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
Add your endorsement to the manifesto for change
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.
Add your endorsement to the manifesto for change
Add your endorsementThe 2017 General Election
Religious campaigners shouldn't be able to veto the refusal of treatment
Christian campaigners have questioned a ruling that allowed a severely ill man to die. Dr Antony Lempert says they're misrepresenting the case – and patients' views are significant when determining their best interests.
Earlier this month a judge ruled that a 34-year-old man who was unable to express his own wishes and faced a severely diminished quality of life should be allowed to die. This case has been widely reported in the press in recent days, after the campaign group Christian Concern called for an urgent review of the decision. The man has now died.
Press reports have tended to focus on the fact the man didn't want to live with a stoma, and highlighted Christian Concern's argument that he might have changed his mind. But some of the headlines haven't done justice to the man's wishes, which were expressed clearly and consistently and supported by his family.
In an 'advance directive', written in February, he made clear that he should be considered to have refused medical treatment in certain circumstances. This went into great detail on a range of conditions and interventions he wanted to avoid.
He did not want his life sustained if he had little prospect of recovery from a life-threatening illness, or if it would severely impair his quality of life in several ways. This included treatment which would leave him with a stoma which was unlikely to be reversed or leave him unable to live independently in the long-term. That some people might be uncomfortable with or disagree with his personal decision is irrelevant; the Mental Capacity Act (2005) rightly supports personal decision-making of people with capacity even when other people or professionals might consider those decisions unwise. Were it to be otherwise then informed consent would be rendered meaningless.
This document was the product of plenty of thought and experience, borne of more than a decade of painful and complex abdominal problems, with the most recent setbacks leaving him in severe pain and very distressed. It even specified the music that should be played if he fell into a coma.
Christian Concern chose to highlight the fact the man had agreed to have a stoma fitted in May. It claimed this indicated an apparent change of mind, and accused the judge of disregarding evidence.
In his ruling, however, the judge went to extraordinary lengths to deconstruct this very point. He found that the patient had agreed to emergency surgery including a stoma as the only option to save his life at a time when he was seriously ill. Crucially, his consent was given on the basis of the surgeon's assurances that the stoma was likely to be reversible – assurances that the judge questioned in his ruling. The patient also faced the prospect of being intraveneously fed on a permanent basis.
The judge added that the man's parents and step-sister – the three people closest to him – had given "choate and consistent" evidence in support of his wishes. This featured harrowing details, such as the fact he'd suffered "violent and frightening" dreams when he'd previously been ventilated in an intensive care unit. The patient's father told the court he feared his son would kill himself if he recovered consciousness.
The judge also said three consultants had given "clear" evidence. Each was left "in no doubt at all" that he wouldn't have wanted to live with either the stoma or the artificial feeding, and the combination of both would be "unbearable for him".
That Christian Concern accused the judge of disregarding evidence suggests that it either didn't read the judgement in full, or issued a deliberately misleading statement. The evidence of those closest to this man was more convincing than the position of Christian campaigners who are trying to enforce their agenda.
There's rightly a heavy presumption in favour of the maintenance of life in these situations. Assessment of a patient's best interests does not rely on this presumption alone, however, but on numerous factors, most importantly what the patient considers important to him. When a person with capacity has gone to great lengths to describe what would devalue the quality of their own life so much that they wouldn't want to live that life, as this patient had done, then regardless of what other people think, the patient's own views must be respected.
That the presumption in favour of keeping someone alive may be absolute according to some religious teachings, and that some religious groups would like their beliefs to be determinative, is unsurprising; it is also irrelevant in determining what is in a patient's best interests. In this case the judge came to the reasonable conclusion that it would be in this patient's best interests to withdraw treatment.
This desperately sad case is also a reminder that the law on assisted dying should be reconsidered. That a man who no longer found life bearable to live, and who was allowed to choose death by withdrawal of food and fluids, still had no option of a legal medically assisted death to relieve his suffering is in no small part due to opposition by organised religion, not least in the House of Lords. For end-of-life decisions to be based on personal autonomy and medical ethics, rather than other people's religious dogma, it is time for our elected representatives in parliament to revisit the law on assisted dying.
Outdoor marriage shouldn't be restricted on religious grounds
The government is reportedly planning to allow couples to marry outdoors as we emerge from lockdown. This is a chance to make marriage more equal and free for all permanently, says Megan Manson.
According to The Sunday Times, the government plans to permit outdoor weddings as lockdown eases.
It's unclear exactly what this means at this stage. Outdoor weddings are already possible in Scotland and Northern Ireland, so this change would simply be a shift back towards normality.
But things are different in England & Wales, where all marriages must take place within a fixed shelter – the notable exception being Jewish and Quaker marriages.
So if the communities secretary Robert Jenrick is working to relax this law, this would indeed, as The Sunday Times says, be "historic".
It would also be very welcome.
