Rethinking religion and belief in public life: a manifesto for change
The time has come to rethink religion's public role in order to ensure equality and fairness for believers and non-believers alike, says a major new report launched by the National Secular Society.
The report says that Britain's "drift away from Christianity" coupled with the rise in minority religions and increasing non-religiosity demands a "long term, sustainable settlement on the relationship between religion and the state".
Rethinking religion and belief in public life: a manifesto for change has been sent to all MPs as part of a major drive by the Society to encourage policymakers and citizens of all faiths and none to find common cause in promoting principles of secularism.
It calls for Britain to evolve into a secular democracy with a clear separation between religion and state and criticises the prevailing multi-faithist approach as being "at odds with the increasing religious indifference" in Britain.
Terry Sanderson, National Secular Society president, said: "Vast swathes of the population are simply not interested in religion, it doesn't play a part in their lives, but the state refuses to recognise this.
"Britain is now one of the most religiously diverse and, at the same time, non-religious nations in the world. Rather than burying its head in the sand, the state needs to respond to these fundamental cultural changes. Our report sets out constructive and specific proposals to fundamentally reform the role of religion in public life to ensure that every citizen can be treated fairly and valued equally, irrespective of their religious outlook."
Read the report:
Rethinking religion and belief in public life: a manifesto for change
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Add your endorsementComplete list of recommendations
Our changing society – Multiculturalism, secularism and group identity
1. The Government should continue to move away from multiculturalism and instead emphasise individual rights and social cohesion. A multi-faith approach should be avoided.
2. The UK is a secularised society which upholds freedom of and from religion. We urge politicians to consider this, and refrain from using "Christian country" rhetoric.
The role of religion in schools
Faith schools
3. There should be a moratorium on the opening of any new publicly funded faith schools.
4. Government policy should ultimately move towards a truly inclusive secular education system in which religious organisations play no formal role in the state education system.
5. Religion should be approached in schools like politics: with neutrality, in a way that informs impartially and does not teach views.
6. Ultimately, no publicly funded school should be statutorily permitted, as they currently are, to promote a particular religious position or seek to inculcate pupils into a particular faith.
7. In the meantime, pupils should have a statutory entitlement to education in a non-religiously affiliated school.
8. No publicly funded school should be permitted to prioritise pupils in admissions on the basis of baptism, religious affiliation or the religious activities of a child's parent(s).
9. Schools should not be able to discriminate against staff on the basis of religion or belief, sexual orientation or any other protected characteristics.
Religious education
10. Faith schools should lose their ability to teach about religion from their own exclusive viewpoint and the law should be amended to reflect this.
11. The Government should undertake a review of Religious Education with a view to reforming the way religion and belief is taught in all schools.
12. The teaching of religion should not be prioritised over the teaching of non-religious worldviews, and secular philosophical approaches.
13. The Government should consider making religion and belief education a constituent part of another area of the curriculum or consider a new national subject for all pupils that ensures all pupils study of a broad range of religious and non-religious worldviews, possibly including basic philosophy.
14. The way in which the RE curriculum is constructed by Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education (SACREs) is unique, and seriously outdated. The construction and content of any subject covering religion or belief should be determined by the same process as other subjects after consultation with teachers, subject communities, academics, employers, higher education institutions and other interested parties (who should have no undue influence or veto).
Sex and relationships education
15. All children and young people, including pupils at faith schools, should have a statutory entitlement to impartial and age-appropriate sex and relationships education, from which they cannot be withdrawn.
Collective worship
16. The legal requirement on schools to provide Collective Worship should be abolished.
17. The Equality Act exception related to school worship should be repealed. Schools should be under a duty to ensure that all aspects of the school day are inclusive.
18. Both the law and guidance should be clear that under no circumstances should pupils be compelled to worship and children's right to religious freedom should be fully respected by all schools.
19. Where schools do hold acts of worship pupils should themselves be free to choose not to take part.
20. If there are concerns that the abolition of the duty to provide collective worship would signal the end of assemblies, the Government may wish to consider replacing the requirement to provide worship with a requirement to hold inclusive assemblies that further pupils' 'spiritual, moral, social and cultural education'.
Independent schooling
21. All schools should be registered with the Department for Education and as a condition of registration must meet standards set out in regulations.
22. Government must ensure that councils are identifying suspected illegal, unregistered religious schools so that Ofsted can inspect them. The state must have an accurate register of where every child is being educated.
Freedom of expression - Freedom of expression, blasphemy and the media
23. Any judicial or administrative attempt to further restrict free expression on the grounds of 'combatting extremism' should be resisted. Threatening behaviour and incitement to violence is already prohibited by law. Further measures would be an illiberal restriction of others' right to freedom of expression. They are also likely to be counterproductive by insulating extremist views from the most effective deterrents: counterargument and criticism.
24. Proscriptions of "blasphemy" must not be introduced by stealth, legislation, fear or on the spurious grounds of 'offence'. There can be no right to be protected from offence in an open and free secular society.
25. The fundamental value of free speech should be instilled throughout the education system and in all schools.
26. Universities and other further education bodies should be reminded of their statutory obligations to protect freedom of expression under the Education (No 2) Act 1986.
Religion and the law
Civil rights, 'conscience clauses' and religious freedom
27. We are opposed in principle to the creation of a 'conscience clause' which would permit discrimination against (primarily) LGBT people. This is of particular concern in Northern Ireland.
28. Religious freedom must not be taken to mean or include a right to discriminate. Businesses providing goods and services, regardless of owners' religious views, must obey the law.
29. Equality legislation must not be rolled back in order to appease a minority of religious believers whose views are out-of-touch with the majority of the general public and their co-religionists.
30. The UK Government should impose changes on the rest of the UK in order to comply with Human Rights obligations. Every endeavour should be made by to extend same sex marriage and abortion access to Northern Ireland.
Conscience 'opt-outs' in healthcare
31. Efforts to unreasonably extend the legal concept of 'reasonable accommodation' and conscience to give greater protection in healthcare to those expressing a (normally religious) objection should be resisted.
32. Conscience opt-outs should not be granted where their operation impinges adversely on the rights of others.
33. Pharmacists' codes should not permit conscience opts out for pharmacists that result in denial of service, as this may cause harm. NHS contracts should reflect this.
34. Consideration should be given to legislative changes to enforce the changes to pharmacists codes recommended above.
The use of tribunals by religious minorities
35. The legal system must not be undermined. Action must be taken to ensure that none of the councils currently in operation misrepresent themselves as sources of legal authority.
36. Work should be undertaken by local authorities to identify sharia councils, and official figures should be made available to measure the number of sharia councils in the UK to help understand the extent of their influence.
37. There needs to be a continuing review by the Government of the extent to which religious 'law', including religious marriage without civil marriage, is undermining human rights and/or becoming de facto law. The Government must be proactive in proposing solutions to ensure all citizens are able to access their legal rights.
38. All schools should promote understanding of citizenship and legal rights under UK law so that people – particularly Muslim women and girls – are aware of and able to access their legal rights and do not regard religious 'courts' as sources of genuine legal authority.
Religious exemptions from animal welfare laws
39. Laws intended to minimise animal suffering should not be the subject of religious exemptions. Non-stun slaughter should be prohibited and existing welfare at slaughter legislation should apply without exception.
40. For as long as non-stun slaughter is permitted, all meat and meat products derived from animals killed under the religious exemption should be obliged to show the method of slaughter.
41. In public institutions it should be unlawful not to provide a stunned alternative to non-stun meat produce.
Religion and public services
Social action by religious organisations
42. The Equality Act should be amended to suspend the exemptions for religious groups when they are working under public contract on behalf of the state.
43. Legislation should be introduced so that contractors delivering general public services on behalf of a public authority are defined as public authorities explicitly for those activities, making them subject to the Human Rights Act legislation.
