“I want to make it clear that the Government works closely with the Church of England on a regular basis, as we do with all other faiths. I do not accept the suggestion that the Government discounts the contributions made by the Church.”
(Hazel Blears, Communities Secretary, Sunday Telegraph)

"I think it's up to us. That's the big message I'm putting out. There's no harm in praying, but I think we're really praying for the good nature of humans, as opposed to the good nature of a floating bloke with a beard upstairs with a big skirt in a damp cloud."
(Comedian Eddie Izzard on his American stand up tour)

“The Vatican favours a natural approach. No nasty chemicals, pills, jellies, ribbed accessories or any kind of (sorry, Cherie) "equipment" which might hinder the mass production of Catholic souls. And Italians, 88 per cent of whom describe themselves as Catholic, have responded with the lowest birth-rate in Europe. They have, it seems, chosen to emulate the sexual habits of the Virgin Mary.”
(Christina Patterson, Independent)

(Gregory Paul, OpEd News)

(By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, Alternet)

(Johann Hari, Independent)

The Church of England is set to become the biggest sponsor by far of academy schools, ensuring that middle class parents will find it easier to get an exclusive education for their children without having to pay fees for private schools.

Plans for a secular academy on the site of a Catholic college are being challenged by the Archdiocese of Liverpool.

Multi-award winning comedian Ricky Gervais has become an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.

Editorial by Terry Sanderson
Twelve hundred right-wing bishops and other clerics from the Anglican Church around the world have gathered in Jerusalem this week to participate in an alternative to the ten-yearly Lambeth Conference.

Soon after the report commissioned by the Church of England, Moral, but no Compass, which argued for more Government recognition of the work of churches, the Prime Minister has launched a Labour party “Faiths Task Force”.

Should religious belief be protected from “defamation”? Is respect for the sensibilities of religious believers compatible with freedom of speech? How should the EU respond to a UN Human Rights Council resolution that endorses restrictions on freedom of expression in the name of "respect for religions and beliefs”? These issues were discussed by MEPs and experts at a meeting of the EP Subcommittee on Human Rights yesterday (Thursday).

The Catholic Church has been criticised for refusing to apologise for the treatment of aboriginal Canadian children sent to church-run residential schools.

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain was one year old on June 21. In the short time since it was launched in June 2007, it has achieved much with volunteers alone.

If we accept human beings as being simply part of nature, with no supernatural element such as a “soul”, then we probably subscribe to the philosophy of Naturalism.

The American comedian George Carlin has died at the age of 71. He was a fierce satirist of religion, and even invented his own religion Frisbeetarianism. The central tenet was that when you died, your soul was flung on to the roof where it stayed for ever. Watch him in action.

Our spokesman Alistair McBay has been busy with media appearances and comments while the President and the Executive Director have been at a conference in Washington DC. This is his report: “I did a radio interview this week with BBC Radio Wales about the CofE report begging for privilege, discussing it with a vicar and a Muslim, and also the BBC News live session, repeated throughout the day last Saturday on the news and on R4, on the Hindu school in north London. The line I took on this was that in 2006, communities minister Ruth Kelly said the UK Hindu community was "a model of integration", speaking at the launch of the Ethnic Minorities Advisory Group. I pointed out that this had been achieved without a single segregated Hindu state school like the one now being opened, so we needed to know from Government if the successful model of integration it had identified was now being torn up. I said it seemed perverse that, having successfully integrated an ethnic minority with integrated schooling, we had now decided that future generations of Hindus would go through segregated schools, and that people would find it hard to understand how minorities spoke of the desire to be integrated on the one hand, yet demanded privilege and segregation on the other. There was other argument about parent choice which went the usual way.

I also won the debate at Durham Union Society with the motion “This house would abolish faith schools”. The heavy hitters lined up to oppose me all pulled out, including the Bishop of Durham, the Bishop of Jarrow and a woman who is, I think, the head of the Headteachers' Association, and I ended up debating against the former World Schools Debating Champion and a Yank who is at St Andrews, having attended a Christian college in the US where, he said, if you thought the world was 10,000 years old instead of 6,000, you were considered a liberal!”

Alistair also had this letter in the Independent

While in Washington DC last week, Keith Porteous Wood was called into the BBC studios there to debate the CofE report with Communities Secretary Hazel Blears on Radio 5 Live.

Terry Sanderson was on BBC Tees radio on Sunday, talking about the research that appears to show that atheists are more intelligent that religious believers. He was on LBC talking about the Muslim hairdresser case and also the BBC’s Asian Network on the same topic.

Keith Porteous Wood spoke to Oxford Humanist Group yesterday on the shenanigans at the UNHRC (see story above).

Terry Sanderson had this article on the Guardian’s Comment is Free (still time to comment). He also had a letter in the New Statesman http://www.newstatesman.com/letters and will be doing a newspaper review on Sunday morning on BBC London radio, around 7.10am.

20 June 2008

The NSS was quoted in the Church of England Newspaper in a story about whether politicians should bring their faith into parliament. (Available on-line only by subscription.)

The NSS helped honorary associate Nick Cohen with an article he wrote about the scandal of the West Midlands Police and the Channel 4 Dispatches programme.

The NSS was attacked by the new religious affairs correspondent at the Daily Telegraph for its support for pupils to be able to opt themselves out of RE and collective worship (see editorial).

Alistair McBay, the NSS’s Scottish representative had a letter in the Scotsman on Tuesday.