Marriage laws in England and Wales are almost Kafkaesque in their complexity and absurdity. For one thing, the legal status of a marriage varies according to the religion or belief tradition a wedding ceremony follows. The legal requirements for Anglican marriages, Jewish marriages, Quaker marriages, marriages for other religions, and secular (civil) marriages are all different. There's little flexibility for couples from different faith and belief backgrounds who want both their traditions reflected in a ceremony; if you opt for a civil wedding, for example, no religious content is permitted at all.
Another peculiarity is that the building in which you get married largely determines which laws it has to follow, and whether it is legal at all. But thanks to a strange historical loophole, this is not the case for Jewish or Quaker weddings, which can take place anywhere. This includes outdoor venues.
The archaic marriage laws of England and Wales have led to inequality. For one thing, there is a huge imbalance between religious and non-religious wedding venues. There are approximately 39,700 places of worship registered for marriage, but only 7,400 civil wedding venues. This is despite the fact most weddings in England and Wales are secular: less than a quarter of all marriages in 2017 were religious ceremonies, the lowest percentage on record. The reason for the surplus of religious wedding venues could be that it is much cheaper for a place of worship to register as a marriage venue than for civil premises.
This imbalance not only limits options for those wanting civil weddings. It particularly limits options for same-sex couples; less than one per cent of religious wedding venues will permit same-sex marriage.
And of course, the current laws give preferential treatment to Jews and Quakers, who are not subject to the same venue restrictions as others.
So why are things different in Scotland and Northern Ireland? There, it is principally the status of the celebrant performing the marriage ceremony that determines its legality, rather than the venue. This not only gives couples far greater freedom to marry where they wish, but also creates a more equal system for religious and non-religious marriages.
Marriage laws in England and Wales urgently need streamlining, modernising and secularising. Your religion or belief should never determine which laws apply to you, and that includes marriage laws. There should be a single marriage law for all - albeit one flexible enough to accommodate all religion and belief traditions. In the end, the marriage contract really matters legally, and that contract should look the same regardless of the religion or belief of the parties within that contract.
An obvious course for England and Wales is to extend the freedoms given to Jews and Quakers to marry wherever they like (within reason), and to adopt a system more similar to those in Scotland and Northern Ireland. This would give couples the freedom to have their dream wedding wherever they like, be it a forest, a beach, or even one's own home – the possibilities are exciting. And it would begin to address the inequalities and imbalances in our marriage law.
As we gradually emerge from lockdown, the post-pandemic UK will present us with many challenges. These challenges call for modern solutions, and provide an opportunity for us to re-examine the relevance of our laws – particularly where religion is involved. If one of those solutions results in greater marriage equality for all, that is to be welcomed.
Places of worship shouldn’t reopen prematurely
As a group of religious leaders threatens legal action over the closure of places of worship during the coronavirus crisis, Stephen Evans says public health must be the priority in deciding when to reopen them.
We're living through a public health crisis unprecedented in the modern era. At such a time the government has an obligation to take steps to protect people's lives – and unfortunately this involves temporary restrictions on individual freedoms. It should go without saying that any restrictions must be necessary to protect public health and proportionate to that aim.
But for now, we still can't get our hair cut, go swimming, get our nails done, go to the pub or attend football matches. And it's still not possible to attend a church, mosque, synagogue, temple or other place of worship, either.
The secretary of state for communities, Robert Jenrick, has made it clear that places of worship will only be opened when the government is confident that people can use these spaces safely and will not put themselves or others at risk. A specific 'places-of-worship task force' has been set up which includes representatives of faith groups. It agreed that reopening should be phased, and only happen when the evidence shows it's safe to do so.
A small coalition of bishops and religious leaders have taken issue with this and threatened legal action to force the government to allow places of worship to open. Their letter threatening a judicial review warns that the state closure of churches is "unlawful and unnecessary" and "an extreme interference" with human rights.
A major bone of contention is that the government's roadmap to lift restrictions puts places of worship in the same category as pubs, restaurants, cinemas, hairdressers and beauty salons.
The fringe coalition of 'religious leaders' rejects any secular assessment which considers church services "less important than steady food supplies and protection of health". Instead they ask the government to bow down before the "believer's worldview" that attending a church service is vital for "achieving eternal salvation of the soul, which is infinitely more important than even a survival of the body."
Disdain for secularism runs through the letter like the words on a stick of Blackpool rock. "If churches are to be closed, that must not be done by people who may well have never been to a church in their lives", it insists.
Amid all the pomposity and bluster of the letter, the clear line of argument is that religion should be above the law.
The assorted bishops claim that closure and opening of churches for services is "a matter for ecclesiastical authorities and not for temporal ones". They reject any secular public health test for the opening of places of worship and demand it must be a theological one.
This is dangerous nonsense. It would effectively mean the churches are a law unto themselves, and to hell with the ramifications for public health.
This is particularly reckless given the prevalence of deadly coronavirus clusters associated with religious gatherings around the world.