44. It should be mandatory for all contracts with religious providers of publicly-funded services to have unambiguous equality, non-discrimination and non-proselytising clauses in them.
45. Public records of contracts with religious groups should be maintained and appropriate measures for monitoring their compliance with equality and human rights legislation should be put in place.
46. There should be an enforcement mechanism for the above, which would for example receive and adjudicate on complaints without complainants having to take legal action.
Hospital chaplaincy
47. Religious care should not be funded through NHS budgets.
48. No NHS post should be conditional on the patronage of religious authorities, nor subject directly or indirectly to discriminatory provisions, for example on sexual orientation or marital status.
49. Alternative funding, such as via a charitable trust, could be explored if religions wish to retain their representation in hospitals.
50. Hospitals wishing to employ staff to provide pastoral, emotional and spiritual care for patients, families and staff should do so within a secular context.
Institutions and public ceremonies
Disestablishment
51. The Church of England should be disestablished
52. The Bishops' Bench should be removed from the House of Lords. Any future Second Chamber should have no representation for religion whether ex-officio or appointed, whether of Christian denominations or any other faith. This does not amount to a ban on clerics; they would eligible for selection on the same basis as others.
Remembrance
53. The Remembrance Day commemoration ceremony at the Cenotaph should become secular in character. Ceremonies should be led by national or civic leaders and there should be a period of silence for participants to remember the fallen in their own way, be that religious or not.
Monarchy and religion
54. The ceremony to mark the accession of a new head of state should take place in the seat of representative secular democracy, such as in Westminster Hall and should not be religious.
55. The monarch should no longer be required to be in communion with the Church of England nor ex officio be Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and the title "Defender of the Faith" should not be retained.
Parliamentary prayers
56. We believe Parliament should reflect the country as it is today and remove acts of worship from the formal business of the House.
Local democracy and religious observance
57. Acts of religious worship should play no part in the formal business of parliamentary or local authority meetings.
Public broadcasting, the BBC and religion
58. The BBC should rename Thought for the Day 'Religious thought for the day' and move it away from Radio 4's flagship news programme and into a more suitable timeslot reflecting its niche status. Alternatively it could reform it and open it up to non-religious contributors.
59. The extent and nature of religious programming should reflect the religion and belief demographics of the UK.
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Heads of state shouldn’t have to swear religious oaths
A challenge to Ireland's religious presidential oath should be supported – and prompt questions across the Irish Sea, says Chris Sloggett.
Over the last few years Ireland has made several steps in a secularist direction.
Same-sex marriage has been legalised. Abortion and blasphemy have been decriminalised. Politicians have made efforts – albeit questionably handled – to divest religious patronage from schools, in a country where around 90% of primary schools are Catholic. The government has declared its intention to support inclusive education on relationships and sexuality, creating tension with the Catholic Church.
Three years ago Leo Varadkar – who was then the prime minister, is currently deputy PM and is set to return to the top job next year – gave an explicit statement of intent. During a visit from the pope, and amid continuing revelations about the Catholic Church's mishandling of sexual abuse, he called for "a new, more mature relationship between church and state in Ireland – a new covenant for the 21st century".
But the commitment to secularist principles only appears to go so far. Disappointingly, the government has decided to oppose a challenge to Ireland's religious presidential oath.
On taking up the office, Ireland's president – and members of the council of state, a presidential advisory body – are constitutionally required to swear an oath "in the presence of almighty God". Earlier this year Ireland's current president Michael Higgins (pictured) expressed support for replacing this oath with an affirmation. Now the co-leader of the Social Democrats and four other public figures have taken a case to the European Court of Human Rights. They note that they, along with plenty of people in Ireland, would have "a conscientious objection" to swearing the current oath.
In response the government is arguing that the case should be thrown out, on the grounds that the claimants shouldn't be regarded as "victims" and therefore their rights haven't been violated. It also says the oath is "necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others".
But that's an unconvincing reason for an oath to be religious. The idea that religion is a precondition for morality isn't just open to debate; it's often actively damaging. Consider the Catholic Church's continuing child abuse scandals, or the recent report which highlighted the devastating impact of church-controlled mother and baby homes in Ireland. As Ciara Kelly, a presenter for the Irish radio station Newstalk, said in a discussion on the subject last week: "We do not need the presence of 'almighty God' for us to be moral or ethical."
The government's submission also says: "In line with the court's case law, pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness – including respect for religious diversity – must be regarded as conducive to public order in a democratic society." But that's part of the problem which the litigants have with the current oath. The religious requirement sends the message that an office holder's suitability for public office is dependent on their personal beliefs.
The claimants will need to clear a high bar to convince the ECHR that the oath violates their human rights. And even if the court rules that the current oaths breach the rights of non-believers, a referendum will be needed to change them. But in recent days both The Irish Times and The Sunday Times have argued for change. The claimants' arguments are worth noting and supporting. And the case should raise questions across the Irish Sea too.
Parliamentarians at Westminster have had the right to make a secular affirmation since the passing of the Oaths Act in 1888. This followed National Secular Society founder Charles Bradlaugh's struggle to enter parliament, where he was effectively barred from taking his seat after being elected four times. But a row over the oath which the UK's head of state swears may now be looming.
As things stand, Prince Charles is set to swear three oaths when he becomes king. He will promise to be a true and faithful Protestant; to uphold the Presbyterian Church of Scotland; and to uphold the rights and privileges of the Church of England.
In 2018 a paper from UCL's Constitution Unit outlined several ways these oaths could evolve. It noted that the current oaths date from the period after the 'glorious revolution' of 1688, when Catholic Europe was still considered to be an "existential threat", and said they should be revised or dropped in a more secular and pluralistic society. The authors suggested several possible reformulations. The boldest of these would involve an oath about the union; an oath to uphold the constitution and laws; and an oath to the people.
Both the UCL paper and the case in Ireland show there are alternatives to the status quo. If policy makers view British citizens as equals, regardless of their religious identity or lack of it, they should consider them. And they should end the arrangement which requires our head of state to swear to promote particular religious institutions, or to practise – or pretend to practise – a particular religion.
Image: Michael Higgins, © Irish Defence Forces, via Flickr [CC BY 2.0; cropped to fit]
The C of E has serious questions to answer over the death of a gay priest
A coroner's report has laid bare the Church of England's cruel and scandalous handling of the case of Alan Griffin, who killed himself following unfounded accusations of child exploitation, says Keith Porteous Wood.
Last week a coroner issued a damning report into the tragic case of Anglican priest Alan Griffin (pictured), who killed himself in November 2020.
The report made clear that Griffin died as he couldn't cope with a Church of England investigation into his conduct. It said the investigation had dragged on for over a year, before he ended his life "without ever having the allegations and their source plainly set out for him".
The church's basis for investigating Griffin was "concerns of possible child exploitation". The coroner highlighted confusion and a lack of care in the church's safeguarding team over the way this allegation was registered. There were neither complainants, witnesses nor accusers. And the "source" was the casually collected verbal memoirs (described as a "brain dump") of a retiring head of operations (HOO).
The principal basis of the "concerns" was that Alan Griffin had supposedly admitted he had "used rent boys". C of E staff reported that the head of operations had used this phrase "from start to finish" in meetings and emphasised that these were "Father Griffin's own words". But under questioning from the coroner, it became clear that Alan Griffin "had not actually said this".
The HOO also told the coroner his understanding of rent boys was that these were "adult male prostitutes". Yet this alone became the pretext for the investigation into "child exploitation".
The coroner's report has now shown how groundless even the initial suspicions against Griffin were. The coroner ruled Alan Griffin: "did not abuse children"; "did not have sex with young people under the age of 18; "did not visit prostitutes"; and "did not endanger the lives of others by having sex with people whilst an HIV risk". She added: "No person said they had been the subject of or had witnessed any concerning behaviour, save that Father Griffin had been seen to have dinner with men in an Italian restaurant, for which he might have paid the bill."
