the US and allow intercept evidence to bring extremists to justice, argues David Davis.

6. Only a free press can root out corruption (Daily Mail)

The police need the press and the press need the police if Britain is to have faith in the way we deal with crime in this country, says a Daily Mail editorial.

7. The re-energised US left has much to teach its dismal European counterpart (Guardian)

Moving from retreat to re-tweet, US progressives have linked the personal and political to create a sense of shared purpose, writes Adam Price.

8. A budget for the rich and powerful (Financial Times)

The poor are the losers as US parties converge to the right, writes Jeffrey Sachs.

9. Greece won't see a cent of the great bail-out (Daily Telegraph)

MPs in Athens may have voted for austerity, but the reality is that default is looming, says Andrew Lilico.

10. The health and social care bill: here is a way out of this mess (Guardian)

Drop the most contentious part of the health bill, the chapter on competition, and give the NHS the stability it needs, says Shirley Williams.

www.newstatesman.com - Morning Call: pick of the papers

Whatever the long-term results of the Leveson inquiry, one appearance may prove a turning point for an increasingly visible and (hopefully) decreasingly vulnerable population. When Helen Belcher presented Trans Media Watch's submission last week, explaining the largely negative practices and consequences behind more than a hundred news items about transgender (but mainly transsexual) people, it felt like a turning point for a group no longer prepared to tolerate the media intruding into -- and sensationalising -- their personal histories.

Tabloid exploitation of transgender lives has now become so crude and so cruel that a 10-year-old is campaigning against it. Returning to her primary school in Worcester as female last September, Livvy James found her story strewn across the headlines after other children's parents took it to local newspapers and the nationals picked it up. Having been compelled to explain to the Daily Mail and ITV's This Morning why she let her child go to school as female (with the newspapers treating her decision as a countrywide concern), Livvy's mother Saffron has secured over a thousand signatures to a petition against media ridiculing of transgender individuals. Livvy felt that the abuse she took from her peers related directly to hostile print and screen portrayals.

It's interesting to note that the earliest British coverage of transsexual people was fairly even-handed: with no conventions set on the subject, the News of the World handled sensitively the surgical transition of athlete Mark Weston in 1936. It was not until the late Fifties, after Christine Jorgensen's fame suggested the emergence of a phenomenon that violated a fundamental social norm, that the tabloids started outing people with transsexual histories: the Sunday Express forced Michael Dillon into exile in 1958 and the Sunday People exposed April Ashley several years later.

You might imagine that after fifty years, we would have moved beyond this. The mere existence of transsexual individuals is no longer a novelty -- the conservative estimate in Trans Media Watch's Leveson submission put current numbers at 7,431 -- but tabloids continue to contrive stories from ordinary people's transitions. This Sun article from 2010, sensationalising RAF pilot Ayla Holdom's private life, complete with voyeuristic "before and after" photos and a lurid headline, is just one example. Having caused her considerable distress with the original exposé, the Sun followed up with mock-shock at Prince William inviting her to the royal wedding two years later.

Just because editors believe that the public are interested does not mean that this reporting is in the public interest. The detrimental effects outweigh any benefit in this systematically invasive and dishonest coverage, which at worst threatens not just the safety of individuals, but the existence of the entire transsexual population by undermining their right to gender reassignment via the NHS. In this "age of austerity", stories attacking transsexual people for using a service to which they were entitled became frequent; the unsourced figures oscillating so wildly that Jane Fae compiled a comprehensive guide to the actual costs to the NHS. Her figures are far below the £20,000-£60,000 spread I've seen across the right-wing press.

This was another fine example of transgender people using the internet to challenge a media that has objectified and excluded them for years. On Friday, Millivres Prowler launched a stable-mate to Gay Times and lesbian/bisexual publication Diva, aimed at the transgender population. Meta, an online magazine catering to female-to-male and male-to-female people will likely reach a larger readership than any other trans-related journal. Its editor, Paris Lees, appeared on BBC Breakfast last week, alongside Livvy James, to expose transphobia in the media to a terrestrial television audience. Now, there's a sense that the excuses that gatekeepers of mainstream liberal and left-wing spaces have previously used to keep out transgender perspectives -- that the issues are too complicated, or that transsexual people somehow undermine feminist or socialist politics -- are finally becoming untenable.

Above all, there's an understanding that transgender experiences illustrate a wider point: the tabloid habit of interfering with the privacy of non-public figures when they think it will sell can potentially damage anyone. Leveson's grilling of Dominic Mohan about the Sun's mean-spirited "Tran or Woman" quiz, and Mohan's sheepish admission that "I don't think that's our greatest moment," happened before Trans Media Watch gave their evidence. This is a sign that, slowly, people in power are not only allowing transgender people to voice their concerns but also listening; and that whatever happens to our tabloid press, the situation can never be quite as hopeless again.

Juliet Jacques is the author of the Orwell Prize longlisted Guardian blog A Transgender Journey and also blogs here

www.newstatesman.com - The turning of the tide

Boris has regained the lead but the London mayoral election remains too close to call. Last month's YouGov poll put Ken two points ahead (51 per cent to 49 per cent), this month's puts Boris two points ahead. With three months to go, the rivals are neck-and-neck in the closest election since devolved government was restored to London.

The full data tables haven't been released by YouGov yet but the Evening Standard's Joe Murphy has a useful summary of the findings here. The good news for Ken is that his impressive "fairer fares" campaign is supported by 68 per cent of voters. The bad news is that just 44 per cent believe he would fulfil his pledge if elected. The outer London "doughnut", which Ken has been courting with his fares policy, currently favours Boris by 52 per cent to 48. In inner London, Ken leads by 53 per cent to 47.

Strikingly, Boris has a two to one lead among the over-sixties, the group likeliest to turn out. If Ken is to return to City Hall, he will need to reduce this deficit.

www.newstatesman.com - Chart of the day: Boris regains lead over Ken