Religious privilege as a local as well as a national issue

Mike Lake writes: The NSS works primarily with central issues – possible changes to legislation, responding to national religious issues etc. At the local level we face religious pressure every day – particularly with the slow but relentless increase in the number of faith schools resulting from the government preferring to give money to religiously-motivated, unaccountable “sponsors” rather than to democratically elected local authorities.

The C of E Dearing Report of 2001 set a target for 200 new C of E secondary schools and they are well on their way. Such schools tend to slip in without much notice, especially in more rural areas, since it is the “dear old harmless C of E”. It would be a different matter if they were Muslim schools!

At the same time we still have the total lunacy of encouraging extremist, evolution-denying, Christians to set up new schools and the Vardy empire continues to expand.

The NSS cannot deal with everything as religion expands its grip or fights for survival (the motive behind the C of E’s schools expansion) so we need to stop moaning, get off our comfortable backsides and start organising. Paying your NSS subscription is not enough to get the job done – it helps enormously, but it is not a substitute for putting your actions where your principles are.

In the last few months new secular groups have been set up in a small number of counties but we have huge gaps. We are not trying to rival other groups, humanists for example, as long as they are willing to be active within their area rather than just chatting about things and bewailing the state of the world. The SecularUK.org web site was established specifically to help people set up new groups and to start campaigning in their area.

The automatic “get in touch with secularists near you” function on the web site has been very successful with over 80 people adding their contact details within days of its launch. The site is now expanding to cover the issue of new faith schools: C of E, Catholic, Muslim, Evangelical Christian - whatever.

A proposal for a new C of E academy in Hereford is first on the list so the site is developing an Action Plan to help campaigns in other areas against new faith schools.

Of course, centrally, we want to get rid of all faith schools and turn them overnight into LEA controlled community schools – this can be done at zero cost because we pay for them anyway! However, that is pie in the sky at the moment – we can aim high but we need to fight each battle as it comes.

So, we urge you to become involved at your local level by visiting the SecularUK.org web site (http://www.secularuk.org), getting together with other like-minded people, and starting to bring about change in your area.
(16 March 2007)