Despite religious services acting as hotbeds for Covid-19 outbreaks in the United States and beyond (in South Korea over 5,000 cases were traced to one person at a religious service) evangelical Christians, spurred on by President Trump, are defying or demanding exemptions from public health orders temporarily barring public gatherings.
But their efforts took a blow last week when the Supreme Court decided with a 5-4 vote to uphold the California governor's order restricting religious service gatherings as part of its pandemic response effort.
In a scathing opinion, chief justice John Roberts indicated that he will not join conservative judges' escalating efforts to override public health measures in the name of religious freedom. This is all the more noteworthy because Roberts has tended to side with those who present religious freedom as an unqualified right during his time on the bench.
The court decided that from an epidemiological perspective, religious gatherings are more like concerts, spectator sports and theatrical performances than trips to supermarkets, restaurants and hair salons, where people tend not to congregate in large groups.
The legal action in the UK is being spearheaded by gay conversion therapy advocate Pastor Ade Omooba, co-founder of Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre – a group which erroneously claims UK Christians are being 'persecuted' for their beliefs. But the Sikh Federation has also reacted angrily to plans to keep places of worship closed until at least 4 July.
Many within Britain's religious communities, which have been hit hard by coronavirus, are more cautious. The Church of England's Sarah Mullally, the bishop of London, said churchgoers are "feeling real disappointment and hurt, that places of worship remain closed to the public" – but also warned that churches may not be back to normal by the end of the year. Ibrahim Mogra, a leading imam from Leicester, expressed scepticism that social distancing can be maintained in mosques. "We must understand that we have a duty to protect others and to protect ourselves," he said.
Maintaining social distancing might be possible with a few Anglicans worshipping privately in a big old draughty church, but we also have to consider how it might look in other places of worship. It might not be quite so easily observed during Friday prayers at the mosque or in the black majority Pentecostal churches which tend to use unconventional and often cramped spaces for services. The fact that Covid-19 appears to have a disproportionate impact on people of black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds should be taken into account here. Any government guidance concerning places of worship needs to be clear, consistent and even-handed. And even when general restrictions are lifted, places of worship should only open where social distancing can be maintained.
The right to religious freedom is as important as any other, but it's not absolute. Churches and other places of worship should be free to open as soon as it's safe to do so. But the timing should be determined by the scientific advice, not special pleading from religious groups. Granting special privileges to religion during this coronavirus crisis would put public health at risk. There's no right to risk spreading a virus, and ultimately, causing unnecessary deaths.
Will Wales lead the way in reforming Religious Education?
The Welsh government's plans to reform RE risk being a missed opportunity for more radical reform of the way we approach religion in schools, argues Stephen Evans.
Compulsory Religious Education in schools is a bit of an anachronism. The purpose of bringing in a requirement for religious instruction back in 1944 was to inculcate pupils with Christian dogma. The original doctrinal basis for the subject hasn't been tenable for decades, so its enthusiasts have had to constantly reinvent a rationale for it.
But none of these justifications adequately account for the privileged educational position still granted to theistic views in British schools.
The sort of religious education pupils receive in schools today varies greatly. But thanks to the lingering influence of religious groups over state education, RE has remained mandatory for all state-funded schools, at all key stages, for pupils from the ages of five to 16.
Now, one part of the UK (education is a devolved matter) has had the sense to have a bit of a rethink. The Welsh government has published legislative proposals to rename the subject 'Religion, Values and Ethics'. It signifies a shift towards a more pluralistic and balanced approach than previously seen. Amendments to existing legislation will make it explicit that any agreed syllabus for RVE must reflect both religious beliefs and also non-religious beliefs. A long overdue development.
One of the general principles of the European Court of Human Rights is that states must take care that the curriculum in schools is delivered in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner. Religious privilege has always prevented this from being anywhere near fully realised in the UK.
Wales's education minister Kirsty Williams deserves plenty of credit for grasping this particular nettle and trying to initiate reforms. But even here, religious influence, most notably through public funded faith schools, is impeding progress.
The Welsh government considered imposing a new obligation on all schools to teach RE in a pluralistic manner. However, in the face of religious lobbying the minister decided against it, citing the "significant implications" it would have for faith schools. Faith schools of course demand the right to teach their own confessional version of the subject — which promotes a particular religious worldview, and so is more akin to indoctrination than education.
Instead, the plan is now to allow faith schools to continue to teach denominational RVE, but also require them to offer a pluralistic version to parents who request it. So, under the plans, some students will receive pluralistic version, others the denominational — a remarkably divisive approach to teaching about religion.
But shouldn't every child have an equal entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum? Setting out her vision for religious education reform last year, Kirsty Williams said she wanted a "fully inclusive education system" where "all learners have the equity of access to education". Under these plans, children's rights to impartial education will depend on the whims of what parents decide to do or not to do. That is surely an indefensible position. Clearly these reforms, stymied as they have been by religious interests, fall substantially short of their own ambitions.