The report has also highlighted further serious missteps from the church. The team of senior professionals who handled the case failed to "check the source of the information the HOO gave", or to "take responsibility for the adoption of most basic evidence-taking protocols".
In relation to sensitive data disclosed by the church to the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), to which Alan Griffin converted and became a priest, the coroner observed that "there seemed almost to be a lack of recognition that the RCC was a different organisation", seemingly raising data protection concerns. A complaint along these lines has been made by one of Alan Griffin's long-standing close friends.
The C of E's safeguarding officer shared the church's groundless suspicions by email with the RCC, even though they did not properly represent her view of the allegations; she did not believe that there was any evidence of sexual activity with a minor, nor any reason to investigate. She also gratuitously disclosed that Alan Griffin was HIV positive, but not that he "was being bullied by parishioners [and …] had "attempted suicide when diagnosed as HIV+"; nor that his HIV status was "viral load undetectable". The email was seen by the archdeacon and the safeguarding manager before it was sent.
The coroner also highlighted the risk that something similar could happen again, not least because output from the HOO's "brain dump" had become the subject of a report mentioning 42 members of the clergy of the London & Westminster Diocese.
The coroner noted that the C of E had not been fully engaged in the inquest process until last month. She said she often encountered organisations which had undertaken "meaningful attempts at improvement by the time of the inquest", but this was "not the case" with the church. The church only decided a review to learn lessons would be worthwhile once its staff had been called to the inquest as witnesses.
The coroner also found that C of E witnesses had undertaken a "lack of appropriately meaningful reflection", with the "notable exception" of a safeguarding adviser. And the coroner added that she had "received submissions on behalf of the Church of England regarding any prevention of future deaths report". These submissions – note the plural – had "impressed upon me that referrals to child protection and safeguarding professionals must not be reduced" and "urged me not to include any concerns that may be taken as a criticism of clerics or staff for not filtering or verifying allegations".
This last observation is by far the most concerning: the established church appears to have felt sufficiently entitled to attempt to interfere with the judicial process. And as the coroner noted, "a duty of care and competence in a situation such as this one is not in any way incompatible with the moral duty we all have, and the legal duty that bodies such as the church have, to try to keep children and the vulnerable safe".
The archbishop of Canterbury is now required in law to respond by 3 September. It will be significant to see whether he addresses questions including:
- The long-standing friend is convinced that the behaviour of both churches can only be explained by their homophobia. How far is it credible that what is described above is solely incompetence rather than victimisation? Did Alan Griffin's sexuality have any bearing on this? And if so, what does this say about the C of E's ongoing attitude to homosexuality?
- Will the church subject those whose conduct has been seriously called into question to a disciplinary process? We understand that some in the church are determined this be done.
- Have years of inquiries, lessons-learned and criticism from the Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse had any significant positive impact on the church's culture?
The Church of England's disregard for the safety of this priest, and the many serious errors it made in its reporting, were cruel. Its utter disregard for the duty of confidentiality that it owed Father Griffin when it passed these unfounded allegations to the Catholic Church – even when it knew they were untrue – was scandalous.
Once again, the church's conduct has highlighted a culture of entitlement, with devastating effects. Often when the C of E faces serious criticism, particularly over its conduct on abuse, it pays lip service to the need for lessons to be learned before reverting to protecting its reputation and continuing as before.
Last year, Archbishop Welby described the findings of the first public abuse inquiry as "profoundly and deeply shocking". Now, for the first time ever, a coroner has personally called him to account. Will anything change this time?
Schools aren’t there to save the church
The Church of England's new evangelical missional strategy should lead us to question its entitlement to proselytise in schools, argues Stephen Evans.
This article is available in audio format, as part of our Opinion Out Loud series.
In a bid to reverse the precipitous decline in Anglican affiliation, archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell has come up with a plan to "revitalise" the ailing Church of England.
Cottrell's "Vision and Strategy" paper proposes setting up tens of thousands of 'worshipping communities', essentially led by the evangelical laity. The plans reflect the growing influence of evangelicalism within the church under Justin Welby's tenure as archbishop of Canterbury.
The plans have caused considerable consternation amongst the clergy. Much of this stems from the apparent desire to deprioritise the parish system in favour of 'groovy' house churches led by lay people rather than priests. Writing in Church Times, Andrew Brown called the plan a "suicide note", likening the proposals to the church "tearing off its buildings and its priests, and rushing stark naked into a world that couldn't care less".
But given the church's privileged and prominent public role, it isn't only the Anglican faithful that should be perturbed. The new evangelical surge will ring alarm bells for anyone concerned about religion's propensity to impose itself where it isn't wanted.
Speaking in the Synod, Prudence Dailey, a lay member for Oxford Diocese, said the church needed to "reach people where they are".
One place where impressionable people are, of course, is in school.
Unsurprisingly, the Church of England's vision is very much focused on children and young people. According to the archbishop of York, his strategy will involve a "bolder commitment to Christian education and ministry with children, young people and students". He says he want to "double the number of children and young active disciples in the Church of England by 2030". To achieve this there will be a "particular emphasis on work with children and young people" and full utilisation of "the resource and opportunity of our church schools."
But the church's ambitions extend beyond church schools. The C of E's 'Vision for Education' document from 2016 makes clear its intention to influence the education of children and young people in community schools, independent schools, sixth form colleges, FE colleges and universities.
Utilising state-funded education for evangelical purposes is educationally inappropriate and insensitive to the diversity of religion and belief in modern Britain. But a combination of desperation and missionary zeal within the church means it will stop at nothing in trying to save itself.
The church does of course have every right to "spread the good news" or "make Christ known", as Cottrell puts it, but it shouldn't have the right to do this via state-funded education. Unfortunately, politicians' bias towards the status quo and their seemingly unshakable deference to religious interests means they lack the backbone to stand up for this important principle.
Despite church attendance falling 40% in the last 30 years, the Church of England's role in state education has increased. In part thanks to Anglican bishops' unique ability to shape legislation, and parliament's and the government's unwillingness to challenge the church on anything, the legal framework that underpins England's schools is ill-equipped to stand up to inappropriate evangelism. In fact, it positively supports it.
For a start, the government continues to fund faith schools, which are run by religious groups to advance their own interests whilst providing state education. The Church of England controls over four and a half thousand state-funded schools in England. So many in fact that almost three in ten families have little or no option other than a church school. Academisation has also allowed churches to expand their reach beyond faith schools and increase their influence over all schools, including those with no religious character.
Religious education, once the only compulsory subject, remains mandatory for all pupils in state-funded schools, despite being unpopular and having an unclear educational purpose. Controlled by religious interest groups, the subject provides yet more space for the promotion of faith. Schools with a religious character still teach RE confessionally, with little pretence of it being objective, critical or pluralistic.
And, inexplicably, the law still requires schools to provide a daily act of broadly Christian collective worship, providing evangelicals with yet another platform to impose Christian faith and practice on pupils.
Despite all of the above, just one per cent of 18–24-year-olds say they identify with the C of E.
Nevertheless, undeterred, the Church of England is placing young people right at the centre of its new missionary offensive in a last-ditch attempt to resurrect itself. Cottrell insists his vision is not motivated by the "downward sloping graphs" but by a desire to share "the abundant life we have in Christ" with "everyone". Either way, he apparently sees easy access to children and young people through state-funded schools as a God-given right.
An institutionally homophobic organisation with a missionary zeal is hardly an ideal provider of state education in one of the world's most secular and religiously diverse nations.
Children, like adults, should be afforded freedom of religion or belief – a right protected by article 14 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Allowing schools to be used as mission fields undermines young people's freedom of thought, conscience and religion. That's why the National Secular Society will continue to lobby for an inclusive, secular education system that protects pupils from evangelicals of all religious stripes.
