Newsline 9 May 2014

Newsline 9 May 2014

Newsline is a weekly round-up of news and opinion from the NSS website. If you're not already a member, becoming one is the most tangible way of supporting our work. Our campaigning is wholly supported by our members, people like you who share our belief that secularism is an essential element in promoting equality between all citizens. Please join today.

News, Blogs & Opinion

NSS challenges Archbishop’s remarks over 'faith schools'

News | Sun, 4th May 2014

The National Secular Society has challenged the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, over his comments that Britain is a "deeply Christian country" and that church schools are "a very good use of social capital".

Welby denied that anything like the religious extremism that is being investigated in some Muslim-majority schools could happen in CofE schools.

"The way it's done with Church of England schools is that it's an expression of our love and service to the community," he said. "People seem to choose these schools in large numbers. They are often in the poorest parts of the country, we seek to love and serve people, as we should, through these schools - and have done for hundreds of years.

The National Secular Society has pointed to some of the weaknesses in Archbishop Justin Welby's justification for church schools.

The NSS's Executive Director, Keith Porteous Wood said:

"As the Archbishop says, the fundamentalism found in some minority schools is not seen in the Church's schools, but his Church is also banging the religious drum as hard as it can. It has made clear that it intends to use them for evangelising.

"Mr Welby fails to point out that his schools, run entirely at public expense, prioritise proselytising over serving the population who are steadily abandoning his pews. For instance, the Bishop of Oxford, head of education at the Church of England has said: "The clergy ought to have a camp bed in [church schools], for heaven's sake! We don't have to bemoan the fact that our Sunday School has collapsed if there are 300 children at the local church school!"

"The often strict selection criteria in some CofE schools mean that they do not serve the interests of the local community but the interests of a self-selecting minority who are prepared to commit themselves to church attendance, whether or not they are believers. This is an abuse of privilege that the CofE exploits to the maximum.

"While Church of England schools exist, schools for other faiths must also be permitted. Faith schools are creating divisions and resentment in communities and the sooner they are put under community control the better it will be for everyone."

Mr Wood continued: "Archbishop Welby's self-serving claim that this is 'a deeply Christian country' is completely undermined by his own Church's statistics showing Sunday attendance declining from 3.4% of population in 1968 to 1.4% in 2012.

"The Church's Establishment is often used as a justification by those claiming this is 'a deeply Christian country'. But Establishment, which Archbishop Welby is understandably so keen to retain, is an anachronism which these statistics of decline show the CofE has no justification or entitlement to.

"The UK should abandon the dwindling group of countries with established churches."

‘Halal hysteria’: Religious exemption from animal welfare law is the real issue

Opinion | Thu, 8th May 2014

Food retailers should be upfront about what they're serving up, but the main issue is one of animal welfare, and the religious exemption that allows animals to be slaughtered without being stunned, argues Stephen Evans.

Halal again hit the headlines this week, after the latest "revelations" that Pizza Express was serving up halal chicken to all its customers without their knowledge.

Following the media storm Pizza Express said it would "review its policy". As all Pizza Express chicken had been pre-stunned in accordance with UK law, one wonders what all the fuss was about. Some Sikhs and Christians, whose beliefs prevent them from eating meat dedicated to another god, may have their objections, but it's hard to see why most people find the idea of their meat being prayed over quite so objectionable.

One concern however is that with so much halal meat being produced (as it becomes the default position for national food outlets), we're entrenching employment discrimination in the meat industry and disadvantaging non-Muslims. According to the Halal Food Authority, some jobs at halal approved abattoirs are open only to "performing Muslims", and non-Muslims need not apply. Chains such as Pizza Express should be mindful of this.

But perhaps the public outcry over halal, now dubbed 'halal hysteria', is really a proxy for wider concerns many have about 'sharia creep' – the accommodation of Islamic practises in the UK, which they feel are starting to encroach upon what were previously secular spaces – food production, finance, law and state education.

Food retailers should be upfront about what they're serving, but surely the main issue surrounding halal and kosher meat is one of animal welfare, and the religious exemption from UK law that allows animals to be slaughtered without first being stunned.

