BBC RADIO LEICESTER: DISCUSSING FORGIVENESS WITH MONICA WINFIELD

On BBC Radio Leicester this morning with Monica Winfield, talking about forgiveness. John Florance phoned me last Wednesday morning to ask if I'd take part in the show, speaking to the topic from a Bahá'í point of view.

I walk down to St Nicholas Place from home in Stoneygate (my 11-year old son Harry comes along to keep me company - and to continue our ongoing conversation about DC comics' new 52). That little stroll takes us about 45 minutes at this time of the morning. It's cold, of course, but pleasant enough.

I'm the last of the three guests to arrive, just after 0800. Already there and ready to roll are Allan Hayes, Trustee of the British Humanist Association and past President of Leicester Secular Society and Daud Sameja, Chairman of the Leicester Christian-Muslim Dialogue Group at St Philip's Centre for Study and Engagement in a Multi-Faith Society (in the photo above with Rebecca Bryers, the show's producer).

I haven't met Monica (photo above) before. She keeps us going for a quarter of an hour or so, asking two questions, which all three of us get to answer in turn. Then she allows us each a final thought. It's all very agreeable and matey and a genuinely enjoyable experience.

As well as putting across some of the ways in which I'd say the Bahá'í principle and practice of forgiveness converges and diverges from how it's seen and done in other traditions, I get to use one of my favourite quotations: "Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies." This is attributed to Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) - although personally, I heard it for the first time uttered by Tim Bayliss an unusually spiritually-centred detective (played by Kyle Secor) in the classic police procedural Homicide: Life on the Street. The quotation came up in connection with our agreement that an important aspect of forgiveness is how it allows us to draw a line under the past and make personal and collective progress.

This is the third time that Allan Hayes and I have sat together in this studio. He remarks (off-air) that he and I will have to put our minds to engineering a public spat of some sort before long, since most people expect the two of us to disagree with each other and we're constantly surprising them that we agree on so much. Thankfully, Monica is not of that opinion and is glad to promote harmony and cooperation on this slot. The programme can be heard on BBC Radio Leicester's Listen Again facility till midnight, Saturday 3 March (our chat begins just after 0810).

GOVERNMENT OPPOSITION TO SECULARISM SHOULD CONCERN US ALL

This story appears today on the website of the Huffington Post:

Government opposition to Secularism should concern us all

To call Britain a "Christian country" is only marginally more sensible than calling Italy a "Roman country" and it was appropriate that Baroness Warsi made her most recent rallying cry against secularism amongst all the archaic pomp of the Vatican state. As a simple factual statement the "Christian country" line is of course demonstrably false (the most recent British Social Attitudes Survey published at the end of last year put the proportion of Christians at 40% and falling) and as a historical claim it omits as much of our cultural past as it includes. But on this occasion it was not so much Christianity the Baroness had come to praise but secularism she had come to attack.

But it is not overweening secularism that is the UK's problem - it is continuing and entrenched privilege for Christianity and Christian churches, and the consequent efforts by other religious groups for privileges of their own.

It was especially surreal of the Baroness to accuse secularism of being "intolerant" and "illiberal". It is not secular schools in England that are allowed by law to discriminate against children on the basis of their parents' religious beliefs: it's the thousands of state-funded Christian schools and the handful of those run by other religions. It is not secular agencies that reserve employment opportunities for staff according to their beliefs, but the many Christian and other religious agencies who are increasingly having public services contracted to them by the state. It is not non-religious organisations which lobby for and have received special exemptions from laws - like equality laws - that should affect everyone equally. It's not the British Humanist Association that has unelected representatives as of right in our national legislature - it's the 26 bishops of the Church of England who are there.

These and many many other examples of religious privilege and continued official discrimination on grounds of religion or belief give the lie to Lady Warsi's oft-repeated smears. 

by would be good if we could dismiss her as just a minority of one but - at least in her views on this issue - she is far from isolated. Eric Pickles just last week jumped into the row about local councils not being able to include prayer on their formal agendas with the same anti-secularist gusto he has displayed on previous occasions. At the end of last year, David Cameron made his own extraordinary speech on Britain's status as a Christian country, a speech which provoked more astonished bemusement than outrage, with its self-evidently ahistorical and bizarre statements, and its improbable calls on us all to be confident in our Christian nature.

When they are so palpably out of kilter with reality, why do present day politicians keep saying these things?

The most hopeful political reading is that they don't really mean it and are just attempting to pacify the small but increasingly strident minority of Christian lobby groups who are seeking yet great influence in our public life and greater privilege for those with Christian beliefs. It would be a shame that politicians had bought into the crazy narrative of "christianophobia" that these lobby groups promote, but at least we could rest assured that it would just be political rhetoric and no practical harm would come of it.

More alarming is if Warsi, Pickles and Cameron are serious in their message. A government that tried to make Christianity and Christian beliefs the foundation of British values or a social morality would be building on seriously unstable and unshared foundations. Secularism is essentially a political strategy that says, in the context of a diverse society, the state should not discriminate in favour of or against any person because of their religious or non-religious beliefs. For a government to set itself against that principle is concerning, and the expansion of state-funded religious schools, contracting out of public services to religious groups, and official guarantees of Christian privilege in public life give increasing plausibility to this second interpretation of the politicians' words.

If the latter interpretation is the correct one, then politicians should remember that their approach is far from popular. In a 2006 IpsosMori poll, "religious groups and leaders" actually topped the list of domestic groups that people said had too much influence on government. In the research released yesterday by the Richard Dawkins foundation, over 90% of self-described Christians said they did not think religion should have special place in public policy. A majority of the public surveyed - including a majority of Christians - repeatedly say they are against new religious schools. Policies that pursue religious exceptionalism in defiance of demographic reality and public opinion can only cause division and dissent.

Andrew Copson is Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association. 

A DIVIDED SOCIETY LOOMS

This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

A divided society looms

In my last article (First Person, January 5) I was optimistic about relations between religions and beliefs.

I had been meeting more people with different beliefs and had seen children from different backgrounds getting on with one another.

The latter is important: our children should be growing up together at school – Hindu children with Muslim children, Sikh children with humanist children, Catholics with Protestant, children indifferent to religion with those for whom it is central.

