You couldn't make it up: Red Cross bans Jesus from its Christmas cards and all mention of Christ from its shops.

All I can suggest is that they might as well go the whole hog and change their name as well. I mean if the mention of Jesus is regarded as offensive to people of other faiths, then surely the word "cross" is equally objectionable? Have the politically-correct bureaucrats who perpetrated this atrocity forgotten that their founder, Henry Dunant, said: "I am a disciple of Christ".

This destruction and perversion of tradition and heritage is everywhere. This week a friend told me that he has been summoned to a meeting of school governors in a Kent village to discuss the inspectors' complaint that the classrooms do not contain enough Muslim symbols. This is a Church of England School in a quiet village where there are no Muslims. Why didn't the inspectors, while they were at it, aim at even greater comprehensiveness and insist on Hindu symbols, models of sacred cows, statues of the Buddha, a chapel for fire worship and an altar for human sacrifice? Strange though how this political correctness is all one-sided: I haven't come across any Muslim classrooms being fitted out with crosses and rosaries.

Mind you, the church has no need of interfering secular bureaucrats to pervert its message. It makes a pretty thorough job of corrupting its own teachings. This year assorted lunatics in the churche's publicity department have produced some posters featuring a parody of a nativity scene.

There is the manger and there is the baby Jesus and Mary his mother. But the baby Jesus is dressed as Santa Claus and the idiotic caption underneath is: "Ask him for something this Christmas".

This is a piece of vandalism and wanton perversion of the Christian faith by those who are paid to uphold it. For years I have heard church leaders complain that in our secular society youngsters don't know the difference between Jesus and Santa. It now seems that the leaders' policy is to accept this confusion and preach it. No wonder the church is a laughing stock.

We have been told for decades that the world is unstoppably on a course of secularisation. The supposition is that religion is a thing of the past, belonging to the dark superstitious days before the light of reason and science. This is not true. Secularisation has taken hold, but only in Western Europe. Eastern Europe remains devout and it was the Catholic Church in Poland which did so much to bring down Communism. More than 80 per cent of the population of the US attends church each week. Religion is flourishing in Africa, Asia and South America.

It is only such as Britain, France and Germany which seek to deny their religious tradition - the tradition of over 1,500 years of sacred texts, paintings, music and the finest buildings in the continent. But it is this tradition which has created and enshrined our deepest values. Destroy religious imagery and the destruction of humane society itself will inevitably follow.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.