Attack on BHA is an attack on us all

Editorial by Terry Sanderson

The British Humanist Association was under fire this week for accepting £35,000 of public money to stage a series of seminars looking at equality issues in the workplace.

The attack originated from a Catholic barrister called Neil Addison, who runs a website called [link Religion Law. This mainly provides information on the current attempts by religious groups to force their doctrines into law through a series of court challenges. Addison concocted an email which he sent round to his subscribers list seeking to portray the grant to the BHA by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to defray the cost of these seminars into some kind of scandal.

But how Mr Addison can translate an attempt to raise awareness of equality matters into a threat to religious freedom results from Mr Addison applying rather less critical examination to this matter than he does to his court cases.

We are not of course suggesting that Mr Addison even as a lawyer has allowed his faith to blind him to the facts when he wrote: “It does really raise the question of whether the EHRC are actually willing to defend Religious Rights as they are obliged to by statute.”

Could we just remind readers that Part 2 of the Equality Act 2006 is entitled “Discrimination on grounds of religion or belief”. Then follows (in Section 44) the words:
(a) “religion” means any religion,
(b) “belief” means any religious or philosophical belief,
(c) a reference to religion includes a reference to lack of religion, and
(d) a reference to belief includes a reference to lack of belief.

The modest grant, of course, pales into insignificance besides the hundreds of millions that the Government pours into the pockets of religious groups every year. Take the Government’s “Faith Group Capacity Building Fund” – a mere £5million to help “faith groups” to ...well, “capacity build”, which seems to mean acquire the skills to ask for even more money. Or this £7.5million handout which is for other vague purposes. Or the recent grant of £950,000 to “Faithworks” which seems to be an organisation whose sole purpose is to advise other “faith groups” how to get money out of the Government – and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Almost every week there is some new massive payout to “the faith communities” with little sign of any substantive return on the investment. Now the Government is being asked to take on the whole responsibility for the upkeep of churches that no-one wants.

Nonetheless, Mr Addison’s selective and rather malignant musings were enthusiastically taken up by the Daily Telegraph. Read the report here.

The Telegraph headline suggests that the £35,000 was being spent on the atheist bus campaign, which the BHA is administering. It was a deception happily taken up and elaborated on by evangelical bloggers – note the headline, which bears no relation to the story) and high dudgeon from others who present the usually mild-mannered BHA as some kind of threat to the future of religion.

The Daily Telegraph — let us just say credulously — repeats the insulting idea that the awareness-raising campaign was being organised by “an atheist group” (not a description, I suspect, that the BHA would choose for itself) and approvingly repeating Neil Addison’s quote “it’s a bit like funding the Taliban to promote women’s rights.”

It’s usually the NSS that takes this kind of flak, so we sympathise that the BHA, which has tried so hard to foster its image of gentle humanism and interfaith engagement. It must be frustrating for them now to be portrayed as some kind of atheist fifth column, using the taxpayers’ money (which, as we all know, rightly belongs to the Church) to undermine and attack the nation’s faith.

The NSS stands shoulder to shoulder with the BHA against this kind of lurid misrepresentation and the blatant attempt to push the non-believing voice out of the debate on equality. Neil Addison has the cheek to say: “If we're having a debate on religion, should we be paying one side of the argument to hold it, especially with public money?”

I think maybe he shouldn’t go too far down that road or someone might take it upon themselves to tot up exactly how much the “faith communities” are draining from the taxpayers’ pocket.

I should explain, while we’re on the subject, that the NSS’s policy is not to seek or accept public funding, as we feel it provides justification for the huge amounts of money given to religion. If the cash-hungry churches can claim that atheist or humanist groups also get a share (a very paltry share, as the BHA grant shows) then everyone is catered for and, as the churches so frequently whisper into receptive Government ears, “you’ve given money to the atheists, now our church needs refurbishing, please supply a couple of million quid forthwith”.

See also:
Western Mail joins the attack

28 November 2008