The National Secular Society has long argued for an end to this exemption. But as long as exemptions are granted, it's necessary for meat from non-stun slaughter to be appropriately labelled, enabling consumers to avoid meat from animals not slaughtered humanely, if that's their choice.

The main source of opposition to method of slaughter labelling has been the religious slaughter industry.

When proposals to introduce mandatory labelling of meat from slaughter without stunning were brought forward by MEPs in 2010, the Jewish food lobby group Shechita UK unleashed a "professionally managed Europe-wide lobbying campaign" to block the proposals.

The proposal (known as Amendment 205) to label meat from slaughter without stunning was supported by MEPs, but later dropped by the European Council of Ministers following Shechita UK's campaign.

This is why I greeted a letter in the Telegraph this week, calling for all meat to be labelled with details of its slaughter, signed by Henry Grunwald, Chair of Shechita UK, with some scepticism.

Shechita UK say they are happy for method of slaughter labelling as long as religious methods of slaughter are not singled out. They argue that any labelling should include all methods of stunning and slaughter – captive bolt gun, electric shock, gassing and free-bullet shooting. They also say labelling should "identify the millions of animals for which the stunning process goes wrong".

There may be some merit in the argument to include all methods of killing on food labels, but the chance of this being supported by the meat industry is remote at best. Shechita UK and the Muslim Council of Britain know this, and their support for clearer labelling of meat on these terms is simply an attempt to get some good PR whilst making sure the labelling issue is kicked into the long grass.

It's important to remember that the only reason non-stun slaughter is permitted at all is because of a religious exemption from EU and UK law that requires all animals to be stunned before slaughter in order to minimise suffering. And this is the point that Shechita UK and the Muslim Council of Britain intentionally miss. That's what makes non-stun slaughter a specific issue of concern from a consumer rights perspective.

The Government has been clear that it would "would prefer that all animals were stunned before slaughter", but that it "accepts the importance which [Jews and Muslims] attach to the right to slaughter animals for food in accordance with their beliefs."

If religious groups are to be given privileged exemption from UK law, it seems reasonable to expect consumers to have the right to avoid meat from animals killed under that exemption.

In fact, meat from animals killed under the exemption is only supposed to be for the consumption of Muslims and Jews, but for economic reasons this targeting of supply is not enforced, and non-stun slaughter meat routinely sold on to the general market – which leads to unsuspecting members of the public being duped into buying meat from religious slaughter methods and at the same time artificially subsidising the religious slaughter industry.

This deceit needs to end.

A study is currently being undertaken by the European Commission on the viability of meat labelling with reference to stunning/non-stunning. The results of the study, initially foreseen for this month, will now not be available before December.

In the meantime, we can all put pressure of the Government to put an end to non-stun slaughter, or least ensure meat from such methods are properly labelled by signing the British Veterinary Association's e-petition.

Vatican unveils figures on its punishment of child abusers

News | Wed, 7th May 2014

The Vatican has, for the first time, revealed how it has disciplined priests accused of raping and molesting children.

According to the Holy See's UN ambassador in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, over the past decade, the Vatican has defrocked 848 priests who were believed to have raped or molested children, and sanctioned a further 2,572 priests for lesser offences. Sanctions included "a life of prayer and penitence."

Overall all, according to its officials, the Vatican handled more than 3,400 cases of sexual abuse since 2004.

The figures were revealed during the Vatican's examination by the UN Committee Against Torture this week.

During the examination, Archbishop Tomasi admitted that it was only in 2010 that the Vatican explicitly told bishops and religious superiors to report to police any credible cases of abuse, where local reporting laws required them to do so. According to an Associated Press report, previously, bishops and religious superiors had been "shuffling paedophile priests from diocese to diocese rather than subjecting them to church trials."

The Committee demanded a response from the Vatican to claims that the Vatican had given refuge to a papal envoy accused of sex abuse. In January, it was reported that a request for the extradition of Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, who faces accusations of sex abuse in Poland and in the Dominican Republic, was refused by the Vatican.

Archbishop Tomasi told the committee that there is no climate of impunity within the Church, and that "there is a total commitment to clean the house."

