Dr Richard Chartres told a symposium on the Bible in the House of Lords yesterday: “Our culture and civilisation were founded on the Bible.

“The economy and politics must have ground beneath them. In Britain that ground has been biblical since our earliest days – and you do not sacrifice that without sacrificing much of what has been built upon that ground.”

He said concepts such at dignity and tolerance at the heart of British society would be “very difficult to sustain without a Christian ground”.

“Although it has become difficult to use the language of the Bible in this country, it will become more and more obvious that these values and these principles will be unsustainable without the Christian ground,” he said.

The bishop also defended the decision of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to use the King James Version at their wedding last month.

“At the royal wedding, the couple chose traditional words and none of the commentators remarked on it,” he said.

“But the following week the church press was full of commentators deploring the use of fusty words.

“But we need to remember that the couple who chose those words were both born in 1982.”

Professor John Wyatt, Professor of Ethics and Perinatology at University College London, said the scriptures had had a “profound” effect on him as a paediatrician.

“Because Jesus was a baby, all babies are special. I have come to realise, as Mother Teresa put it, that when we care for the least of these we are tending the wounds of Christ,” he said.

The professor urged Christians to speak up for the sanctity of human life before the law.

“English law is still deeply penetrated by this notion that all human life is special,” he said. “As we debate the appropriate use of new and powerful technologies a special responsibility falls on us.”

Baroness Butler-Sloss said she hoped to see more people pick up a King James Bible during its 400th anniversary year.

“In these days of moral pluralism, the celebration of the King James Bible in this year may encourage more people to read it and to benefit from it.”

Olave Snelling, chair of the Christian Broadcasting Council and organiser of the symposium, said the Bible continued to be “foundational” to Britain as a nation.

“The Bible is a phenomenal work of literature, but so much more. It is God-breathed. Today we want to raise our voices in this celebration of Britain and the Bible,” she said.