Be interesting to know if that last line is true.
This is starting to look more and more like someone's personal hangups turned into vendetta, using the nearest available excuses and target.
In my experience vocal Christians (as in: people mentioning Jesus, prayer or other church-related activities in person or on Twitter) are the minority, at least when it comes to JS conference speakers. So much so that they stick out as much as e.g. a Muslim wearing a hijab.
That said, even as a "militant" atheist I wouldn't mind having a Christian university as the conference venue or having Christian speakers -- as long as they don't try to use the talk/event as a means to force their ideologies on others. If anything, I'd find it interesting, because it's a place and a kind of person I would not actively seek out otherwise (i.e. outside the technical/conference context).
A few people I follow on Twitter or outspoken Christians or even Mormons. Yes, I find their religious gobbledegook annoying (but I'm sure they'd find my atheist rants equally unpleasant) but if they have enough interesting things to say otherwise, I'm willing to put up with that no matter how much it offends my sensibilities.
I'd hope this is the norm, but apparently "diversity" these days often means "no disagreeable persons" and being a white Christian heterosexual cis-man is borderline offensive in itself.
If someone is spending time at a tech conference intensely focused on how many people in the room happen to believe in the same god(s) as them, they might be the ones with the problem.
I'm in a relatively "progressive" part of Australia - in the parts of the Australian tech community I'm involved with, I'd say that last statement is definitely true.
In circles where I generally interact with other developers, (slack channels and in person), the assumption tends to be some form of irreligious/secular ideology, although generally those areas are more "true secular" -- that is, "sure, okay, believe what you want, that's your business."
In the internet at large, I tend to get some form of condescension or general dismissal for mentioning my faith in anything but an almost-apologetic tone. But that's the internet, and frankly people can say whatever they want to me online.
The thing that's more frightening to me is when that dismissal starts to cross from internet snark and jabs into active sort of "retribution" or (ironically) "witch hunts", trying to shut people's career opportunities down on the basis of their belief systems.
Look, everyone has a worldview, because everyone observes the world around them and arrives at conclusions. And given how complex any given worldview must be when brought in contact with reality, and how many people there are in the world with such different realities and experiences, you're just not going to be on the same page as everyone. In fact, you're virtually guaranteed not to be on the exact same page as anyone.
Intellectual and emotional maturity, at least in my view, requires the capability to look at another person's point of view and try to understand it -- and if you can't, then pare down to what's germaine to the subject at hand. I don't have to agree with my Muslim coworker about Jesus's divinity, but I do have to try to cooperate with him in deciding whether we should upgrade our codebase to Angular 2.
I may want us to agree about Jesus's divinity (and indeed, for religious reasons I may believe this is my life's central issue -- which I do), but if I mention the subject to him, it should be in another context where such issues are more germaine, and it should be in a way that grants him the intellectual respect to decline the conversation and disagree with me.
Just as I would not topically-hijack a work-focused meeting to try to convert my coworkers, I would hope not to be denied participation in such a meeting because of the unrelated issue of my beliefs.
Also in the UK the dominant sect of Christianity is Church of England, which in the UK is very casual compared to the Catholic church.
Agreed. I was baptised in a CofE church etc.
However, there are probably lots of people in the UK who have a vague connection to the CofE without calling themselves Christian. I was mostly interested in the number of practicing Christians in tech. My guess is those people keep their faith pretty quiet.
OTOH, I bet numbers are probably higher than you might think. Not every Christian is outspoken, and religion seems to be pretty openly hated on - I could see a large % of religious people just being quiet to avoid contention OR because they aren't really practicing.