Some revelations arise in surprising circumstances, like seeing the Pope on television. You're sitting there watching and realize in forty years there have never been so many religious leaders on our screens.

Religious leaders now populate the TV in the way the Beatles did forty years ago, or, more apposite, the way politicians do now.

For those of us who grew up in societies that were becoming more secular it signifies our loss of voice. THis is what I want to say: The Liberal voice died of its own accord. Bush didn't strangle it and nor did an Islamist leader.

While we berate Bush for incompetence and zealotry and while radical Islam inspires the kind of fear we haven't known since the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction ruled over us, the sad truth is we bear a responsibility for the death of liberal humanism

The liberal voice died because we didn't use it.

It expired because we became ashamed of words like fairness. Fairness and justice passed out of common usage. Unfairness didn't needle us like it used to, once upon a time.

Going back to the late 1970s and the arrival of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher people with a liberal humanist outlook began looking on nervously but with quiet assurance.

In those days the extremists were also in our midst. They were our leaders too. But we liberals thought - this kind of extremism can't last.

Remember when Reagan took on the pilots and Thatcher the miners. Or when they cut benefits and widened social inequalities? Ok, we kept quiet by and large. It wasn't fair but....

But why did the notion of fairness die? Not just die. We know what political leaders of a certain disposition think. Why did it die in our minds, those of us brought up to savor it, those of us who used it over dinner and those for whom it was an identifying feature?

Because we were sure that the secularization of society was inevitable and progressive. The tide could not be turned back because the tide represented reason. No point making a song and dance about that.

Because "people" would come to see sense, that ultimately capitalism favors the few and democracy is about the majority. It's obvious.

Because these things go in waves. You get your Democratic supremacy period, and then you get your Republican. You go through a Labour period and then it swings back to Tories. Sit tight.

Only what really happened is that because we didn't use our liberal humanist voice to talk about fairness, religious leaders started to do it. Religion has recaptured the language of justice and fairness that seemed to belong in our vocabulary.

It began in the 1980s in the inner cities, it became for a while an ecumenical movement though ultimately it may prove divisive even for Church leaders.

But I remember it, back then twenty years ago, Ministers being the only people who would listen and offer help to people. The educated among us decided to move on from social issues and pursue living room furniture, wine, cuisine, school entrance issues.

So now we face the desecularisation of society.

It's also unnerving to realize we really can't live the good life, determined by the branding agencies, the labels and the fashion houses.

Like it or not we have to go digging into our own past, find those university texts, read up on the issues, start talking the language of fairness again. Is this in any way fair?