Lancashire mayor opts for non-religious ceremonial

Councillor Marjorie Adams of Pendle in Lancashire has become the latest in a growing number of town hall mayors to have declined to appoint a religious chaplain. She is now looking for an alternative to the church service that has been traditional on the first Sunday of the mayor’s term.

Cllr Adams, who has just been installed as mayor, instead consulted veteran local secularist and atheist Hayward Lynn Millard about a format for a secular celebration in her home town of Barnoldswick.

Lynn — the name he’s best known by — lives in neighbouring Burnley, and has been officiating at non-religious ceremonies for over 40 years, and joined the National Secular Society in 1954. He was one of the first people in the country to officiate at a secular mayoral ceremony when in 1999 he addressed the mayoral gathering in Rossendale, Lancashire.

Welcoming the mayor’s decision to nail her secular colours to the mast he declared; “Her honesty and integrity are intact”.