And as an increasingly influential evangelical strand of Anglicanism takes hold, the time is right to rethink the Church of England's privileged role in state education, not to mention its established status as the national church.
Picture: Justin Welby (left) and Stephen Cottrell, fourthandfifteen, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Will the government protect the ethos of secular schools?
The Department for Education's protections for the secular community ethos of non-faith academies are inadequate. This enables a consolidation of religious control and undermines accountability, argues Alastair Lichten.
Religious privilege is built into England's school system, with around a third of state schools having a formal religious designation. But as the National Secular Society's 2020 report Power grab: Academisation and the threat to secular education found, religious control of education is also extending beyond these faith schools into those which are nominally secular. As the government seeks to turn all schools into academies, the community ethos of non-faith schools risks being eroded.
Among our findings in Power grab, we revealed that more than 2,600 former community schools are now in multi-academy trusts (MATs) with religious ethos and governance. Across the country, schools which supposedly have no religious designation are facing pressure to promote religious groups' interests. And in April, the education secretary announced a new pilot scheme to increase the number of C of E and Catholic multi academy trusts. This will risk exacerbating these problems.
We have raised these issues with the Department for Education for the last decade, but ministers and officials have not been responsive. They point to clauses in the funding agreements of mixed-MATs (which contain faith and non-faith schools) requiring that a community ethos formally be protected through the local governing body. These may protect against the introduction of direct religious discrimination or an openly denominational curriculum, but time and again we have seen religious MATs impose an informal ethos on non-faith schools under their control. This can include changes to extra-curricular activities, worship policies, or the selection of resources or training from faith-based organisations.
Theoretically you can complain to the Education and Schools Funding Agency (ESFA), as a trust failing to protect a school's community ethos could be in breach of its funding agreement. But given the limited official interpretation of those clauses, this would be a difficult case to make. To our knowledge, the ESFA has not upheld any such complaints. Part of the problem is the perception – encouraged by the C of E, our laws on collective worship and the structure of RE – that a community ethos should mean a school is generically Christian by default.
So, this month I wrote to Baroness Berridge, minister for the school system, asking her to set out meaningful protections for the community ethos of secular schools entering MATs. We're calling on the DfE to take three tangible steps to genuinely protect non-faith academies.
Firstly, we've made specific suggestions for changes to guidance for mixed-MATs and the model funding agreements mentioned above, so that a community ethos is properly defined and protected. Internal guidance may go further. But it's difficult for civil society to hold schools or the DfE accountable to standards which aren't made public. Making the protection of a community ethos more explicit should preclude the imposition of a faith ethos in such schools. Local governing bodies should report on and act to ensure all policies are consistent with the community ethos, including raising concerns where trust-wide policies may impact this.
Secondly, a school's community ethos should be inspected as part of its overall assessment. Faith bodies receive public funding to inspect 'their' schools to ensure they are promoting a rigorous religious ethos. The C of E and Catholic Church even have special arrangements with the DfE meaning they can force a re-brokering if they are unhappy with the protection for the ethos. Earlier this year we published research into the costs and impacts of these inspections in our report Religiosity inspections: the case against faith-based reviews of state schools There is no sectoral body representing community-ethos schools in the same way as the C of E's National Society or the Catholic Education Service, but ministers could require Ofsted inspections to ensure schools are promoting an inclusive community ethos. In 2010 the government removed a duty on Ofsted to inspect schools' promotion of community cohesion; this could help to address the gap this has left.
Thirdly, the DfE should work with appropriate partners to ensure that teacher, governor and senior leadership training provides advice and support on maintaining and developing a community ethos. If you want to take on almost any position in a publicly funded faith school, you will be required to support the ethos. This is reinforced throughout ongoing professional development organised by faith groups. Teacher training covers the importance of an inclusive ethos, but we're not aware of any comparable focus specifically on a community ethos.
These comparatively simple changes could make an immediate difference. In Power grab, we also called for more wide-ranging changes to remove the special privileges given to faith groups, to the detriment of community schools, during academisation.
Ultimately, we need a cultural change to ensure a community ethos is valued by officials and developed in all non-faith schools. While schools have a faith ethos, we also need to ensure this is not used as a free pass to do whatever they like. It's not just about protecting secular schools today, it's about showing how community schools can educate children from all religious backgrounds together, without pushing religious worldviews on them. This could help provide a model for the positive transition we need away from faith-based schooling altogether.
If you have concerns about academisation introducing or strengthening religious control over your school, please get in touch
Image: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.com.
Defending Muslim women’s rights requires a willingness to criticise Islam
Islamic scripture is being used to justify attacks on women's rights in many countries. Secular law is a crucial defence – and shielding Islam from criticism undermines efforts to assert it, says Kunwar Khuldune Shahid.
On Saturday, the Taliban issued a decree in Afghanistan's provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar demanding that all local unmarried females above 15, and widows, be 'handed over' to jihadists 'fighting in the path of Allah'. As the Taliban hope to return to power amid withdrawal of US-led troops from Afghanistan, they're preparing ground to reestablish their grotesque 'Islamic emirate', asking women not to leave houses without a hijab or without a mehram (a male relative or guardian approved by Islamic scriptures). The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, insist that women should only be allowed to live within Islamic mandates, which in turn reduces them to male-owned property that can be in the shape of sex slaves for jihadists, subordinated wives, and a general embodiment of male 'honour' in a violently patriarchal society.
The Taliban's gory implementation of Islamic scriptures, thankfully, isn't a reality in a vast majority of Muslim-majority countries. However, in many of these states Islam continues to be used to subjugate women and deny them their universal rights, resulting in Muslim-majority countries often dominating the bottom of most gender equality indices. Where the theocratic Islamic states like Saudi Arabia and Iran have long suppressed women with impunity owing to their undiluted upholding of sharia, many of the seemingly democratic Muslim countries have also piggybacked on Islam as a rationale to deny basic human rights.
Afghanistan's neighbour Pakistan, for instance, is currently deliberating over whether or not Islam allows domestic violence. Pakistan's Council of Islamic Ideology, which maintains Islam gives men the right to 'lightly beat' wives or marry girls as young as nine years of age, will decide if it is 'un-Islamic' to penalise violence against women perpetrated by mehrams. Meanwhile, former playboy and cricketer Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, continues to brazenly blame women for sexual violence, endorsing his rape apologia through the Islamic "concept of purdah". In April, Pakistan's women's rights marchers were booked for 'blasphemy', in a country where sacrilege against Islam is punishable by death.
From Bangladesh to Malaysia to Nigeria, sharia clauses continue to clash with civil law even in Muslim-majority democracies. On June 28, a woman was given 100 lashes for sex outside of marriage in the officially secular Indonesia's Aceh province, which enforces Islamic law. Even women from Muslim minorities in the UK, the US, India and other states can face large scale discrimination in personal matters, including marriage, divorce and inheritance, if courts allow rulings using sharia.
Some of the Islamic clauses used to deny women's rights come from the fourth chapter of the Quran an-Nisa (The Women), which establishes female inheritance as half of men, upholds male supremacy, and allows husbands to beat 'disobedient' wives. The Quran's Chapter 24 an-Nur (The Light) mandates lashes as punishment for sex outside of marriage, allows female sex slaves, and establishes sexist modesty codes by asking women to cover up — including their hair — in front of those who aren't mehrams, so as to not be harassed.
Child marriage is often justified using the example of Muhammad's marriage to six-year-old Aisha, as narrated by Aisha herself in Sahih al-Bukhari, a compilation of the sayings of Islam's prophet. Jihadist groups like Isis or the Taliban cite hadiths on forced sexual intercourse with war captives and slaves to recreate the horrors of sexual violence against women arguing that they're at war with the west or local regimes.