It's also difficult to see how, in practice, faith schools will run two RVE curricula in parallel. Parents are unlikely to want to rock the boat by requesting the alternative curriculum, and teachers will need substantial extra resources to teach both courses effectively. A biased and confessional approach to RVE will still dominate in many faith-based schools but now with the added downside of segregating pupils along religious lines. One wonders what message about religion this will send to young people.
Another missed opportunity is the decision to retain a role for SACREs. These are local committees dominated by religious interests that are responsible for developing and adopting an agreed RVE syllabus.
Mark Chater, the former Director of Culham St Gabriel's, a trust supporting research, development and innovation in religious education, recently noted that RE will only be recognised as critical, objective and pluralistic when it is "liberated from any influence of any belief groups, whether religious or secular".
These proposals manifestly fail to do that. SACREs and faith schools will allow vested interests to continue to exert significant influence over RVE, undermining its legitimacy across all schools.
And this is particularly alarming because the proposals also end the parental right of withdrawal, a vital religious freedom protection that has existed since the study of religion became compulsory in schools in 1944. Ending this right under such circumstances is clearly premature.
The Welsh government would perhaps have been better taking a more radical approach and dispensing with RE altogether. There is no compelling reason why a stand-alone subject primarily devoted to the study of religion should be part of the compulsory curriculum in modern Britain.
In a world in which religion remains highly relevant, a rounded intercultural education that helps students to navigate issues of religion and belief is clearly beneficial. But the in-depth study of particular religions is a parental or individual responsibility. It's not the role of the state.
All those hours spent theologising and learning about gods and goddesses prevents more beneficial learning from taking place. The useful stuff covered in RE could quite easily be absorbed into a wider humanities subject. Citizenship, human rights, moral philosophy, cultural and political literacy will arguably be of more practical use to future citizens and wider society than theology. Opportunities naturally arise for religion to be explored in other subjects, too, such as English literature, history, and the visual arts.
The Welsh government could lead the way, here. But it seems churches are still wielding significant influence over education policy. This is both outdated and educationally inappropriate. Wales, which has a disestablished church, presents the ideal opportunity to genuinely transform the way we approach religion in schools. But that opportunity will be wasted unless legislators learn to prioritise young people's interests above those of organised religion.
This piece was originally published on Medium.
The state must act to protect children in unregistered faith schools
Eye-opening evidence at a public inquiry has shown the dangers presented by unregistered schools. Richard Scorer, a lawyer at the inquiry, says the authorities mustn't leave children to languish in unsafe environments.
Last week the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) turned its attention to unregistered schools. As many unregistered schools claim to have a religious ethos, IICSA is examining this issue as part of its investigation into child sexual abuse within "religious organisations and settings". This investigation relates mainly to minority religious groups: Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Jehovah's Witnesses and independent Christian denominations. The Catholic and Anglican churches have been examined by IICSA in separate hearings.
The inquiry heard from Amanda Spielman, the head of Ofsted (pictured). Understandably, discussion of unregistered schools has tended to focus on their educational failings. But as this is a child abuse inquiry, Spielman's evidence was directed at the potential risks of sexual, physical and emotional harm to children in these settings.
As Spielman explained, Ofsted has conducted multiple inspections of unregistered schools including, for example, in the Charedi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) and Muslim communities. Inspectors identified significant safeguarding and health and safety concerns. Examples included settings where:
- Inspectors were unable to confirm that DBS checks had been carried out on individuals working on the premises.
- There were hazardous systems of record keeping about individuals working there.
- There were problems with the physical security of premises - inspectors discovered that they were able to enter premises unchallenged.
- There were serious issues with fire safety.
- There were serious issues with the physical safety of children. In one setting inspectors encountered "multiple broken and shattered windows, with jagged edges within touching distance of children; electrical plugs and sockets in a state of disrepair, with exposed wires in touching distance of children; broken or missing door handles with sharp metal edges exposed to children; and an uninsulated and extremely hot water heater with an exposed flame in the entrance area to the main building". Elsewhere, a classroom portacabin elevated on the flat roof of a single storey building and had "open holes in the floor down to ground level". In a third setting, inspectors found "tiles, broken windows and loose electrical wires".
- Inspectors observed inadequate hygiene standards: toilet facilities were unclean and in one setting the kitchen used to prepare children's meals was dirty and unhygienic. During one inspection, an inspector was injured and required hospital treatment. Doors to the food preparation area were "not locked, giving children access to sharp knives". Some vermin bait traps were "placed in classrooms with their lids open, with the poison they contained clearly visible".
- Staff had not undertaken any safeguarding training.
- Child protection policies were either non-existent or inadequate and were "not effective in keeping children safe".
- Physical chastisement of children was the norm in some schools.
- Schools were using inappropriate behaviour management strategies for children.
- In a Christian unregistered school, it transpired that the proprietor had been dismissed from a local school following an assault on a pupil, and was prohibited from teaching due to the assault. The individual concerned was "verbally aggressive towards inspectors. He accused inspectors of being racist towards the setting because the pupils attending were not white".