Campaigners and survivor groups have questioned this claim however, and highlighted the omission by the Vatican of any names or details of the child abusers sanctioned by the Church. David Clohessy, the director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said that whilst "every step towards more transparency about clergy sex crimes and cover-ups is good […] this one – the number of priests defrocked – is largely meaningless. Parents can't protect their kids from a number. What parents need are the names and whereabouts of child-molesting clerics."

Sue Cox, of Survivors Voice Europe, said in reaction to the examination: "The statistics of Tomasi are meaningless, he quotes meaningless figures but no names or details. He says our evidence of rape and abuse is "anecdotal" but churns out figures which cannot be verified.

"The Vatican simply cannot police itself. Even if it "cleans its house" and begins to adhere to the laws of the land, and even if we did see a change in safeguarding, we will still be left with hundreds of thousands of abuse survivors whose traumas are being ignored and trivialised."

During the examination, Archbishop Tomasi argued that the Holy See's obligation to enforce the UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT) stopped at the boundaries of the Vatican City state, stating that, "The Holy See intends to focus exclusively on Vatican City state."

This attempt by the Vatican to evade responsibility for the actions of the Catholic Church elsewhere in the world, and draw an "alleged distinction" between the treaty obligations of the city state and the Holy See was rejected by the Committee.

One committee expert and director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute, Felice Gaer, said the Holy See had to "show us that, as a party to the convention, you have a system in place to prohibit torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment when it is acquiesced to by anyone under the effective control of the officials of the Holy See and the institutions that operate in the Vatican City state."

Before the UN examination, the Vatican's chief spokesperson, the Reverend Federico Lombardi, had warned that it would be "deceptive" to link torture with the types of paedophile abuse committed by those in the Catholic Church. He called on the UN not give into pressure from nongovernmental organizations "with a strong ideological character" intent on framing the sexual abuse of minors as an issue of torture.

"The extent to which this is deceptive and forced is clear to any unbiased observer," Lombardi said.

In response, Sue Cox commented: "Frederico Lombardi has made it quite clear that he does not regard childhood clergy sexual abuse as torture as defined by the UN Convention against Torture. He even suggests that "ideological organisations" such as ours, are "deceptive". The pope also recently complained that the Church is being "singled out" and persecuted.

"Their PR machine is in full swing, but they contradict themselves and each other at every turn. This is a narcissistic organisation fighting to save its face, regardless of the damage caused to human beings."

Earlier this year, the UN committee on the rights of the child had expressed its concern that corporal punishment, including ritual beatings of children, remains widespread in some Catholic institutions, reaching "endemic levels".

Scottish Parliament challenged over 'Time for Reflection'

News | Tue, 6th May 2014

Campaigners in Scotland have called for the Scottish Parliament's weekly 'Time for Reflection' to be more representative of the diversity of religion and belief in Scotland.

Speakers leading Time for Reflection (TFR) are predominantly representatives of Scotland's different faith groups, but the slot is also open to those of no religious affiliation.

At a meeting of the Public Petitions Committee on 6 May, Edinburgh Secular Society (ESS) President Norman Bonney argued that TFR is dominated by religious voices and that the moral views of the non-religious half of the population are not heard by MSPs.

A motion approved by the Scottish Parliament in 1999 proposed that TFR would "follow a pattern based on the balance of beliefs in Scotland". However, according to Norman Bonney, contributions since then have heavily over-represented religious denominations. Although only 56% of Scots indicated in the 2011 census that they had a religion, Mr Bonney said respective contributions by religious denominations to TFR in the previous three parliamentary sessions from 1999 to 2011 were 98%, 87% and 86%.

Mr Bonney's petition proposes that presentations from representatives of religious denominations should to be limited to one half of all presentations and that 25% of all sessions should to be presented by atheists.

Coincidentally, on the day of the Public Petitions Committee meeting, TFR was presented by ESS Board member and Humanist Society Education Officer, Gary McLelland, who delivered a "humanist parable on the dangers of segregated schooling". It was only the fourth Humanist contribution in fifteen years of about 450 sessions.