Of course, Islamic scriptures are far from being the only misogynistic religious sources. Orthodox Jews and Christians, or indeed Hindus and Buddhists, can quote their texts brimming over with ghastly misogyny. In fact, gender equality—and its offshoot ideas like sexual consent—is barely a few decades old concept and hence is gapingly missing across scriptures written millennia ago. However, other religious communities have tended to progress further towards making clear distinctions between orthodox religionists and the rest, along with, more crucially, subordinating religious law to secular civic codes.
As a result, while other religions have gradually evolved into a wide gamut of adherents treating the scripture from literal divine commandment to a now outmoded guidebook, Muslims across the ideological divide are expected to endorse the Quran as Allah's unadulterated word valid till the end of time. Therefore, while the progressives from other religions can shun verses contradicting modern day values as obsolete or irrelevant, their Muslim counterparts are often left with an unenviable task of arguing that the fast-evolving humankind actually received its complete moral code 14 centuries ago which — much like claims over 'scientific discoveries' — can result in today's progress being predated, and attributed, to seventh century Arabia.
On the women rights front, this can mean arguing that Islam is a 'feminist religion', which only allows polygamy for men if all wives are 'treated equally', teaches unprecedented 'treatment of slaves', and asks men to 'lower their gaze' just as it asks women to cover-up. Any argument that these ideas represent a step forward for equality between the sexes wouldn't hold a droplet of water in a secular setting.
While progressive Muslims face difficulties circumventing the literalism often attached to Quranic verses, hadiths offer an escape route through the hierarchy of Muhammad's sayings based on how credible they are. The predicament with this line of thought is that much of what is known as Islam stems from the hadiths and the biography of Muhammad, the earliest original form of which—Ibn Hisham's As-Sīrah an-Nabawiyyah— was written two centuries after the death of Islam's prophet, leaving everything about the religion up to conjecture, and more critically, shaped entirely by blind faith.
Hence, addressing women's suppression via Islam needs a Muslim reorientation of the religion as a faith system — one can that be incorporated to the desired extent, or as a source of inspiration for an individual's life — not as an unquestionable code that has to be uniformly implemented on society. In this regard, Muslim feminist re-interpreters of scriptures, from Amina Wadud to Irshad Manji, reiterate that Islamic verses be subordinated to gender equality regardless of their original contexts or intents. That requires willingness, nay encouragement, to critique Islam, especially from a Muslim perspective so as to not attribute the most problematic texts sweepingly to the entire religious community.
In addition to violent blasphemy laws upheld by Islamists — whose interests obviously align against female emancipation — the resistance towards a critical treatment of Islam today comes from western liberals who have blatantly abandoned Muslim dissenters. As a result those who otherwise tout absolute gender equality, and rightly argue that men shouldn't tell women what to do, are seen glorifying modesty codes for women that were enforced by seventh century men.
But if Muslim liberals refuse to unapologetically condemn regressive Islamic commandments, and western liberals paradoxically endorse for Muslims what they flagrantly shun in their own communities, Islamists will be emboldened, and their stranglehold over Muslim communities along with their vulnerable sections strengthened. And for Afghan women, these Islamists come in the form of the Taliban, legitimised today by the peddling of an indisputable Islam in Muslim-majority countries, and the promotion of a hypocritically calamitous cultural relativism in the west.
Image: Satur/Shutterstock.com.
Helping the public shouldn’t mean pushing religion on people
A parliamentary group has removed provisions in its 'faith covenant' that prevent faith groups from proselytising when delivering public services. This leaves vulnerable people open to exploitation, says Megan Manson.
This article is available in audio format, as part of our Opinion Out Loud series.
Is it reasonable for councils to ask organisations delivering public services to do so without pushing religion on vulnerable people? Disappointingly, a parliamentary group no longer seems to think so.
One of the most important contributions of the all-party parliamentary group on faith and society was its 'faith covenant'. The faith covenant was established as an agreement between faith groups and local authorities, to lay out a set of principles that guide interactions between them and the general public. It helped to address the potential conflict of interests that can happen when religious organisations deliver public services. In the past, the NSS has publicly supported the faith covenant and recommended its use with public authorities.
One of the commitments for faith groups agreeing to the faith covenant was: "Serving equally all local residents seeking to access the public services they offer, without proselytising, irrespective of their religion, gender, marital status, race, ethnic origin, age, sexual orientation, mental capability, long term condition or disability".
This is a key part of the covenant. A common concern is that faith groups may discriminate against people of different religions and beliefs or LGBT+ identities in particular; the covenant explicitly protects against this.
Another common concern is that faith groups may try to evangelise to service users, which was forbidden by the "without proselytising" clause. That is, until now.
Around the beginning of this year, the APPG on faith and society quietly removed the words "without proselytising" from the covenant. As a result, the covenant offers no protection to the public against unwanted evangelism at all.
Minutes from the APPG's October meeting reveal that some faith groups opposed the "without proselytising" clause. Stephen Timms said faith groups in Southampton felt that "without proselytising" meant they "can't do any religious outreach work", while Rev Debbie Sellin said the clause was a "stumbling block for a couple of churches". This would suggest that these groups do in fact wish to proselytise to service users - something that the faith covenant was originally meant to prevent, and which demonstrates the need for an explicit non-proselytising clause.
The decision to remove "without proselytising" is a big step backwards, which has been taken primarily for the benefit of faith groups and not for the benefit of public service users. Surely the needs and welfare of the public, particularly vulnerable members of the public who are most likely to depend on these services, should be prioritised in any agreement between local authorities and service providers?
The problem with proselytising and public services
There are many religious organisations that gladly refrain from proselytising while helping the public. Last year the universities of Sheffield and Leeds published a report, Faith responses to modern slavery, which found several religious organisations working to tackle modern slavery have self-imposed safeguards that warn against discussing faith with clients. It concluded that all organisations in contact with potential survivors of modern slavery should implement the 'non-proselytisation clause' of the Human Trafficking Foundation Slavery and Trafficking Survivor Care Standards.
But not all religious groups abide by this. One such group is Azalea, which says it provides support to women involved in sex trafficking. Azalea is expanding: it registered as a charitable incorporated organisation last year in Luton, and appears to have opened a High Wycombe branch last month.
Azalea's work helping survivors of sex trafficking is a noble and important undertaking. Doubtless it had helped many individuals dealing with appalling circumstances. But some of Azalea's policies and methods are cause for concern.
Azalea's website says the organisation "was established in prayer" and that prayer is "essential for the fulfilment of the vision that we will see an end to commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking". It says prayer is "always offered" to the vulnerable sex-trafficked women and men its volunteers work with, and the prayer is "almost always accepted".
However well-intentioned this offer of prayer, one must question the extent to which Azalea's clients feel they can refuse the offer. Faith responses to modern slavery found some survivors who had sought help from religious organisations had experienced pressure to attend religious services because they felt it was a requirement of the support. Offering assistance to desperate people with 'religious strings attached' can cross the line into exploitation.
Azalea has received funding from public authorities, including the Bedfordshire Police & Crime Commissioner, and is partnered with Luton Borough Council. It's worth noting that Luton is one of six local authorities identified by the APPG on faith and society as interested in adopting the new faith covenant. If the council had adopted the previous covenant, it could easily rein in any desire to evangelise that partner organisations may have. But there is nothing to prevent this at all in the new covenant.
The key purpose of the faith covenant was to increase confidence around commissioning services from faith-based organisations. Removing the no-proselytising clause does the opposite. It can only undermine confidence in faith groups delivering public services.
Partnerships between local authorities and support groups, both religious and secular, can provide much needed support to the most vulnerable members of our communities. And we should expect the highest standards of ethics from any organisation that's working with local authorities to provide a public service. That must include an agreement from all parties not to exploit their position to try and gain converts or save souls through proselytising. When delivering services to the public, the priority should be the welfare and dignity of the public – and not the missionary objectives of faith groups.
Image by Godsgirl_madi from Pixabay.
