“The pressure Farron felt rings familiar to American evangelicals, who are continually grappling with their place in public life and the future for their convictions. Earlier this month, a Trump administration appointee was challenged during his confirmation hearing over his belief in salvation through Christ alone.”

Amid mounting scrutiny over his evangelical faith, the head of the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom resigned from his position and spoke out about the tension he faced as the political party’s leader.

“To be a political leader—especially of a progressive, liberal party in 2017—and to live as a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching, has felt impossible for me,” Tim Farron told his country on Wednesday, a week after the general election.

Considered the first evangelical party leader in a century, Farron dodged questions during the recent campaign about whether he believed homosexuality was a sin despite his political stance in favor of same-sex marriage and equal rights. An evangelical amid Anglicans, he faced accusations of harboring conservative theology within the liberal party, even when he made his liberal views clear.

Still, the accusations bled into the general election—the party gained seats in Parliament but their vote share declined—and were enough to make a fellow party leader step down on Wednesday. Farron’s announcement came hours later.

“Farron’s resignation was not a total surprise—some people had been saying the [Liberal Democrats] should have done better in the election—but the manner of his resignation was,” said Nick Spencer, research director with London-based Christian think tank Theos. “He could have slipped out the back door quietly, but instead chose to return to the moments of the election that were most uncomfortable for him: the interrogations he faced about his faith and his attitude to issues of human sexuality.

“His conviction that his faith provoked a suspicion and intolerance among so-called ‘liberals’ is both an indictment and warning to our public life in Britain,” Spencer said.

When Farron took over leadership of the Liberal Democrats two years ago, Theos pointed out how the evangelical convert broke the mold for what British media expect from political leaders. Now that his tenure will come to an end next month, UK evangelicals worry that instead of paving the way for a different kind of Christian politician, Farron exposes the growing pressure against them.

The director of the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum, Sarah Latham, told the British site Christian Today (no relation to CT):

Sadly his resignation reflects the fact we live in a society that is still illiberal in many ways and is intolerant of political leaders having a faith. This urgently needs to change. It will only change if Christians step up and get involved in all areas of life and change the rhetoric, whether in politics, media, business, or the arts. We need to bring about a society that is truly liberal—where everyone of all faiths and none are valued and considered equal.

The head of the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, called Farron “honorable and decent.” Andrew Wilson, a British pastor and CT columnist, described Farron’s resignation as “extraordinary, brave, and principled.” (A fuller excerpt appears at the end of this article.)