There are obvious difficulties because of the distribution of population in the city, but we should try.

Unfortunately, things are moving against us. Already, several city schools, Anglican, Catholic, Muslim and Hindu select pupils (and staff) by their religion and looking to the future, the Government's "free school" programme opens the way for many more such schools to be opened.

Under this programme, any group, local or not, can apply to set up a state-funded school in Leicester promoting one religion and giving preference to pupils and staff who belong to that religion.

Worse, there is no procedure laid down for letting us know about the application, for questioning it or for objecting to it – even the council can be kept in the dark – and the decisions are taken in London.

The programme is little over a year old and already in Leicester one school is up and running and others are being considered.

This is, of course only part of the bigger issue of the role of religion in society. What can be done?

I am, like other humanists and secularists, committed to joining with others in "promoting understanding and advancing harmonious cooperation", to quote the British Humanist Association constitution, and I have to ask my Anglican friends to think whether their Church was mistaken when in 2001 it took the decision to counter falling numbers by increasing the number of schools it controls and using schools more systematically to evangelise.

It has pursued this strategy and encouraged other religious groups to do the same.

It is now creating clusters of academies, and inviting other schools to become Anglican schools, and offering to take the place of local authorities in providing assistance – it is looking to be the biggest "provider" of education in the country.

This is not healthy for a democracy and it is being done using general taxes.

There is a steady drift towards a religiously divided country and city and politicisation of religion; and, very seriously in my view, efforts to create for our schools a vision of humanity encompassing both religious and non-religious views are being blocked.

We must work together.

Allan Hayes, Leicester

CHRISTIAN HOTEL OWNERS LOSE APPEAL AGAINST DISCRIMINATION RULING

This story appears today on the website of the British Humanist Association:

Christian hotel owners lose appeal against discrimination ruling

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has welcomed today’s Court of Appeal judgement upholding the ruling that Christian hotel owners Peter and Hazel Bull unlawfully discriminated on grounds of sexual orientation against Martyn Hall and Steve Preddy in refusing them a double room.

In the appeal, the judges acknowledged that all sides have strongly held beliefs, but ruled that the previous ruling was correct in concluding that the Bulls had breached the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation Regulations) 2007 (now Equality Act 2010). As the hotel is not a religious organisation but a business, it is not entitled to exemption from these laws.

BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson commented, ‘Although the right to your religious or non-religious beliefs is absolute, it is legitimate for the right to act on those beliefs to be restrained so that the rights of others are not violated. Our equality law protects religious people on those grounds in exactly the same way that it protects gay people – but no more than that.

‘In this particular case, the court has once again struck the correct balance between the right to freedom of religion and the right not to be discriminated against and we welcome it. The narrative whipped up by political Christian groups around cases such as this, that Christians are being marginalised and their beliefs ignored, is a false and misleading narrative. Instead, what we are seeing time and again is the courts upholding the rights of people not to be discriminated against on the arbitrary convictions of someone who does not wish to treat them equally – and that is how it should be in a decent society.’

The British Humanist Association is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity. It promotes a secular state and equal treatment in law and policy of everyone, regardless of religion or belief

Read the ruling in full here.

RE: WE SHOULD TAKE A BROADER VIEW OF BELIEF

Allan Hayes has written the First Person column in today's Leicester Mercury:  

RE: We should take a broader view of belief

Allan Hayes calls for change in the position of religion in our schools' curriculum.

Thank you for your Opinion column, "Compulsory religion is out of date" (Mercury, September 7). It is time that we faced up to these issues. I write in a personal capacity, but with a long involvement with religion and its role in society: I am a director of Leicester Secular Society, a trustee of the British Humanist Association and Humanist representative on the Leicester Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE).

The requirement of compulsory acts of worship could be simply dealt with – it could, and I think should, be removed. That not just because it is widely ignored and the majority of the population is in favour of its removal; compulsion in religion is morally offensive.

Of course, morning assemblies are a valuable part of the school day.

One of the most inspiring experiences during my year as chaplain to the Lord Mayor, was a visit to morning assembly at one of the city's infant schools.

It was a joyous and happy affair with children singing and reading, and reflecting on life and caring. It set the feeling for the school as a caring community – it was good.

Religious Education is a more difficult matter.

In spite of the efforts of teachers and advisers, the subject still gives the impression to many people of the state pushing religious views on to children.

And consider the make-up of SACREs, the local bodies responsible for what is taught: four groups, one for Church of England, one for other approved religions, one for teachers' representatives, one for representatives of the local council. What about other beliefs and the great number who just want to get on with their lives without reference to religion? Millions of people are essentially humanist in their outlook, but Government guidance is that humanists should most definitely not be full members.

In addition to these issues of principle, there are real worries among teachers of RE at the reduction in the subject's status and the resources available, and its not being included in the English Baccalaureate.

What might be done? Can the subject evolve and widen into one in which our humanity is nourished and celebrated, including our religions – a subject where we learn to value one another directly as people and where respecting someone's religion is a consequence of a wider respect for people?

I would like to think that it can, but I don't know. Perhaps, here in Leicester, we have the possibility of bringing this about.

Our schools should bring us together, and it is on this point that, while I welcome your opening up of the discussion, I have to say that I think that your suggestion of simply leaving RE and worship to individual schools would push us in quite the wrong direction. It would lead to division – it could also result in schools rather than the state exercising compulsion.

The atheistic critique of humanism has been all but forgotten

This is the Face to Faith column in today's Guardian, written by Giles Fraser (Canon chancellor of St paul's Cathedral).

The atheistic critique of humanism has been all but forgotten

The World Atheist Convention is currently under way in Dublin. Among those addressing the conference is Richard Green from Atheism UK. His is a new and small group seeking to establish itself in the marketplace of ideas where the most familiar voices are those of the National Secular Society and the British Humanist Association. What is distinctive about Atheism UK, Green insists, is that it's an atheist organisation for all atheists, including those not committed to humanism. "We cater for atheists who are not humanists," he says.