Clearly, it is unacceptable that any child should experience 'education' in such an environment. But equally scandalous is the seeming inability of agencies tasked with public protection to tackle this problem effectively. In many of the above instances Ofsted tried to get other relevant agencies to intervene: local authorities, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the fire brigade and the police. However little effective action was taken. Ofsted's view is that "this is in part due to a lack of available powers. However where organisations have relevant powers, they have sometimes been reluctant to use them."
Local authorities, meanwhile, have expressed the view that their powers to intervene are limited: for example, that they are unable to intervene to protect children in such settings unless there are specific concerns about abuse or neglect of an identified child; or that whilst they have a general duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, they are unable to see children simply in order to monitor their education. Ofsted reported that in response to health and safety concerns about one setting, both the HSE and the local authority initially said they did not have the power to intervene as "they believed that the setting was operating as an educational establishment". Meanwhile Ofsted's own power to take action comes up against a fundamental – and many would say extraordinary – loophole in the law: "establishments offering only a narrow or religious curriculum are not required to register as schools even where they are providing full time education".
Clearly, regulation of these entities is falling between lots of different stools. But even where owners have been prosecuted for operating illegal unregistered schools, the penalties are limited: as pointed out by one of my clients in IICSA, Sadia Hameed of Gloucestershire Sisters, fines are very modest, typically only a few hundred pounds. The result is that individuals who are convicted of operating illegal unregistered schools frequently resurface at a later date and recreate schools which were thought to have been closed down. Whatever the specific reasons for inaction in particular cases, it seems very clear that significant loopholes in the law are enabling unscrupulous individuals to operate unregistered schools without legal consequences.
Not all unregistered schools are religious, but many are. This issue therefore raises a broader question: to what extent should the state interfere in, or seek to regulate, activities associated with the practice of religion? In the UK, state interference in religious activity is minimal: as counsel to IICSA observed in one of the sessions last week, donkey sanctuaries are more heavily regulated. On one level, this is how it should be: religious freedom is a fundamental human right, and the state obviously has no business in telling people what to believe, and whether and how they should worship.
However, religious activities do not simply involve consenting adults; they often involve children. Indeed, few religious activities do not involve children. If children in religious settings are at risk of harm, the state has a legitimate right to interfere in such settings insofar as is necessary to protect them.
The issue is brought into sharp relief by the unwillingness of many religious fundamentalists to accept secular norms and laws regarding children. Recently we learned of a document entitled "Pamphlet: Encouragement to Teachers and Guidance for Parents" produced by leading Charedi Jewish Rabbis, including several affiliated to the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (UOHC), an umbrella body which is represented in IISCA as a core participant.
This document explicitly advocates corporal punishment and the importance of fear and submission in education. As Ofsted noted, "some of the signatories to the document are believed to be serving head teachers or teachers at Charedi schools and unregistered yeshivas". The document confirms that even though corporal punishment in schools was ruled unlawful many years ago, it is still being actively promoted by religious leaders today. Where religious leaders explicitly reject laws and reasonable societal expectations around treatment of children, the need for state intervention is even starker.
So the dangers of unregistered schools highlight the need for stronger regulation in this area. But they also yet again highlight broader issues about child protection in religious settings, which have become a familiar theme during IICSA's hearings. In its eventual recommendations, the inquiry will need to address these head-on. We mustn't leave children to languish in unsafe environments out of fear of confronting religious interests.
Scotland's faith schools are a divisive anachronism
Having worked in education for nearly 40 years I am convinced that the continuing existence of faith schools divides children in a local community. They add significant extra costs on an already-stretched educational budget; they contribute to the scourge of sectarianism; they are anachronistic and do not reflect Scottish society in 2020.
With education budgets under so much pressure it simply does not make sense that you can have two schools (both at primary and secondary level) built side by side to serve different religious communities. This duplicates construction costs, maintenance costs and administrative costs. It gives a very clear physical impression of difference between the two school communities.
There are examples of neighbouring schools operating different timetables for starting the school day, lunchtime and intervals and for the end of the day, on the assumption there might be trouble between the pupils. This is divisive and shows the failure to tackle sectarianism, which is such a scourge in parts of Scotland.
In Catholic schools, the local hierarchy has a very strong presence. I know of examples where teachers have been refused promotion because they were not of the Catholic faith. On another occasion a request by a parent council to amend a headteacher job description to allow for the appointment of a non-Catholic was vetoed by the local archbishop. There are regular pressures on teachers and the school leadership teams when curricular topics in science or social education touch on issues, for example relating to inclusion and diversity, which do not sit comfortably with Catholic teaching.
Faith schools do not reflect the Scotland of the 21st century. They are an anachronism. In the last Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, 58% of Scots were non-religious, including almost 70% of 18-24 year olds. The Church of Scotland reports that by 2018 its membership was down to six per cent of the population, while by 2016 reported affiliation to the Catholic Church had fallen to about two and a half per cent of the population. Despite these radical transformations over the last half century, there's a continuing assumption that denominational faith schools exist to serve children from Catholic backgrounds and non-denominational schools serve those from a Church of Scotland one.
