AS OF this week we can say that two of the politicians who will decide Europe’s future grew up in clerical households, and in both cases it is an important part of their psycho-history. Neither Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel nor Theresa May are noted practitioners of small talk, but if they do ever have an occasion for light conversation, it is a topic over which they can bond. And if they are honest about it, both will doubtless recall that there was a price to pay for being a clergyman’s offspring. Britain’s new prime minister was the only child of an Anglican vicar in Oxfordshire, a role which brought her father a degree of social status but very little money. Mrs Merkel grew up as the daughter of a Lutheran pastor in communist East Germany, a position that implied going against the prevailing order of society, albeit mostly in a quiet way. Both know what it is like to be raised by a person of whom high, perhaps impossibly high, moral standards are expected, and by someone who has to sort out the bitter quarrels that can often break out within communities of supposed like-minded people, such as parishes.

And these days, the two leaders remain discreet but firm practitioners of the faith in which they were brought up. Their explicit references to faith are so rare that when they come out, listeners are somewhat taken aback. But the message is clear enough. Mrs Merkel has described herself as a member of the evangelical (ie Protestant) church for whom faith is a “constant companion”. Mrs May told a radio interviewer that being a practising member of the Church of England “is a part of me…and it obviously helps to frame my thinking” even though “it is right that we don’t flaunt these things in British politics.”

She was speaking on Desert Island Discs, a radio programme in which celebrities imagine what tunes they would listen to as lonely castaways. Mrs May’s choice of music was perhaps more revealing than any of the words. Along with some thoroughly low-brow choices like Abba’s "Dancing Queen" there were two hymns which reflected an intense, aesthetically refined, Christian piety. There was an Anglican favourite called “When I survey the wondrous Cross…” and a medieval Latin chant which would be more more familiar to old-fashioned Catholics: "Sing my tongue, the Saviour’s glory, of his flesh the mystery sing; of the Blood, all price exceeding, shed by our immortal King." Neither of these hymns would be chosen by somebody who merely thought of Christianity as a collection of woolly sentiments about people being nice to each other.

So what will future historians have to say about the influence of Christian teaching on either leader? Mrs May has certainly shown that her thinking is capable of evolving in ways that would amaze her high-church Anglican father, who died in a road accident when she was 25. She has become an advocate of gay marriage, saying that: "If two people care for each other, if they love each other, then they should be able to get married."

Paradoxically enough, both Mrs May and Mrs Merkel may yet be remembered as Christian politicians who were adamantly open to the possibility of Islam being integrated into European liberal democracy. Perhaps out of an instinctive respect for religion in general, both seem careful to avoid falling into any kind of anti-Islamic essentialism.

Mrs Merkel has insisted, quite contentiously, that “Islam belongs in Germany”. What does that imply? Although Germany has no established religion, the Protestant and Catholic forms of Christianity do have an entrenched status in the Federal Republic, especially in education, on the understanding that they will uphold democracy not undermine it. Mrs Merkel’s statement suggests that a belief that Islam, of an appropriately reformed kind, can find a place in that system.

As for Mrs May, she recently (in her old job as home secretary) raised secularist hackles by the emollient terms in which she announced an 18-month enquiry into the operation of Islamic family law in Britain, led by a distinguished Muslim academic, Mona Siddiqui. The adjudication of divorce and inheritance matters by "sharia councils" does pose a dilemma for many liberal-democratic governments. On one hand, Britain (unlike France) allows people to bequeath their property to anybody they choose, and if they choose to make a will on Islamic principles that is formally speaking a free exercise of this entitlement. On the other, a person who grows up deep inside a traditional Muslim sub-culture may feel under overwhelming pressure to accept the adjudication of family affairs on Islamic lines, so there are questions about how free the choice really is.

For secularists (and for Christians of a more militant hue), Mrs May spoke too mildly when she responded by suggesting that the only problem lay in the abuse of a phenomenon which was in itself neutral or benign. What she said, inter alia, was: “Many British people of different faiths follow religious codes and practices, and benefit a great deal from the guidance they offer. [However] a number of women have reportedly been victims of what appear to be discriminatory decisions taken by Sharia councils, and that is a significant concern."

Secularists immediately retorted that some aspects of Islamic family law (for example giving a woman half the inheritance rights of a man, and making it much easier for a man to initiate divorce) are intrinsically discriminatory; the problem lies in the rules, not in their unfair application.

But for someone of Mrs May’s background, there can be no rush to judgment. More than her secularist colleagues, she finds it self-evident that some groups in society can find comfort in “codes and practices” as well as texts, rituals and traditions which seem alien to outsiders.