Naz Shah’s argument on blasphemy should be rejected
The Labour MP has effectively called for a blasphemy law as she highlighted the "emotional harm" caused by depictions of Muhammad. Freedom of expression on religion mustn't be up for negotiation, says Chris Sloggett.
A speech in parliament by Labour MP Naz Shah has set tongues wagging on social media this week.
Addressing the current police and crime bill, Shah highlighted the government's argument that courts should be able to recognise the "emotional harm" caused by damage to statues and memorials. Her party is opposing the bill, so you might have thought she'd critique this argument. But instead she expanded on it, by drawing a link to the "emotional harm" caused by cartoons of Islam's prophet Muhammad.
After saying that for Muslims, "there is not a single thing in the world that we commemorate and honour more than our beloved prophet", Shah added that it causes "unbearable" emotional harm when "bigots and racists defame, slander or abuse" him.
She went on to criticise cartoons explicitly and ask whether there should be a "hierarchy of sentiments". Her implication was that religious figures such as Muhammad were being denied equal protection to secular ones such as Oliver Cromwell and Winston Churchill.
On Twitter she topped this off with the hashtag "#NotJustACartoon". Her speech has been shared thousands of times – including, approvingly, by some other politicians.
Her argument is worth listening to, not least because it helps to draw attention to the much stronger case in reverse. It shows that justifying clampdowns on expression on the basis that they cause "emotional harm" opens the door to various censorious demands, as the writer Timandra Harkness noted.
But there's also a significant distinction between the two acts which Shah referred to. It's not criminal damage to draw a cartoon. Damaging a physical object in a public space isn't equivalent to creating a likeness that offends someone's sentiments. Drawing a cartoon that mocks Muhammad doesn't infringe on a Muslim's right to revere him unless, for example, you put the cartoon on the door of a mosque or a private home. Shah's case isn't an argument for equality; it's that all mockery of Muhammad should be off limits, for everyone.
Much of the response to the recent Batley affair appeared to assume that Britain doesn't really have to worry about blasphemy taboos and laws any more. Shah's comments are a reminder that this complacency is misguided. Whether she wants an explicit blasphemy law, or just an implicit one, the result would be alarming.
Allowing people to criticise, critique and mock religion has been fundamental to human progress. If people can laugh at a religious figure, they can challenge or disbelieve them, and they can think for themselves. If they can't, by contrast, the fundamentalists' demands will keep coming, as the Batley saga and the killing of Samuel Paty have shown in recent months alone.
If you give up freedom of expression on religion, what other restrictions on this fundamental right do you accept? What stops someone using the taboo against depicting Muhammad to justify other forms of censorship? And if you hand away freedom of expression, what other rights are on the table?
The principled argument alone should be enough to defeat Shah's. But there's a risk that some in Britain see this issue purely as a tussle between competing communities. In recent years much of the response to rows over blasphemy has been marked by a patronising assumption that all Muslims are a monolithic bloc who will be offended. (Ironically there's a similarity between the arguments of parts of the multiculturalist left and those of the far right in that regard, although they differ on the way to respond.)
This is also a significant error. Restricting free speech harms minorities within Muslim communities, who may question or challenge aspects of their faith or wish to renounce it entirely. It empowers reactionary Muslim 'community leaders', and undermines the case for human rights in countries where reactionary forms of Islam are in power.
As Times columnist Matthew Parris put it during the recent Batley affair: "Who are the bullied here? The imams who cry 'persecution' because they think their version of Muhammad has been dishonoured? Or the youth at Batley Grammar who is beginning to question the cruel and rigid certainties he has heard in the mosque?"
A cohesive democratic society that values the rights of all its citizens should never accept the idea that any religious figure can be above criticism. The case should be made and remade: freedom of expression on religion isn't up for negotiation.
Schools must be supported against religious bullies
Comments from Ofsted's chief inspector highlight the need to help schools resist efforts to shut down teaching which reactionary religious groups deem controversial, says Alastair Lichten.
In a recent speech at the annual Festival of Education conference Amanda Spielman, head of Ofsted, touched on issues with activism in schools. While acknowledging the many positive contributions of activism to education, she criticised "the militant kind" which leads to "confrontational approaches both outside and inside schools".
She went on to talk about the impact on children having to "cross what amount to picket lines outside their school because one group's religious beliefs – protected by law – sit uncomfortably with teaching about another group's sexuality – also protected by law".
We've seen this play out with protests outside school gates and misinformation campaigns organised against relationships and sex education (RSE). In Batley a mob forced a religious education (RE) teacher into hiding over a lesson on blasphemy - and reactionaries have since hounded the Labour candidate during the recent by-election with homophobic abuse, largely because of her support of inclusive RSE.
It's important to cut through the euphemism and talk about the specific subjects and topics that reactionary religious groups are organising around. They want schools to uphold taboos against LGBT identities, contraceptives, sex and blasphemy. They use euphemisms such as protecting children – a longstanding dog whistle used to frame LGBT people as a threat and talk the language of community engagement – when they want to be treated as gatekeepers regardless of what the wider community may want.
Currently it is conservative Islamic groups leading the charge, but this is not confined to one group. Anti-LGBT Christian groups have supported these protests. How long before other religious groups start mobilising on their own pet issues? Some white parents object to schools teaching about racism and colonialism. Some Hindu groups are bitterly opposed to caste discrimination being mentioned in A-level coverage of Hinduism. Where religious authorities control schools, very little outside pressure is needed to enforce such taboos.
The number of schools that will have religious mobs baying at their gates may be relatively small, but many more will be intimidated into silence. We've seen these tactics and the effects they have before. In 2011 researchers at Penn State University published a study showing that only 13% of US science teachers were sympathetic to creationist beliefs, but the real threat to scientific literacy was the 60% who avoided teaching about evolution to avoid conflict or controversy.
RE students tend to be particularly interested in discussions about the conflicts between religious beliefs and wider societal values. Examiners have told me that questions about religious objections to abortion or providing services to LGBT couples are among the most popular options chosen in exams as they are perceived as more relevant than scriptural questions.
If you want to discuss contemporary religious issues, then I can think of very few more pertinent than debates over offending Islamic blasphemy taboos. Any student passionate about RE would love to debate the lines between free speech, religious criticism, and needless offence. After Batley, many won't get the chance. I expect many teachers will be quietly putting that particular lesson plan in the bin.
I suspect that few teachers or schools will actively support Islamic, or other religious, blasphemy taboos or homophobia, but many will seek to avoid this conflict. There are currently structural issues of religious privilege within RE and RSE which encourage this strategy for schools, and which encourage religious parents to demand concessions.
Religious education
Our system of religious education assumes that religious groups should be gatekeepers and producer communities - meaning they should decide, through the system of SACREs and their dominance of the market in resources, how religions are covered.
Good teaching about religion should challenge prejudice against and between people with differing beliefs. Challenging discrimination is not always consistent with protecting everyone's religious feelings. An academic study in 2018 showed that most RE teachers see it as their job to address prejudice by prioritising positive views of religion over critical exploration. Evidence from the same authors, reported last week, suggests this holds regardless of teachers' personal beliefs. This positivity bias primes teachers to back off from topics that might make religions look bad. A lot of discussion of the Batley affair in RE communities had an underlying suspicion of the teacher's motives given this potential.
Relationships and sex education
Current government guidance allows schools to teach RSE from a religious perspective. This was designed to appease religious objectors. It allows faith schools to continue to teach the subject in a discriminatory way. This creates the unreasonable expectation that content will be restricted on religious grounds. All RSE should be age appropriate, but this is poorly defined and is used by religious groups to try to push any coverage of LGBT issues out, particularly in primary schools. The current guidance opens the door to this: just this week, Ofsted has said schools want it to be clearer.