Despite declining church attendance, church representatives are still entitled to membership of local authorities' education committees or their equivalents. These appointments are often justified by the presence of denominational faith schools.
Finally, on a personal note it is upsetting to see the children in our street going in different directions wearing different uniforms to experience a rather different education from their friends. Education in Scotland should be secular. It is up to families to introduce their children to their particular faith. Schools should not be the vehicles for the indoctrination of young Scots.
Discrimination, inconvenience, unfairness: The harm caused by faith school admissions
When parents in England have an unresolved complaint about their local council, they can approach the local government and social care ombudsman. This includes complaints relating to schools maintained by local authorities. By looking at ombudsman investigations, we can see what sort of complaints about schools are common.
Complaints highlighting the harm caused by faith schools are sadly quite frequent.
Here are five case studies of complaints referred to the ombudsman over the last year. They illustrate the absurdity of letting schools prioritise pupils on the basis of their family's religion, the desperation of parents who just want to get their child into a good school, and the problems caused by discriminating against families who aren't the 'right' faith.
The daughter who can't go to the local school where her mum works
Miss X works at St Bede's School, a Christian faith school in Redhill, Surrey. One of her three children also attends the school. In 2018, she applied for a place for her daughter, Y, to attend the school, but was refused. The reason was that Miss X does not attend any place of worship, so her daughter was given the second lowest priority in the school's admissions criteria.
In her appeal Miss X said the rejection from St Bede's had a "severe adverse impact" on her daughter. She said that because the family lives close by, the journey to school would be easier and safer for Y. She now struggles getting her three children to three separate schools every morning.
Her appeal was rejected. Read the full case.
The mum who didn't get her daughter baptised in time
Mrs X wanted her daughter to attend Blessed John Henry Newman Roman Catholic College in Oldham. Her family lives within easy walking distance of the school, and her older son had attended there – she had very understandable reasons for wanting her daughter to go there.
Like all parents who want to be considered for priority admissions in faith schools, Mrs X completed a Supplementary Information Form (SIF). Faith schools use this to get evidence about how religious a particular family is, and therefore rank them according to their priority list.
Mrs X submitted the SIF three weeks before the deadline, and said her daughter wasn't Catholic. She was being honest – her child hadn't been baptised yet.
She then had her daughter baptised three days before the deadline to submit the SIF. She didn't baptise her sooner because their priest apparently refused to baptise her daughter until they had attended church for two years. She did not receive the baptism certificate before the deadline to submit it to the school as part of the SIF.
Mrs X's daughter was rejected. Mrs X appealed, saying there wasn't space on the SIF to explain the baptism situation. In her appeal, she noted that two children who were baptised Catholic who lived further away from the school had been given places.
The appeal panel questioned why she hadn't had her son baptised, and suggested she had "only had Y baptised so she could attend the school". The appeal was rejected.
The case demonstrates the hoops parents have to jump through in order to get their child a place at a school that's within walking distance from their house, if that school happens to be a faith school. Even when parents do everything in their power to secure a place, baptised children living further away will often beat them to it. And when parents appeal, they'll frequently face accusations of feigning religiosity.
But can we really blame parents for playing a system that's unjust and unfair in the first place?
The Muslim family rejected for not being Catholics
It isn't just non-religious families who are discriminated against in faith school admissions. Members of minority faiths can suffer too.
Mr X wanted his daughter to attend St Paul's Catholic College in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey. The school was oversubscribed and she was assigned to another school assigned as her third favourite choice ('School D').
The school prioritises baptised Catholics, but Mr X's family are Muslims. They were therefore ranked no.11 ("children of other non-Christian faiths") out of 12 on the school's order of priorities.
Mr X appealed, largely on the grounds that St Paul's Catholic College was closer to home than School D. He said this was particularly important for several reasons. His daughter had various medical conditions. The family was responsible for care of the daughter's elderly grandmother who had a number of health issues. And the family had two other children to take to school as well.
The appeal was rejected. Read the full case.
The non-religious family assigned a faith school against their wishes
Sometimes the opposite problem occurs: a family get allocated a faith school when they want a secular education for their child.
Ms F moved into her local area in Hampshire in December 2018 and applied for a place for her seven-year-old son in Year 3 at 'Q School'. This was unsuccessful and she was instead offered a place at 'W School', which turned out to be a faith school. In her appeal, Ms F explained that the faith ethos of the school was one reason why she didn't want her son to go there.
Her appeal was rejected. Read the full case.
Ms F's case is far from uncommon. The National Secular Society's 2018 Choice Delusion report revealed almost three in 10 families across England live in areas where most or all of the closest primary schools are faith schools. They often have no choice but to have their child raised in a religious tradition that they may not share. NSS research has since found that 20,000 families were assigned to faith schools in England against their preferences in September 2019.