These days, atheists who are not humanists are an unfamiliar breed. Most atheists, and in particular the new atheists, regard themselves as committed humanists. Indeed, they are new in name only for they appeal back to the atheistic humanism of the Enlightenment, with its optimism about human nature and strong belief in the power of human reason and the inevitability of progress. Here humanism and atheism formed an alliance against all that stands over and against human flourishing. God must be dead so that humanity can thrive. Once emancipated from religious tyranny and dogma, humanity will thrive. As Kant believed, humanity must be its own highest being and ultimate end.

Yet throughout the 20th century many atheists rejected this picture. The sunny optimism of the Enlightenment – not least its commitment to progress and a sense of the intrinsic goodness of human nature – was profoundly dented by the horrors of the first world war and the Nazi death camps. The Enlightenment hadn't found another word for sin. And just as Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, a developing anti-humanism started to announce what, in less gender-conscious times, Foucault was to call "the death of man". Indeed, Nietzsche himself insisted the belief in humanity was itself just a hangover from a belief in God and, once God was eradicated, the belief in human beings would follow the same way.

It was mostly Marxists who developed this idea and ran with it. Louis Althusser coined the term anti-humanism. Forget the significance of the human individual, he argued, it is historical processes that make the difference. There is no such thing as intrinsic humanity, we are all the product of external forces. Everything that cannot be analysed structurally is false consciousness. Humanism itself is false consciousness. Others made a parallel critique using Freudian psychoanalysis. Human beings are not little gods free to choose for themselves on the basis of reason alone. We are subject to forces outside the reach of rational scrutiny. And, broadly speaking, the intellectual left all rose in applause. As Emmanuel Levinas observed in 1957: "Contemporary thought holds out the surprise for us of an atheism that is not humanist."

It is worth recounting a small part of this increasingly forgotten tale to lament what has become of a noble tradition. For it seems the atheistic critique of humanism has been all but forgotten. Richard Green's "atheists who are not humanists" could meet in a phone box. Indeed, the new atheists simply duck the challenge made by atheistic anti-humanism, believing their expensive scientific toys can outflank the alleged conceptual weakness of their humanism. Thus they dismiss the significance of philosophy just as much as they have always done of theology – as if the two were fundamentally in cahoots. But this is nonsense. Nietzsche, Marx and Freud attacked Christianity with passionate ferocity.

Christian theology of the 20th century has spent much of its time wrestling with the consequences. Why won't the new atheists do the same?

Read this article, along with reader comments (and the opportunity to leave your own) on the Guardian Comment is Free cif Belief website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jun/04/atheistic-critique-of-humanism-forgotten?INTCMP=SRCH

BELIEVERS AND ATHEISTS ARE HAVING DIALOGUE

Here's Allan Hayes's First Person column from today's Leicester Mercury:

 

Believers and atheists are having dialogue

In his column last week, Bishop Tim wrote: "I long for the time when people of faith and committed atheists do not feel the need to insult each other or to accuse each other of holding a particular position because of some inadequacy." That time is now, and it has been here for many years: atheist and religious people have been having amicable and constructive discussions in Leicester and nationally for a long time. I am surprised that he seems unaware of this.

I would welcome a public discussion with him. Nothing shows better the need for such discussion than his later remark:

"It was Shakespeare who wrote in Macbeth of life as 'a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'. That, I suppose, sums up the atheist position."

"Told by an idiot": Is this not a little insulting?

A wonderful opportunity is to hand: the bishop would be very welcome to attend, and even run a workshop at, the coming national Sea of Faith Conference to be held at Leicester University (July 22 to 24, www.sofn.org.uk). He would meet some very agreeable and non-insulting atheists (I happen myself to be a trustee and local convener for the network); some of them would be Christians.

But what does being an atheist tell us about a person? Does it imply that he or she is not a good person? Of course not – I am sure that the Bishop will agree with this.

As for meaning – Bishop Tim is concerned about this – well, I think that we make meaning for ourselves and for one another. At 78 years of age with children and grandchildren and a wonderful world, my life is full of meaning and I still have much to do and be remembered for.

And, making more use of Shakespeare, this time from Hamlet: I am free of "the dread of something after death, the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns".

The Sea of Faith Network, now a national organisation with international connections, is in fact a local product – another example, along with the Secular Society, of Leicester radicalism. It was conceived in a pub in Barrow-on-Soar in 1987 by a group of (mainly) Anglican clergy. Most of its annual conferences have been at Leicester University. Controversial from the start, with its assertion that "religion is a human creation" it has stood for a more open attitude towards the exploration of theological issues.

I prefer to describe myself as a humanist, committed to the welfare of humanity and the view that we are solely responsible for our own well-being and future: I am a trustee of the national body, the British Humanist Association.

Beyond Grayling, Hawkins [sic] and Hitchens, a new kind of British atheism

The Census just refuses to go away. It's only been a couple of weeks since we were all filling out the forms and the statistics themselves won't be published till who knows when. Debate continues over our specialist subject here: the religion question.
Here's an interesting article from the Guardian website, Comment is Free: Belief. I don't know who "Hawkins" is, though I hope Dawkins isn't too miffed at being nudged out of this trinity.

Beyond Grayling, Hawkins [sic] and Hitchens, a new kind of British atheism

On 27 March, when British households were completing census forms, people may have chosen to answer the optional question, "What is your religion?". It is thought that the proportion of those who did, and ticked the "no religion" box, will have risen from the 15% it was at the time of the last census, in 2001.

Indeed, the British Humanist has campaigned for this. It cites statistics estimating that more like between 30% and 40% of the population is "non-religious", increasing to as much as 65% for young people.

But what does it mean to be a "none"? Does it mean just being indifferent to religion, or being an atheist? Social research has begun to try to understand this growing constituency defined by what they are not, and we are contributing to this with a one-year project speaking to young people who identify themselves as atheists, free thinkers, humanists, secularists, sceptics – or all of the above.

Public debate so far has tended to focus on the high-profile, rather old "new atheists" such as AC Grayling (with his bible for atheists just out), Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, but from the numbers it appears that atheists are relatively young.