The consultation requirements in the guidance and legislation on RSE are intended to help schools form a partnership with parents, understand cultural perspectives and concerns, and tweak their planned content to be most effective. However, these are exploited by religious groups whose real target and demand is getting rid of RSE. They will always demand more consultation and more concessions, not out of a genuine desire to improve the subject, but to sap schools' time and energy to try and intimidate them into giving in.
In both subjects, guidance should make clear that schools are not expected to conform to the prejudices of parents or religious gatekeepers.
We also need a wider cultural change, so that teachers feel confident delivering the curriculum even when some pupils, or their families, may find it challenging or controversial. Parents and communities need to know that although their views will be heard, they do not get a veto. When covering controversial cultural issues teachers need to be given some benefit of the doubt, even when they don't handle an issue perfectly, and they need to know they will be supported.
Image: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.com.
The Church of England’s offensive in FE colleges must be resisted
This piece was originally published in FE Week and is republished here with kind permission.
C of E proposals to increase its influence in FE colleges have little to do with education and more to do with reversing its declining numbers among young people, say Chris Higgins and Keith Sharpe.
The Church of England is on a missionary offensive in our FE colleges. This is the thrust of a recent report, Vocation, Transformation and Hope: a vision for the Church of England's engagement with further education, fronted by the bishop of Winchester, Tim Dakin.
How is it that the "bishop for higher and further education" can produce a report that has so little to say about the realities of education and so much to say about how the church might increase its membership?
The report rather gives the game away by acknowledging that the aim of engaging with FE colleges is to "build a younger and more diverse church" and that "colleges can, especially, be a way to engage with what is often a missing generation… There is genuine potential here to help revitalise the local church in the long term."
It appears the Church of England views FE colleges as a potential source of new recruits, rather than the pluralistic communities of learners and educators that they are.
The lord bishop of Durham confirmed this strategy, stating in the recent Queen's Speech debate: "We as a church recognise that we must become younger and more diverse. Engaging in further education needs to be at the core of what we do."
He added that the church is "committed to an ongoing working partnership with the secretary of state and the government to explore these issues together".
The report laments the fact that, unlike HE, no Christian church now operates an FE institution, and suggests the establishment of a church "FE Colleges Group".
Even more worryingly, this latest report follows a report published in 2020 called Faith in Higher Education – A Church of England vision, also under Bishop Dakin, which states that the church's approach to further and higher education is theological, not educational.
That report declares that education and wisdom are achieved by "aligning all our ways – our thinking, acting, belonging – with those of God".
Most strikingly, it adds "sustained theological attention is needed on the distinct questions of the content of any particular discipline or field, the methodologies with which these are examined and interpreted, and the curriculum through which it is taught".
In the 21st century, no educational institution should be subject to the constraints of theological doctrine.
One proposal being considered by the Church of England is that "each diocese should engage with further education and sixth-form colleges in its strategic planning and an appropriate member of the bishop's staff should have responsibility for linking diocesan strategy with FE and sixth-form college activity".
But fewer than one per cent of college students are members of their particular church. Meanwhile, governors of FE colleges are charged with developing an independent strategy for the benefit of all their students.
Another proposal in the report is to provide house-for-duty posts and to "reimagine chaplaincy provision". This neglects the fact that FE colleges already have a cadre of professionally qualified and committed staff who work diligently to enhance the welfare and wellbeing of students of all backgrounds, abilities and aspirations.
Support for all students' wellbeing is fundamental to the pluralistic life of our FE colleges and the communities they serve.
While, of course, most individual chaplains are well-intentioned, a "cuckoo-in-the-nest" chaplaincy whose first loyalty is towards a particular church would privilege a very small minority of staff and students. This would undermine every college's purpose of building a community in which people of all faiths or none have equal opportunity.
The potential for conflict between the doctrinal beliefs of chaplains – for example, on same-sex marriage, other faiths or LGBT+ rights – and the inclusive support provided by the professional pastoral support teams in FE would also be ever present.
Support for further education from any source is, of course, to be welcomed, but the Church of England's latest proposals have little to do with education and skills and much to do with reversing its own declining numbers amongst young people.
That's why the specific proposals in this report must be resisted.
Image: © sirtravelalot/Shutterstock.com.
The ugly Batley and Spen campaign showed the risks of indulging religious identity politics
Voters and politicians who value social cohesion and basic democratic principles should reject the trend of pandering to religious tribalism, says Chris Sloggett.
The recent events at Batley Grammar School are well-documented, but still shocking to recount. A loud group of intolerant Muslims gathered at the gates of a school demanding a teacher's dismissal because they objected to a resource he used in class. The school suspended the teacher and issued a grovelling apology. The teacher faced threats, and soon afterwards two of his colleagues were also suspended.
A local investigation has found that the resource which the teacher showed - a cartoon of Islam's prophet Muhammad - was not used with any ill intent. The teacher was nominally reinstated. But he and his colleagues can't return to work because they fear they could be attacked. Meanwhile the investigation has effectively enforced a blasphemy taboo on the school by saying the cartoon, or similar ones, shouldn't be used again.
The teacher at the centre of the row has been driven out of the area and into hiding. The mob that hounded him has got what it wanted. Other schools around the country will have taken note.
And the politicians have moved on. The Department for Education has called on parents to accept the outcome of the local investigation. The department and others have presented this as if it's some kind of reasonable compromise. But anyone who cares about teachers' freedom to do their jobs without facing intimidation and threats - on this issue or any other - should say what this is: a meek surrender to demands for censorship.
When the protests first broke out many politicians and commentators wrung their hands. Some called for calm, but the message was often that the main concern lay in the minutiae of a handful of teachers' decisions about how to present a particular lesson in one school.
The grubby Batley and Spen by-election, which limped to a close this week, helped to highlight the price to be paid for this. When the issue came up during the campaign, mainstream candidates' responses smacked of fear, self-interest and short-termist thinking. They either doggedly avoided it or offered responses which were weak to the point of meaninglessness, as a piece from Batley by Dan Hodges in The Mail on Sunday highlighted this weekend. Meanwhile George Galloway spotted an opportunity to weaponise the issue to try to win over some reactionary Muslim voters, saying the school had "absolutely no right" to use the cartoon.
Did the politicians think their positions were right, or did they just not want to upset a perceived bloc vote? Either way, this collective wall of silence was alarmingly predictable. It's now a standard tactic to treat large swathes of voters primarily as members of various religious 'communities', and to appeal to them through the gatekeepers who claim to speak for them.
But this approach sends the message that religious identity groups can make increasingly unreasonable demands and nobody will dare to say no to them. In Batley, there seems to have been a widespread unspoken agreement that freedom of expression - the most important freedom which citizens in a democracy enjoy - could be treated as a commodity and signed away for electoral convenience.
Politicians should beware where the multi-communal game leads. If they rely on religious identity politics to shore up their support, they'll come under pressure to extend more privileges to particular religious groups. Others will organise along competing identitarian lines, or grow bewildered that politicians appear uninterested in them. The principle that we all enjoy equal citizenship and that politicians should seek to serve all of our interests will be further frayed.
There will also be fertile ground for bad actors of various stripes. The Batley and Spen campaign was marred by inter-communal tensions and intimidatory tactics, including homophobic intimidation aimed at Labour candidate Kim Leadbeater. More moderate and reasonable voices, such as a group of Muslim women who rejected the authority of a "loud minority" of Muslim men this week, faced an uphill battle to make themselves heard. Several far right candidates also spotted an opportunity to advance their agendas.
This ugly campaign should be a prompt to pause and reconsider. Indulging religious tribalism is risky and unsustainable. Voters and politicians who value social cohesion and basic democratic principles should unite against it.
Image: © Ian S, via geograph [CC BY-SA 2.0; cropped]
The 2015 General Election
Success: School resists CofE evangelism following NSS concerns
Nonreligious school says it will 'decline' to join Church of England's "Youth Catalyst Project".
Bishops, know your place: it’s not in parliament
It was with great lamentation and gnashing of teeth that members of the Church of England reacted to news this week that the archbishop of Canterbury's request for a meeting with the Home Secretary was refused.