We often hear that faith schools create more 'choice' for parents. But in cases like this, they evidently do the very opposite.
The grandma on benefits who can't get free school transport because she doesn't share the school's faith
The discrimination caused by faith schools isn't limited to their admissions policies. Another example from the ombudsman highlights the unfairness of procedures for transport to faith schools.
Local authorities can offer free transport to children attending faith schools – and bizarrely, a loophole in the Equality Act 2010 means they can refuse this transport to children attending the faith school who do not share the religion of the school.
In 2018, Ms C applied for a place at School F for her granddaughter, CC. School F happens to be a faith school, but like many parents and guardians, Ms C selected it for reasons other than its faith ethos. Initially the application was refused, but Ms C was able to successfully appeal against this.
Ms C is on benefits. She applied to Newcastle upon Tyne City Council for school transport funding and was refused. Its reasoning was that School F was not one of the three closest suitable schools to their home, and CC's place at School F had not been awarded her place on faith grounds.
When Ms C complained, the ombudsman found that had she and her granddaughter shared the faith of the school, she would have been entitled to free transport.
But the ombudsman determined Ms C hadn't been unlawfully discriminated against because of exemptions in the Equality Act.
While the ombudsman did criticise the council for operating an "inflexible" policy that did not allow for discretion, it found Ms C and CC suffered "no personal injustice". Read the full case.
Time for change
These five cases illustrate the damage faith schools cause to families and communities. They impose religion on families who don't share it, segregate communities and prevent parents from sending children to the school that's most appropriate for them. And that's why all of our schools should be equally welcoming to children from families of all faiths and none.
Scotland says it wants to clamp down on hate. But its charity law helps to promote it
The Scottish government has published a bill that threatens to outlaw the expression of hateful ideas. But meanwhile religious groups who promote harmful ideology enjoy charitable status, says Megan Manson.
Scotland's legal landscape is beginning to look weird.
On the one hand, Scotland made it a criminal offence last year for parents to smack their children.
On the other hand, it grants charitable status to organisations that exist to promote ideologies which include beating children.
I'm referring to the multiple charities belonging to the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, a fundamentalist Protestant sect. The official website of the parent charity devotes a whole article to why parents should physically discipline their children because the Bible says "Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die."
The article, which is an extract from the work of theologian Charles Bridges, says that while it is "revolting to give pain and call forth the tears of those we so tenderly love", God has "ordained the rod to purge [the child's] sins". It adds: "Is it not better that the flesh should smart than that the soul should die?"
In order to be granted registered charity status, and all the tax breaks and other perks such status confers, charities "must actively provide benefit", according to Scottish charity regulator OSCR. Furthermore, an organisation may fail the charity test if it causes "actual or likely detriment or harm".
So how can an organisation that says you must beat your children in order to save their souls qualify as a charity? How can a charity continue to be a charity while it promotes an activity that's now illegal?
And things could get weirder still. The Scottish parliament is now considering a new hate crime bill that will tighten its rules on hate speech. If passed, the bill would provide for new 'stirring up' of hatred offences that would apply to all characteristics listed in the bill: age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics. Currently these offences only apply to stirring up racial hatred.
How will this sit with the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland?
Its website makes it pretty clear what it thinks about sexual orientation. It refers to same-sex relationships as "heinous", "vile", "great evil", an "abominable practice" and "a lifestyle of disease and death".
Transgender identity gets a similar treatment. The website quotes the Bible's assertion that those who wear clothes of the opposite sex are "abomination unto the Lord thy God", and laments: "What fearful uncleanness ensues from 'cross-dressing' and other deliberate and extreme 'trans-gender" sins against this requirement."
The Free Presbyterian Church's charities aren't the only ones that could fall foul of the hate crime bill. The website of the Christadelphian Auxiliary Lecturing Society, without any condemnation, quotes a Bible passage that says men who have sex with other men "must be put to death". This organisation was registered with OSCR in 2015.
Meanwhile, the registered website of Glasgow branch of Mountain Of Fire And Miracles (MFM) Ministries International Scotland says that homosexuality "redefined as sexual preference" is the result of "bewitchment". MFM's founder Daniel Olukoya preaches that gay people are possessed by "the spirit of the dog" and believes that prayer can save those "in the bondage of homosexuality". An undercover investigation in the Liverpool Echo in 2018 revealed that an MFM church was putting these teachings into action through an extreme form of 'gay conversion therapy' involving starvation.
Finally, Al-Mawrid Global's website has this to say about lesbians: "Lesbianism is obviously one of the practices whose abomination is ingrained in us. Only women whose nature have become perverted indulge in it." Al-Mawrid Global was registered with OSCR in 2013.
All these charities exist to promote religion. And that's precisely why they are charities: "the advancement of religion" is a charitable purpose in Scotland, thanks to the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 (with similar legal provisions in place across the UK). Your organisation doesn't need to run a food bank, or give shelter to the homeless, or do anything else that would reasonably be recognised as 'good work' to get charitable status – provided it's religious. Simply preaching your religion is generally enough to get you stamped as a charity.