From our research so far it seems they may be more flexible and open to different perspectives than older non-religionists (some report attending events with actively Christian friends), and prefer to engage with online communitiesthan belong to official organisations. They are strongly influenced by family and education. Some have reacted against Christian upbringings; have been influenced by writers like Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris; one man is looking to challenge the influence of the Christian Union on his university campus; and another would like to break the association between Britishness and Christianity. For one woman, the important thing is being pro-human rather than anti-religious.

Whatever the variety in terms of identities, journeys to and reasons for stances, the group we have engaged with so far is demographically similar – mainly British-born, white and middle-class, planning to go to, attending or having been to university. This fits with other people's findings, though of course there are exceptions.

We cannot generalise from our small sample, but research elsewhere indicates that an actively non-religious position is more socially acceptable in Britain than in the US, and is easier for a young person to proclaim in contemporary Britain than a Christian identity.

This suggests real and distinctive social change in Britain, which some scholars now refer to as "post-Christian". Nonetheless, Christianity is clearly of enduring social significance for some "young atheists". They can struggle to affirm the positive rather than negative content of their "irreligious" identity, but we're finding faith in people rather than nothing, and that the secular can be just as moral, emotional and sacred as the religious.

Read this article on the Guardian's Comment is Free: Belief website, along with reader comments:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/14/atheism-socialnetworking?CMP=twt_fd

SHOULD WE TICK "NO RELIGION" ON THE CENSUS?

A typically amusing, thought-provoking and wry piece by Deborah Orr in today's edition of The Guardian, on the "religion" question in the Census. The writer's opinions are her own (obviously); I put them here to add a distinctive flavour to the mix of debate on this issue that has already graced this blog.

Should we tick "No Religion'" on the census?

The British Humanist Association would like us to, but its brand of humanism sounds like religion without God 

It is census day on Sunday and, despite sterling efforts from many interested parties, angry controversy around this quaint operation has not quite been ignited. I particularly enjoyed the attempt to muster az boycott on the grounds that the UK subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, the world's largest arms company, had been contracted (again) to conduct the thing. Because that's what you want, isn't it? To make sure arms companies stay totally focused on their core business, and don't start piddling around in more peaceable activity?

I filled in my household's form with some alacrity, not least because the part of me that will always be a 10-year-old goody-goody schoolgirl simply loves the opportunity to print in lovely, neat, black capitals. It wasn't until after it had been mailed – why not? Keep postpersons employed – that I caught up with the British Humanist Association's plea: "We urge people who do not want to give continuing or even greater importance to unshared religions in our public life to tick 'No Religion' in the census."

Actually, I had ticked "No Religion". But I still don't like the tenor of this instruction. I don't want to stand against "believers". I am still, for my secular sins, a wet multiculturalist, minded to put up with the beliefs I can't share, whenever possible, in the interests of strengthening those that I can. I'm combative and dogmatic by nature, but I don't think these are among the finest of human qualities. I used to be a combative and dogmatic atheist. But then I realised that combat and dogma might be the problem.

Combat especially, of course. It is a popular atheist assertion, the one that says religion causes war. As if humans would never fight over land, or resources, or power, or out of sheer, carnivorous, animal aggression. Humans cause war. So do chimps and bonobos, our close genetic relatives. Perhaps Lockheed Martin is on a religious mission? Yeah, right.

I was in Motherwell, my home town, outside Glasgow, a few weeks back, on the evening that a recent Rangers v Celtic match descended into on- and off-pitch aggression the like of which had not been seen in 20 years. The Old Firm antipathy is characterised as "religious". But really it's tribal. No one goes home pissed and full of anger because the guys that scored the goals believe in transubstantiation. People go home pissed and full of anger because they left home with the intention of getting that way, and had signed up for it as toddlers. And that's not good.

The British Humanist Association is right to identify the segregation of state institutions as a powerful factor in augmenting the sort of antipathy that the Old Firm shelters. It cites a poll of 1,896 people, in which 61% identified with a religious denomination while only 29% said they were religious. The argument is that the statement of "empty" religious identity results in data that is used to justify continued religious privilege in state policy on public services. The real question is why people cling to a religious identity when they have no religious faith. It's the desire, surely, to be in one team, and opposed to another – a cultural need, a human need, even, a need that helped to deliver humans to the top of the food chain, for better, for worse, or for a bit of both.

Despite great effort to find them, human saints are hard to come by. Julian Assange, for example. Good guy? Bad guy? Perfect guy? Flawed guy? How about a mass of contradictions? That's where I really become uncomfortable with humanism. The British Humanist Association says: "Humanists are atheists and agnostics who make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values. We take responsibility for our actions and base our ethics on the goals of human welfare, happiness and fulfilment. We seek to make the best of the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves, individually and together." Nothing much to complain about there (although a bad person might say words such as "smug" and "piety"). Well, unless you fail to subscribe to the idea that humans are essentially good and wise, rather in the manner that humans tend to characterise the gods they invent and worship.

Mostly, humanism sounds like religion without God, a kind of collective, earnest, well-meaning narcissism. People are welcome to it, if it floats their boat, though the proselytising does demand response, of course. The call to reason forgets that any atheist worth his salt understands that God does exist, but only in the minds of some of those humans who are not entirely and absolutely governed by reason. Which, I would say, is all of us. Few humans live their entire lives in reasonable refusal of all thoughts and deeds that are bad for them, or for others. People often turn to God as a means of helping them to find the discipline to avoid such behaviour. Humanists appear to believe that the opposite is the case. It's dogma – irreligious mumbo-jumbo really – and should not be confused with secularism.

For the fact is that there are plenty of reasons to be relaxed about the attractions of plain secularism, as opposed to humanism. A study, from Northwestern University and the University of Arizona, analysed census data from 85 countries, some of it stretching back a century, and presented it this week at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas.

In nine countries, Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland, the analysis found that there has been a steady rise in the number of people claiming no religious affiliation. Religious belief, in all these countries, is fading slowly away, and organised protest against it does not appear to be the reason for this. Richard Wiener, who led the research, says: "put simply, it shows that social groups have a kind of 'gravity' that drags in more people the bigger they are". The tide of history is running against the religious. Conspiring to help that powerful tide risks provoking the entrenchment called fundamentalism.