NSS honorary associate Mary Honeyball MEP wrote this excellent piece for the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog.

The NSS’s comments on the proposal to allow pupils to opt themselves out of collective worship and RE were reported in today’s Times Educational Supplement.

The NSS in this week's media.

Please send your letters for publication to letters@secularism.org.uk. We want to publish as many letters as possible, so please keep them brief. We reserve the right to edit. Opinions expressed in letters are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the NSS.

Please send your letters for publication to letters@secularism.org.uk. We want to publish as many letters as possible, so please keep them brief. We reserve the right to edit. Opinions expressed in letters are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the NSS.

Please send your letters for publication to letters@secularism.org.uk. We want to publish as many letters as possible, so please keep them brief. We reserve the right to edit. Opinions expressed in letters are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the NSS.
23 May 2008

Film: Inherit the Wind - BBC4, Saturday 28 June 7pm.
Brilliant courtroom drama based on the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. Directed by Stanley Kramer and starring Spencer Tracy and Frederick March. A school teacher is arrested for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution to his pupils. In the ensuing courtroom battle, liberal defence lawyer Henry Drummond is pitted against the fundamentalist Matthew Harrison Brady. The names may have been changed but it is clear that this whole sharply written script is based on the real events. Gene Kelly is cast unexpectedly as E.K. Hornbeck, the H.L. Mencken character.

Dr Who - BBC1Saturday, 28 June 7.10pm.
This is the episode in which Richard Dawkins makes a cameo appearance. Dawkins has another connection with Dr Who, in that he is married to Lalla Ward, the actress who played the second incarnation of the Doctor’s companion Romana, opposite her former husband, Tom Baker. Dawkins and Ward were introduced by Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy author and one-time Doctor Who script editor, Douglas Adams.

Next week's TV selections

Documentary: Jesus Camp
(Channel 4, Tuesday 6 May, 11.05pm).
An edited version of the documentary feature looking at the indoctrination of children by crazed evangelical Christians in the United States. The film features a crackpot so fanatical she shouldn’t be let within a thousand miles of children.

Film: Cromwell
(ITV3, Friday 9 May, 11.10pm).
Epic exploration of the English civil war, with Richard Harris’s aggressive warts-and-all Oliver Cromwell and Alec Guinness’s unyielding Charles I making an historical double act well worth catching. They bring past politics to vivid life and put paid to the idea that right and grace were on the side of the royalist Cavaliers as opposed to the Puritan Roundheads. It’s a bit long-winded, but compelling. Features some mighty battle scenes that take us back to a time when England had its own version of the Taliban running wild in the country.

Gaud and Bennett
Conway Hall, 7.30pm on Friday 11th July. Admission free.
A dramatised reading based on the life and times of D.M. Bennett.
GALHA and SPES invite you to a dramatisation based on the life and times of D.M Bennett (1818–1882) the revered and reviled Editor of the Truth Seeker – the newspaper devoted to science, morals and freethought, which was steeped in controversy in late19th Century America. Bennett was imprisoned for obscenity and a massive campaign was launched for his release. Bennett and many others who supported women’s rights, birth control and opposed dogmatic religion were vilified, persecuted, imprisoned and in some cases driven to suicide by a campaign led by religionists spearheaded by Anthony Comstock the US Post Office’s Special Agent and self-appointed arbiter of morals and “weeder in god’s garden”. (Comstock is played by NSS President, Terry Sanderson!). As we celebrate the ending of the Blasphemy Laws in the UK, this dramatisation highlights issues such as censorship and free speech which are as relevant today as they were then. The play will also feature Josephine Tilton who was willing to be imprisoned in order to defend a pamphlet about “free love”.

Gaud and Bennett is a Fire and Brimstones production and will be performed in the Library at Conway Hall, 7.30pm on Friday 11th July. Admission is free.

To be straight with you (DV8 Dance Theatre)
Fri and Sat, The Lowry, Pier 8, Salford Quays, Manchester 7.30pm
Have you heard the one about the gay devout Muslim, the lesbian rabbi and the gay Iraqi doctor? These are three of the 20 characters in DV8 Physical Theatre's new show. A frank and disturbing look at religion being used around the globe to justify homophobia, it tells stories that are straight to the point and heartbreaking. And every word is true.
Fri and Sat, The Lowry, Pier 8, Salford Quays, Manchester 7.30pm, £9.50 to £17.50. Tel: 0870 787 5780. www.dv8.co.uk

Oxford Humanists: Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, will ask "How effectively is the UN supporting [The Universal Declaration of] Human Rights?" Oxford Town Hall’s Court Room, Thurs. 19 June, 7 for 7.30pm. Further information: John White 01865 891876.

International Conscientious Objectors’ Day:
Thursday May 15, 12 noon at the commemorative stone in Tavistock Square, London WC1.
Annual ceremony of remembrance for COs and laying of carnations. Keynote speaker Norma Kember. Further details – www.rrk.freeuk.com

Gay and Lesbian Asylum Seekers - panel discussion
Friday May 16th, 7.30pm Amnesty Human Rights Centre, 17–25 New Inn Yard, London E2 3EA. Admission free
The desperate plight of LGBT asylum seekers will be explored in a panel discussion organised by The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) on Friday 16 May. Some gay people who are returned to their country of origin may face persecution, imprisonment or even death. The discussion aims to find ways for politicians, campaigners and supporters to support these victims of religious persecution.

09 May 2008