The National Secular Society has called for the complete removal of Time for Reflection from formal proceedings of the Scottish Parliament.

Alistair McBay, NSS spokesperson for Scotland, said: "Time for Reflection clearly fails in its intention to be representative of the range of faith and belief in contemporary Scotland, but one has to question why anyone should be given a privileged platform to lobby Parliament on the basis on them belonging to a particular religion or belief community."

Meanwhile, the Scottish Parliament's Education and Culture Committee has been giving consideration to an ESS petition to remove non-elected but voting religious nominees (mostly Church of Scotland and Roman Catholic representatives) from Scottish council education committees. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has suggested that these arrangements do not meet the requirements of the UK Equality Act of 2010 which requires public authorities not to discriminate on religious grounds.

US Supreme Court backs prayers during government meetings

News | Tue, 6th May 2014

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that opening public meetings with prayer does not automatically violate the Constitution's ban on government endorsement of religion.

On a 5-4 vote the Supreme Court upheld the right of the town of Greece, New York, to open its meetings with mostly Christian prayers. The court found that sectarian prayer doesn't violate the Establishment Clause, as long as no religion is advanced or disparaged, and residents aren't coerced.

The court's decision was criticised by Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, which sponsored the lawsuit, and campaigns for the preservation of the principle of church-state separation. He said the decision "relegated millions of Americans – both believers and nonbelievers – to second-class citizenship".

"This ruling is out of step with the realities of modern-day America," Said Rev Lynn. "In a country where pluralism and diversity are expanding every day, a Supreme Court decision that gives the green light to 'majority-rules' prayer at local government is exactly what we don't need."

An opinion piece for the New York Times described the decision as "lamentable" and called the Supreme Court's ruling "a defeat for religious neutrality".

The Courts closely divided decision was split along ideological lines, with the conservative wing saying the prayers were acceptable, while the liberal justices said the prayers in question violated the First Amendment. The five justices in the majority were Roman Catholic. Of the four dissenters, three were Jewish and one was Catholic.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court's swing vote, wrote the majority opinion. He said the town's prayers were consistent with the high court's 1983 precedent in Marsh v. Chambers. That case made it clear that the long-standing practice of having prayers before State legislative sessions was lawful, based in large part on its historic nature.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan said the decision will foster majority rule on public prayer.

"I respectfully dissent from the Court's opinion because I think the Town of Greece's prayer practices violate that norm of religious equality – the breathtakingly generous constitutional idea that our public institutions belong no less to the Buddhist or Hindu than to the Methodist or Episcopalian," she wrote.

Americans United sponsored the legal action on behalf of two Greece residents, Susan Galloway, who is Jewish, and Linda Stephens, an atheist. They objected to the town board's practice of inviting clergy to open meetings with predominantly Christian prayers that left them feeling unwelcome and alienated.

Town officials had claimed members of all faiths and atheists were welcome to give the opening prayer, but official records show that two-thirds of the prayers delivered between 1999 and June 2010 contained references to "Jesus Christ", "Your Son", "the Holy Spirit" or "Jesus".

In the UK, a landmark ruling at the High Court in 2012 found there was no lawful place for prayer during formal proceedings of council meetings in England and Wales, following a case brought by the National Secular Society.

Read the Supreme Court ruling in Greece v Galloway in full

Also see:

A New Low At The High Court: Justices Approve 'Majority-Rules' Government Prayer Scheme

NSS Speaks Out

NSS executive director Keith Porteous Wood appeared on BBC news and was quoted by BBC online, Belfast Telegraph, Wales online and the Huffington Post challenging the Archbishop of Canterbury over his claims that Britain is a "deeply Christian country" and that church schools are "a very good use of social capital".

Our campaigns manager Stephen Evans also discussed the role of faith in education on BBC Leeds.

Stephen was also quoted calling for an end to non-stun slaughter and better labelling of meat from religious slaughter in The Independent, Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Sun, ITV, and International Business Times. He also discussed the topic on a number of regional BBC radio stations.

Terry Sanderson defended Channel 4's decision to broadcast a Ramadan season of programming in the Daily Mail after it became the most complained about broadcast of Channel 4's output.