CHRISTIANS & HUMANISTS CRITICISE FALSE "DISCRIMINATION" CLAIMS

This is the second news release inside a week from Ekklesia (a thinktank which examines the role of religion in public life) which should be posted here. The notes at the end of the press release are also from Ekklesia's news release.

Christians & Humanists criticise false "discrimination" claims


Claims that Christians are being 'discriminated against' by human rights and equality legislation in the UK have been strongly criticised by the Christian think-tank Ekklesia and the British Humanist Association (BHA).


The two organisations have spoken out jointly after socially conservative group 'Christian Concern' (formerly Christian Concern For Our Nation) launched a petition claiming that people with 'mainstream Christian' beliefs are being barred by equalities legislation 'from different areas of public life and employment'.


The petition was launched following the latest in a string of failed court cases pursued by the Christian Legal Centre, which has strong links to Christian Concern.


In December 2010, Ekklesia, the BHA, the European Humanist Federation (EHF) and other religious and non-religious groups described Christian Concern's 'Not Ashamed' campaign, which made similar claims, as "misleading and having no evidence to support them".


Simon Barrow, co-director of Ekklesia, said: "The judgement in the recent Johns foster case was very clear. It described claims of anti-religious discrimination as a 'travesty of the reality' and 'wrong as to the factual premises on which they are based.' The judges added that 'No one is seeking to de-legitimise Christianity or any other faith or belief. ... No one is seeking to give Christians, Jews or Muslims or, indeed, peoples of any faith, a second class status. On the contrary, it is fundamental to our law, to our polity and to our way of life, that everyone is equal.'


"It is this equality which some vociferous campaign groups are disputing. They want a privileged status in law for their own particular prejudices, using arguments which many other Christians find misplaced, misguided and offensive. Far from 'defending Christianity', petitions like this bring it into disrepute," added Barrow.


BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson commented: "This petition is the latest in a series of increasingly desperate attempts to create a victim narrative about 'Christianophobia'. But these claims have no basis in reality. What they describe as discrimination and marginalisation of Christians is in fact the proper upholding of human rights and equalities law and principles - a law which protects religious people from unjustified and illegitimate discrimination in exactly the same way as it protects people on other grounds like race and sexual orientation.

He continued: "It is very important to be vigilant over claims that mask prejudice with false claims about oppression. There is no evidence of discrimination against Christians, only evidence of a persecution complex from those perpetuating the myth of 'Christianophobia'. We must be robust in our response to an ideology that, in reality, would limit religious and other freedoms for most people, while permitting wide discrimination by a small number of narrow-minded persons against others."

Founded in 2001, Ekklesia examines politics, values and beliefs in a changing world, from a Christian perspective. It has been listed by The Independent newspaper among 20 influential UK think-tanks. According to Alexa/Amazon, it has one of the most-visited religion and politics / current affairs websites in Britain. More: http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=y7uzgobab&et=1104817613705&s=16026&e=001s_MCAGhNKS-qQECAgTUOA0-9H0g1HrpIpnJALWfUITnWZIpKrxaj6fbnm5foXElyWRWiE8efKLkLKCONbS8IrG_ChCEo6Sp4zn8ezDAd3DppAgraiwKIJMC_pnsivTKnjZO6Zofhqb9IqrU45T3YEg==


The British Humanist Association is the largest national charity representing and supporting the interests of ethically concerned, non-religious people in the UK. More information at:http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=y7uzgobab&et=1104817613705&s=16026&e=001s_MCAGhNKS8O3u9H0maXJJUTbs3GZpcqahfC6UB9gFHhUWxehRDVuTC9YTFdzwmptQJnJAcsAe6jedft2aZY-qI5y0G2AzwI73p4L6ZMI_0qy-yGUT_EXb-Vypv50EiS


See also: Simon Barrow, 'Shameful claims and alternative Christian living' and 'Discriminating Christian confusions'

Faith to Faith: Caspar Melville

Here's the "Faith to Faith" column from today's edition of The Guardian. It's by Caspar Melville, Editor of New Humanist magazine on a topic that has featured strongly in this blog. It's interesting, insightful and amusing (though I'd take exception to his assertion that the writ of the Church of England runs all through the UK!)

So the British Humanist Association ads with the headline "If You're Not Religious for God's Sake Say So", urging people to tick the "no religion" box on the census, have been banned because the people who own the advertising space in railway stations think they will cause "serious and widespread offence". I mean, Christ on a bike!

Before considering the ads themselves it's worth reminding ourselves what they are about. The way the religion question was posed on the last census grossly distorted the figures – does anyone really believe that 71.8% of the UK population are practising Church of England Christians? So if we are going to bother to have a census and ask questions about the population's religious affiliations, it only makes sense to get it right – especially since the figures are subsequently used to justify policy. So this is a serious issue.

But the ads are not in themselves serious. Andrew Copson of the BHA admits that the strapline was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, designed to "express urgency" and be attention-grabbing. This is, after all, what a good advertising headline should do. But offensive? OMG!

In actual fact we don't really know if anyone would have found the ads offensive. CBS Outdoor, the owner of the ad space, says it referred the decision to its franchisees, who passed it on to something called the Committee of Advertising Practice, which came up with the advice that the ads would cause "serious and widespread offence". How would they know this? They don't say, and it's hard to think how you might go about proving it, short of actually running the ads. I was interviewed on BBC Breakfast on Sunday about this, alongside the Times's religion correspondent, Ruth Gledhill. She's a Christian, but she wasn't herself offended by the slogan; she just argued that she could see why some people might be.

The presenters urged viewers to email their thoughts. They got a large response, they said, on both sides, and read out on air the views of one person who said he was offended, though he didn't explain why. But really, if you are the kind of person who is going to find commonplace expressions like "Oh my God", or "Bless you", or "Blimey", or "Lord love a duck", or "Saints preserve us" offensive you'd be well advised only to go out in public with ear plugs and a mask (on second thoughts, perhaps it would just be safer to stay in).

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the slogan would not have caused "serious" and "widespread" offence, and I have as much evidence to prove this as the Committee of Advertising Practice has to prove its argument. I just don't think most Christians, still less part-time CofE don't-take-the-Bible-literally Christians, are that thin-skinned. The ones I know certainly aren't.

