A Message From Claire Rayner

Join the Society

Be on the side of all humanity, the side of intelligence, rationality and decency

YOUR CHANCE TO JOIN THE BEST OF CAUSES

"I do hope you’ll join the Society, because its work helps keep alight the torch of clear rational thought and plain common sense in a world that is beset by confusion, superstition and very muddled thinking. If only half the people who we know share our views on the absurdity of the many antiquated beliefs that litter our world, the National Secular Society would be one of the biggest and most powerful in the country."

Open any newspaper lately and you’ll be confronted with news of some fresh religious conflict. Whether it’s Muslims and Hindus at war over Kashmir, Catholics and Protestants murdering each other in Northern Ireland or Christians and Muslims doing so in Indonesia, the ghastly carnage continues. And if it isn’t holy warfare it’s the promotion of some exploitative money-making New Age superstition like feng shui or miracle healing.

Irrationality and religious exploitation are mushrooming all around us and pose a severe threat to reason and civilisation; that is why the National Secular Society is as important now — maybe even more so — as when it was founded in 1866.

We are one of the few organisations that are fully committed to fighting superstition and religious privilege. We are up against enormously powerful institutions: the churches and a Government that seems determined to make us all into God-fearing Christians once more. As one of our Honorary Associates, Jonathan Meades of the Times so succinctly put it:

"If you believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden you are deemed fit for the bin. If you believe in transubstantiation, parthenogenesis and the rest of it, you’re deemed fit to run the country."

Our opponents often accuse us of being negative. But, as one of our past Presidents, Barbara Smoker, observed: the Society’s vigorous opposition to the forces of superstition, obscurantism and illiberalism could equally well be described as its vigorous support for progressive liberal causes. When the NSS campaigns against censorship, it is campaigning for freedom of expression; when it campaigns against the any of the social and fiscal survivals of religious privilege, it is campaigning for equality in a pluralist society.

We need your help and support so that we can make the voice of reason heard more loudly in our society. Join us today, and become part of what has been called "the best of causes".

Many prominent public figures have aligned themselves with the National Secular Society. From science we have Professor Richard Dawkins, whose books The Selfish Gene and Climbing Mount Improbable have brought Darwin’s theory of evolution back into public consciousness; and the late Professor Francis Crick, the Nobel prize-winning discoverer of DNA, was a long-standing Associate.

Influential playwrights Harold Pinter and Edward Bond are enthusiastic supporters, as is the best-selling novelist Iain Banks. From journalism, Polly Toynbee — the award-winning Guardian columnist — helps promote the cause whenever she can. Agony aunt to the nation, Claire Rayner, has been active in the Society for many years. Sir Ludovic Kennedy, whose recent book All in the Mind: A Farewell to God caused such controversy, is a well-known atheist. Gore Vidal, the American political thinker and writer, recently joined the illustrious gallery of Honorary Associates.

I hope you will join the Society, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.