Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey said this week that Christians need to be bolder about speaking their beliefs.

"I think we need a tougher church," Carey said in an interview on BBC 5 Live's breakfast programme.

"We Christians are very often so soft that we allow other people to walk over us and we are not as tough in what we want, in expressing our beliefs, because we do not want to upset other people."

"We have got to be more outspoken," he added.

Carey's comments echo those of current Anglican head Rowan Williams, who said last month that politicians should be more outspoken about their faith, defending it in the public square.

Williams criticized the British government for thinking that religion is a "problem" and that Christian beliefs are no longer relevant in Britain but are practices performed by "oddballs" foreigners and minorities.

Last week UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown took up the challenge saying in a video that faith shouldn't be separated from the marketplace.

"I don't subscribe to the view that religion should somehow be tolerated but not encouraged in public life, that you can somehow ask people to leave their faith at the door when they enter a town hall or a Commons chamber," Brown said.

"Churches and the Christian charities have been Britain's conscience on causes from debt cancellation to child poverty, to the good environmental stewardship of the earth, and each of these great recent causes is rooted in the idea that we are each other's brother and sister's keeper," he added.