In any case, we do not (yet) live in a country which guarantees the right not to be offended. No one should be in the business of banning things on the off-chance that someone might be upset by the message.

And why is it the companies which own the advertising space who end up policing the boundaries of acceptable speech? These are commercial ventures and their job is to make money, it's not to arbitrarily decide what kind of message society can take and what is beyond the pale. We need an independent body to do that, which should set the bar very high and have a sense of proportion – even, if that's not too much to ask, a sense of humour.

Read this article on The Guardian's website, along with reader comments:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/mar/12/census-humanists-christians-offence-religious-sensitivities?INTCMP=SRCH

Visit the website of New Humanist magazine:
http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/

DO WE ACTUALLY NEED A CENSUS?

Here's one of the best all-round articles on the Census I've seen, written by Jon Henley and published in the G2 section of today's Guardian.

Two hundred and 10 years ago today, pursuant (as we once said) to a groundbreaking "act for taking an account of the population of Great Britain, and the increase or diminution thereof", a small army of town clerks, wealthy householders, overseers of the poor, schoolteachers and clergymen set off with sharpened pencils and forms to undertake, parish by parish, this country's first national census.

It was a rudimentary affair, prompted largely by a desire to settle a burning 18th-century debate over whether the population was expanding or contracting (in 1798, Thomas Malthus shocked the nation by suggesting that "the power of population is greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man" – in other words, we might starve – and a string of poor harvests had underlined the point). But, it was also conceded, if the exercise was repeated every 10 years, then the information might conceivably be useful for legislative purposes too. So out went the officials to count the number of houses in their parish; the number of families who occupied them; the number of people and their employment; and the numbers of baptisms, burials and marriages. A government statistician called John Rickman crunched the data and laid it before parliament: the population of England and Wales was all of 8.87m, plus half a million-odd soldiers, seamen and convicts not present for counting.

This month, we will be asked to fill in the form for Britain's 21st national census. It will also very likely be its last. At £482m, the whole operation – performed every decade since 1801 with one exception, the wartime year of 1941 – is expensive, inaccurate and inefficient.

That, at least, is the government's view: Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, is looking for "ways of doing this which will provide better, quicker information, more frequently and cheaper". The census, he complains, is "out of date almost before it's done"; data held by the likes of the NHS, councils, Royal Mail, the electoral register, tax returns and even credit card firms and phone companies can do the job.

It is a view disputed by those who use the data the census provides. But it warms the heart of the many who – on any number of grounds – resent it, as many always have. In one early and unsuccessful debate in 1753, the MP for York asserted that a census would "impair the liberty of the individual", describing it as a "most effectual engine of rapacity and repression". (Some apparently also feared a census might incur the wrath of God, as happened when King David foolishly ordered a census of the Israelites and 70,000 died in the ensuing plague.)

Mostly, however, says Ian Cooke, curator for political studies at the British Library, which is currently staging an intriguing exhibition on the history of the census, early opposition tended to focus on "fears about the government using the figures to direct labour, and the consequences of Britain's enemies finding out exactly what the country's population was". Fears, in other words, about how the authorities might try to use the data, and about what would happen should it fall into the wrong hands: about privacy, and security.

A couple of centuries on, those remain among the principal objections. "This is information the government does not need, cannot protect and should not collect," says Guy Herbert, general secretary of NO2ID, which, having seen off the national identity card, now campaigns energetically against what it sees as the broader evils of the "database state".

Few would dispute that the census has grown into something of a monster: from a single foolscap sheet, it has become a 32-page booklet with four pages of questions for every person. Among other things, it wants to know what type of central heating we have, how many bedrooms we have got, who is staying over on the night of 27 March (plus their age, sex and where they usually live), how well we speak English, and what our employer's address is.

Census data, argues the Office of National Statistics, is vital to decisions including central funding for the devolved and local authorities; policy development and planning by some 40,000 government and government-related bodies, at all levels, in key fields such as housing, transport, education and health; and for an enormous amount of social research, corporate strategy and charity campaigning. The census remains, it adds, the "most extensive source of demographic and social statistics available in the UK today", unique in both detail and consistency because it aims to cover every person usually resident in the country on a single night.

Herbert begs to differ. "The motives may be beneficent, but the effects are maleficent," he says. "Information on people is power over them. If Tesco finds out I like cheese, the worst it can do is send me a few special offer vouchers. The government can use information to enforce or 'nudge' my behaviour." He points to the steadily evolving role of, for example, the DVLA in collecting, distributing (even selling) vehicle and driver data to councils and private companies as evidence of "a growing government obsession" with information-sharing.

Data security is his other major worry. "I have no objection to a simple statistical abstract," he says, "although there are far cheaper ways of getting it: if, during the last election, both major political parties could buy off-the-peg computer programmes to identify potential voters with great accuracy, why a census like this?

"But because of computer technology, vast amounts of information are now being collected that can be processed and referenced in ways that simply weren't possible before. Census data is supposed to be confidential for 100 years, but the law already allows it to be shared with all 27 EU member states, public bodies and approved researchers – and there's no guarantee that some bright spark in Whitehall won't want to use some subset of data for something even more intrusive. While the data is there, the temptation will be too."

Alex Deane of Big Brother Watch makes broadly similar points. "No other free country requires this degree of detail," he says. "It's a real intrusion of the state where it doesn't belong. There is a need for a simple headcount, yes, of course. But this goes way beyond that'"

Objections to the census do not stop there. Many point out the exercise is not particularly reliable: besides the undeniable fact that many people's situations will have changed long before the findings are published, last time around, in 2001, the census managed to miss 900,000 men under 40. Beyond the perfectly plausible explanation that they were simply down the pub or round at their girlfriend's, no one seems to quite know how this happened, but the incident was serious enough to prompt councils, including Manchester and Westminster, to take legal action over the consequences of such a big discrepancy between census data and their own figures, and is in large part responsible for this year's question about overnight visitors.