An incandescent Dominic Grieve took to the airwaves of Radio 4 to denounce Suella Braverman as "extraordinarily rude" for not acceding to meet the archbishop to discuss the government's immigration bill. The former attorney general, himself an Anglican, superciliously opined that the archbishop comes "well ahead" of the Home Secretary in "the order of precedence in this country". Dripping with condescension, and arguably misogyny, he concluded Braverman should "know her place".
Readers will have their own opinions of the Home Secretary, but the nation's democratic representatives should not be expected to prostrate themselves before a cleric who sits ex officio in the Lords by virtue of Victorian statute.
The whole episode lays bare the Church's unabashed sense of entitlement: How dare we be denied the privileged political access we have always taken for granted? "There was shock internally" and it was "a big slap in the face", an unnamed former senior adviser to the Lords Spiritual noted dolefully. Those officials who did meet with the Home Office were made to feel like "lepers", he added with appropriately biblical melodrama.
Lambeth Palace, the office of the archbishop, was very straightforward: "In the past the Archbishop has met other Home Secretaries. It is not unusual."
Maybe not for Lambeth Palace, but the public will rightly question this level of influence given how wildly out of step the Church is with society on issues of fundamental importance, such as reproductive rights, same-sex marriage and assisted dying.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the Church has reacted with such opprobrium. After all, bishops are used to VIP treatment in the Lords. By convention, other peers must give way when a Lord Spiritual rises to speak. And there is an unwritten expectation that letters sent by primates to ministers should be answered within two weeks. Constituents and civil society organisations can only dream of such a prompt response.
There are also those Anglicans, such as Conservative MP Chris Loder, who support the bishops' bench in principle, but wish they would pipe down when their message is politically inconvenient. This is to have your cake and eat it. Of course, when bishops are given automatic seats in the legislature, they will use them to politically pontificate and further their own ends. As Loder said, they act as "politicians that wear mitres".
But that's precisely because that is what they are legally empowered to do. There is no clause in the Bishopric of Manchester Act 1847 – the law which enshrines 26 seats by right for Anglican bishops – which precludes them from participating in the political cut and thrust of the Lords.
If, as he says, he truly believes that bishops should focus on "the cure of souls" rather than "the political issues of the day", there is one very simple solution: abolish their automatic seats and dispatch them back to their dioceses posthaste.
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Freedom of religion or belief must include the freedom to ‘blaspheme’
The freedom to question and criticise religious ideas in the same manner as any other kind is foundational to a democratic society. Where it exists at all, this freedom is constantly threatened, both by its traditional enemies of theocracy and religious fundamentalism, but also increasingly from a misguided interpretation of liberal values.
A recent report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom identified 95 countries which criminalise blasphemy in some way. That number is at least one too few, as it fails to include the United Kingdom, where the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel remain on the books in Northern Ireland.
Punishments in countries which outlaw blasphemy vary, from fines to imprisonment and execution. Unjust though such legal processes are, the extra-judicial violence licenced and encouraged by such laws is of equal importance. The Center for Inquiry, which established September 30th as International Blasphemy Rights Day, has said to "charge someone with blasphemy is to value a person's life less than an idea". Though this is particularly true in countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan, where those accused of blasphemy are often murdered, it is also the case worldwide. Last year, Sir Salman Rushdie was attacked in Chautauqua, New York, 34 years after the Ayatollah Khomenei called for his murder for the supposed offence of blasphemy.
Those who would impose and enforce blasphemy codes on others do not respect or recognise national borders or sovereignty. A commitment to free speech must therefore be equally international in its scope. In failing to fully abolish its blasphemy laws, the UK validates the notion that perceived offence to religion or God should be prohibited, thereby undermining its ability to promote the right to freedom of expression elsewhere.
Attempts to shield religion from criticism are also underway via systematic efforts to characterise such criticism as a form of racial or ethnic bigotry. The concept of 'Islamophobia', vigorously promoted by Islamists both in the UK and abroad, is the most pressing example. Integral to the concept is the claim that criticism of ideas is equivalent to attacking individuals. Under the term's definition formulated by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims (APPG), to question Islamic ideology is to effectively express hate for Muslims.
This is a blasphemy law in another form – a point demonstrated by the case of Erika López Prater, who was fired last year by Hamline University after discussing artistic representations of Muhammad in an art history class. A Muslim student complained that as images of Muhammad are banned in Islam, the content of the lesson – and by extension Prater – was thus blasphemous and Islamophobic.
By agreeing that images of Muhammad are Islamophobic and should therefore not be shown, Hamline generalised the personal feelings and religious interpretation of one individual as the definitive position of Islam. But this view is not shared by all Muslims. As Anna Khalid - an associate professor of history at Carleton College and herself a Muslim - pointed out, in endorsing the supposed Islamic ban on images of Muhammad, Hamline "privileged a most extreme and conservative" point of view.
A policy which empowers the most fundamentalist elements within a religious community is neither liberal nor inclusive. Yet that is precisely what the current arguments around 'hate speech' have achieved. What we have, in effect, is a code which polices a particular theological interpretation of Islam against other interpretations. It is a gross perversion of laws intended to protect the right to freedom of religion or belief to enlist them in sectarian theological disputes in this way.
If the right to freedom of religion or belief means anything, it must include the right of those within religious groups considered blasphemous by more doctrinaire views to practice their faith as they see fit. The current understanding of 'Islamophobia' threatens those who perceived not to conform to traditional theology – Muslim women who reject the hijab, openly LGBT Muslims, and minorities within the religion such as Ahmadis, for example. It is absurd to think that a gay Muslim could be labelled 'Islamophobic' for criticising elements of their own faith which are homophobic. Yet under the current conceptual framework, such criticism could be labelled as such. The ability to criticise religion must therefore be seen as an essential component of the right to freedom of religion or belief, not in conflict with it.
However well-intentioned, politicians who endorse the concept of 'Islamophobia' are effectively reintroducing blasphemy laws by the backdoor and empowering fundamentalists within religious communities in the process. Concerningly, a significant part of the UK's political establishment appears unaware of the problem – the APPG definition has been accepted by all major parties except the Conservatives, along with one in seven UK local authorities.
The UK must not sacrifice the right to free speech in a misguided attempt to promote social cohesion. Secularism, and a robust defence of the ability to criticise all ideas and ideology, is the only genuine way to achieve an properly inclusive society which respects everyone's right to freedom of religion or belief. In defending that right, we must remain vigilant.
Image: frank333, Shutterstock
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Fusce vehicula quis arcu sed convallis. Cras commodo rutrum nunc, eget varius eros. Vestibulum quis urna at libero semper dictum et non ipsum. Fusce sollicitudin sapien at dolor gravida egestas. Quisque accumsan ligula id erat tristique tempor. Sed in congue lorem, a pulvinar nulla. Nullam non nulla diam. Curabitur a mi tincidunt odio iaculis consequat eget eget nulla.
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Fusce vehicula quis arcu sed convallis. Cras commodo rutrum nunc, eget varius eros. Vestibulum quis urna at libero semper dictum et non ipsum. Fusce sollicitudin sapien at dolor gravida egestas. Quisque accumsan ligula id erat tristique tempor. Sed in congue lorem, a pulvinar nulla. Nullam non nulla diam. Curabitur a mi tincidunt odio iaculis consequat eget eget nulla.
Fusce vehicula quis arcu sed convallis. Cras commodo rutrum nunc, eget varius eros. Vestibulum quis urna at libero semper dictum et non ipsum. Fusce sollicitudin sapien at dolor gravida egestas. Quisque accumsan ligula id erat tristique tempor. Sed in congue lorem, a pulvinar nulla. Nullam non nulla diam. Curabitur a mi tincidunt odio iaculis consequat eget eget nulla.
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