Famously, the 2001 census – the first to ask a question, albeit voluntary, about religious belief – also recorded that 390,000 British residents were Jedi knights. This followed an internet campaign that claimed the Star Wars belief system would win official recognition if only enough people said they adhered to it. It wasn't, sadly, the case, but for the time being at least, Jedi is Britain's fourth-largest religion.

(Perhaps surprisingly, there is little evidence that we are more than usually dishonest in filling out our census forms. Facetious, certainly: in 1911, one man gave "Peter Tabby" as an occupant of his house and listed his nationality as "Persian" and his occupation as "mouser"; in 1851, another described herself as a "mangle worker" and her husband's job as "turning my mangle". More often, despite the threat of a £1,000 fine for not completing the census form, we simply don't bother: an estimated 3 million people didn't last time.)

The religion question has sparked controversy again this year. The British Humanist Assocation, for one, objects strongly to its wording: although there is a "No religion" option alongside boxes for the major faiths, it argues that the question "What is your religion?" encourages people to answer in terms of whatever loose cultural affiliation they may feel, rather than actual belief. "The effect is to artificially increase the number of religious people in Britain, and decrease the number of non-religious," says Andrew Copson, the BHA's chief executive. In 2001, 77% of us said we were religious – and more than 70% of us Christian – whereas it is plain from, for example, the British Social Attitudes survey that more than 50% of us consider ourselves non-religious, and more than 60% of us never attend religious services.

"It's important because those figures are then used to justify, for example, an increase in the number of faith schools, keeping bishops in the House of Lords and other policies that are damaging, divisive and don't reflect the real demographics of British society," says Copson.

The BHA is urging everyone who isn't religious to tick the "No religion" box. The Pagan Federation is also up in arms, insisting druids, wiccans, witches and other pagans constitute a serious and growing religious group, maybe 250,000 strong, and deserve proper recognition. A Facebook campaign to get heavy metal admitted as a religion has garnered nearly 35,000 supporters.

The census's question on ethnicity, also long avoided as too sensitive, is another bone of contention. The Sikh Federation last year threatened legal action against the ONS's continued refusal to include Sikh – an option in the religion question –as a printed option in the ethnicity question. The ONS says this is for reasons of space, and points out that anyone who feels their ethnicity is not reflected in the choices available on the form can state it in a box provided.

But the Sikh community argues it has been recognised as an individual race under British law, and fears scarce government resources risk being unfairly allocated. Some Jews have also made a similar argument ("Jew" is not an ethnicity option either), and the Board of Deputies acknowledges the census probably underestimates the number of Jews in Britain (partly because of a historic reluctance to reveal such information to the authorities). Some academics also fear results from the ethnicity question may in future be unfairly used in the immigration and nationalism debates, along the lines of "Look: half of British Pakistanis consider themselves Pakistani rather than British."

A battle also seems to be brewing over the role of the US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin is gathering and processing the data for this year's census. A coalition of anti-war groups, pacifists and digital activists has already said its members are ready to face the £1,000 fine for boycotting the census over the involvement – on a £150m contract – of the arms giant that makes Trident nuclear missiles, F-16 fighter jets and cluster bombs.

All these disputes, however, look set to pale into insignificance beside the big question of whether – as the government seems determined will happen – the 210-year-old census really should come to an end following this year's exercise. For academics such as David Voas, Simon professor of population studies at the University of Manchester, the decennial census is not only a useful and important tool, but very difficult to replace. Many objections to the census, he contends, are more or less groundless. Intrusiveness? "The information held by many credit card companies is far more detailed," he says. And the ONS does "a very good job" of resisting pressure for ever more questions. Although most other national censuses, including the US's, include income bands with tick-boxes in their forms, Britain decided not to "because it was deemed too sensitive. It was feared people would not answer."

The confidentiality issue is largely a red herring, says Voas. "This is probably the most secure of any data set around. The lengths the ONS go to preserve anonymity and confidentiality are remarkable, to the extent of undercutting the value of the data. The principle is that no one should be able to point to a number on a table and say: 'That's me'. An absurd example, but if there was just one middle-aged man in Derbyshire, he shouldn't be able to identify himself on any census table – even by combining it with data from other sources. Small numbers are fudged, white noise inserted."

Voas regrets an "increasing suspicion" of public data-gathering, which he says is both misplaced and unfortunate, because "this is one really important exercise that decides how a great many services are provided . . . It has real, practical utility." The historic continuity and consistency of census data is also priceless, he adds.

What, then, might replace it? "We're a little bemused in the demographic community," he says. "While it's possible, maybe even desirable, to move towards some kind of population register and a periodic count, we'd always assumed a system like that would be based on something like a national ID card scheme. Now that's been done away with, how could it work?"

The problem, he says, is that big and unwieldy and far-reaching as the census may be, "It is a single, highly controllable exercise. If you try to pull that same information from all the other data sets out there – GPs, NI, credit card records, commercial databases, local authorities – there's going to be an awful lot of duplication, an awful lot of incompleteness. How do you marry these data sets? How can you be sure different records refer to the same people? It's very hard to believe that either accuracy or security will be anything like as good. And even if you concede that on a national level you may arrive at information that's more or less adequate – on ethnicity for example – at a local level it will be an absolute, unmitigated disaster."

LEICESTER SECULAR SOCIETY REFUSES TO LEAVE GOD OUT OF CAMPAIGN

Having read the article, "Humanist census posters banned from railway stations" in today's Guardian (and having posted that article here earlier today) I see this piece in today's Leicester Mercury with what might be considered the local response. As I mentioned in the earlier post, I was sorry to see that the British Humanist Association has bowed to pressure and was changing the wording on its Census campaign posters. Trust Leicester to stick to its guns!

Leicester Secular Society refuses to leave God out of campaign 

By Peter Reeve

Leicester Secular Society today vowed to continue its poster campaign on census responses to religion – despite warnings the wording could be offensive.

Buses in Leicester have been carrying the society's posters with the slogan: "If you're not religious, for God's sake say so."

The society wants non-believers to tick the "no religion" box on this year's census.

But the British Humanist Association (BHA), which had planned to use the same slogan for a national poster campaign, said it had been forced to change the wording.

It was told by the Committee of Advertising Practice that the original wording had the potential to cause widespread and serious offence.

As a result, the British Humanist Society posters – which will be displayed on more than 200 buses in London, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Birmingham, Cardiff and Exeter – will now carry the slogan: "Not religious? In this year's census, say so."

Dr Emma Chung, president of the Leicester Secular Society, said they would be continuing with their poster campaign, despite the CAP's recommendation.

The society also intends handing out British Humanist Society leaflets with the original "for God's sake" slogan on them.

Dr Chung said: "Buses in Leicester have been carrying these ads for nearly two weeks with no complaints from the public.

"Our advertisements are intended to be a humorous way of drawing people's attention to a serious issue.

"Leicester has a well-earned reputation for tolerance and I am sure that apart from a few zealots, the majority of religious people have a sense of humour."

Dr Chung says that during the 2001 census, many people felt compelled to answer "Christian" when it came to their religious belief, either out of habit or because they felt they ought to.

But she says doing so leads to inaccurate figures, which are then used to justify policies that "do not reflect the real demographics of our society".

Andrew Copson, BHA chief executive, said: "This censorship of a legitimate advert is frustrating and ridiculous.

"The blasphemy laws in England have been abolished but we are seeing the same principle being enforced nonetheless."

But the CAP insisted it had not banned the British Humanist Association from using the "for God's sake" slogan, merely given it advice.

A spokesman said: "Leicester Secular Society, just like the British Humanist Association, are not duty-bound to take our advice.

"We may or may not investigate if we get any complaints about Leicester Secular Society's poster campaign, but at this stage we have not received any complaints."

The British Humanist Association is a national charity which champions atheists and agnostics.

Its work is based on improving human welfare, happiness and fulfilment.

The National Secular Society is a pressure group which fights for the rights of atheists and agnostics.

I was wondering why Leicester didn't appear in the list of cities where buses would be carrying posters with the amended wording. Now I know. Although, as a regular bus passenger (at least twice a day) I've yet to see one of these posters inside or on the outside of a bus in Leicester. As soon as I do, faithful reader, I'll let you know of course.

HUMANIST CENSUS POSTERS BANNED FROM RAILWAY STATIONS

There have been a number of entries about the forthcoming Census in this blog. There will certainly be more as the day of the Census approaches. Here's the text of an article from today's Guardian (which was accompanied in the paper by the image above).

Humanist census posters banned from railway stations

The posters, which encourage people to tick the "No religion" box if they do not believe in God, were judged too likely to offend

By Alan Travis

Three posters appealing to people who are not religious to declare themselves as such in this year's census have been banned from appearing in railway stations.

The posters, bearing the slogan "If you're not religious, for God's sake say so", have been refused by the companies that own the advertising space, which say they are likely to cause offence.

The British Humanist Association (BHA), which published the posters, said it was astonished that such an everyday phrase should be deemed too contentious for public display. "It is a little tongue-in-cheek," said the BHA chief executive, Andrew Copson, "but in the same way that saying 'bless you' has no religious implication for many, 'for God's sake' is used to express urgency and not to invoke a deity.

"This censorship of a legitimate advert is frustrating and ridiculous: the blasphemy laws in England have been abolished but we are seeing the same principle being enforced nonetheless."

The posters ask those who are not religious to tick the "no religion" box when they fill in forms for the 2011 census.

"We used to tick 'Christian' but we're not really religious. We'll tick 'No Religion' this time. We're sick of hearing politicians say this is a religious country and giving millions to religious organisations and the pope's state visit. Money like that should go where it is needed," says one of the banned posters.

The ban followed advice from the Advertising Standards Authority's committee of advertising practice that the advert had the potential to cause widespread and serious offence.

The poster display company involved also said it did not want to take adverts relating to religion.

The British Humanist Association has amended the campaign slogan on the adverts to read simply: "Not religious? In this year's census say so." The posters are being displayed from this weekend on 200 buses in London, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Birmingham, Cardiff and Exeter.

The Humanist Association says that those who profess to have no religion rose from 31% in 1983 to 51% in 2009 and believes that many who ticked "Christian" in the 2001 census did so for cultural rather than religious reasons.

The organisation argues that unless this year's census gives a more accurate picture of the non-religious population, the data will be used to justify increased state-funding for faith schools and other religious organisations.

The Advertising Standards Authority says that in 2009 the Christian Party's "There definitely is a God. So join the Christian Party and enjoy your life" became the most complained-about non-broadcast ad ever, attracting 1,204 complaints. The ad was a riposte to the British Humanist Association's "There is probably no god, now stop worrying and enjoy your life", which attracted 391 complaints.

Now: I have to say that I'm sorry to see that the BHA will be changing the wording on these posters. I like the punning quality, that sense of turning the tables, of seizing your opponents' biggest weapon and using it on them. The way it's been phrased up till now makes people pull up short, makes them stop, think, question, discuss. Some readers will, no doubt, object to it as taking the Lord's name in vain; more will probably skim over it and dismiss it as "stupid" or on the grounds that it "doesn't make sense". Why should anyone who doesn't believe in God (and who goes to these lengths to let you know they don't) ask you to do anything "for God's sake"? This is an example of "polysemy" (from the Greek: πολυ-, poly-, "many" and σήμα, sêma, "sign"). Polysemy is the capacity for a sign (e.g., a word, phrase, etc.) or signs to have multiple meanings (i.e. a large semantic field). It's a pivotal concept in several academic disciplines (linguistics, literary criticism, media studies, semiotics, social sciences). It's the kind of idea and practice that's at the core of the honours level Open University course that I tutor (E301: The Art of English). I'm going to use these posters as teaching material in the next tutorial for my students. I'm sure it's clear how replacing the current wording ("If you're not religious, for God's sake say so") with the new wording ("Not religious? In this year's census say so") takes the zing out of it. It's clear that the BHA is doing this in response to external pressure, that they're making this compromise so that they can still get across their message. But if I were involved in this campaign I'd be very disappointed (heck, I am disappointed, even as no more than an observer or commentator - or as a consumer of this sort of cultural product). They've still got the same sausage to sell, but now it's got very little sizzle.

Visit the British Humanist Association's news page about their campaign.

Go direct to a gallery of the British Humanist Association's Census campaign posters.