But as these examples demonstrate, what many religions teach isn't inherently good. Sometimes it's downright hateful. But because religion is privileged in charity law, we've reached this bizarre situation where you could be arrested for smacking your child, while the organisation that told you to smack your child gets tax breaks – because they told you in the name of religion.
And if the new hate crime bill is passed, you could be arrested for saying something interpreted as stirring up hate against gay people – but if you're representing a church and say those things in the name of God, you could become a registered charity.
Should the Free Presbyterian Church or the Christadelphians or any other homophobic religious group be subject to criminal proceedings for expressing their hateful views? I don't think so. I think this would be a severe curtailment of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. It would be against core secularist principles.
But surely it's obvious that we shouldn't be giving such organisations charitable status?
That's one reason why 'the advancement of religion' should be scrapped as a charitable purpose. Doing so would not prevent the many religious charities that do genuine good work without preaching hate from registering, under charitable purposes such as the relief of poverty or the relief of those in need.
But it would weed out the organisations that do nothing but promote a religious agenda and spout harmful rhetoric. Those organisations could continue to do this, of course – but they would no longer be endorsed by the state via charitable status.
As society changes, our values also change. Acceptance of physically disciplining children has diminished while acceptance of same-sex relationships has grown. Many of Scotland's laws have changed to reflect this – but charity law has lagged far behind. It needs reform, and challenging the privileged status of religion in charity law would be an excellent place to start.
Read the NSS's report on religious charities, For the public benefit?: The case for removing 'the advancement of religion' as a charitable purpose
Image: Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, Kinlochbervie; © Euan Nelson [CC BY-SA 2.0]
How charity law props up ‘gay conversion therapy’
As the NSS challenges the status of a Christian charity which pushes "change oriented therapy" for gay people, Megan Manson says charity law shouldn't help religious groups to engage in exploitative behaviour.
Attempting to change someone's sexual orientation is unethical, exploitative and potentially harmful. So said the UK Council for Psychotherapy, the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and a host of other professional bodies in the field of medicine, psychology and psychiatry in a consensus statement drawn up in 2014.
The harms of so-called 'gay conversion therapy' were made clear in a 2018 survey by the Ozanne Foundation. Of those respondents with experience of attempting to change their sexual orientation, well over half had suffered from mental health issues as a result, including nearly a third who had attempted suicide.
But 'conversion therapy' still goes on in the UK. It is reliant on the belief that same-sex relationships are a moral evil and that same-sex attraction is a 'disorder' or 'sickness' in need of a cure.
It's therefore unsurprising that supporters of various forms of conversion therapy are usually conservative religious institutions. In 2017 an investigation by the Liverpool Echo found a Pentecostal church, Mountain of Fire and Miracles, offered 'gay cure' sessions involving intense prayer and starvation. And in 2018 Winners Chapel, another Pentecostal church, was filmed attempting to 'cure' an undercover reporter of his homosexuality via a "complete mind reorientation".
What is perhaps more surprising, however, is that organisations promoting and conducting gay conversion therapy are frequently registered charities.
Both Mountain of Fire and Miracles and Winners Chapel are registered with the Charity Commission. And they aren't the only charities who have been involved in conversion therapy.
This week the National Secular Society helped to highlight this. We challenged the charitable status of one of the primary supporters of conversion therapy in the UK, Core Issues Trust, which is registered in Northern Ireland. Although it rejects the term 'conversion therapy', it advocates what it calls "change orientated therapy" for people "seeking to leave homosexual behaviours and feelings". The trust says the therapies it promotes "support client goals to prioritize (sic) conservative religious values over their same-sex attractions in identity development".
Charities are meant to provide a public benefit. So how can organisations promoting an unethical and harmful activity be charities?
The reason is hinted at in a Charity Commission ruling in 2016, concerning an organisation called Living Out. Although Living Out says it does not support conversion therapy, it nevertheless regards same-sex relationships, and even merely desiring sexual encounters with someone of the same sex, as sinful. It therefore seeks to help "Christian brothers and sisters who experience same-sex attraction stay faithful to biblical teaching on sexual ethics". In other words, the organisation exists to encourage gay people to practice abstinence.
In 2015, the Charity Commission rejected an application from Living Out to the charity register, on the basis that it was not serving a public benefit and because it "was not evidenced that the organisation sought to promote the wider Christian religion rather than the specific doctrines with regard to homosexuality."
Living Out sought a review, and in 2016 the Charity Commission reversed its decision and accepted Living Out on to the register. Critics of this decision included Conservative MP Michael Freer who expressed surprise that "the Charity Commission could remotely believe this to be of public benefit".
But the commission said it was now satisfied that Living Out "was a more broadly-focused organisation, interested in promoting acceptance, love, compassion and a welcoming place in the Christian Church for same-sex attracted individuals who wish to stay true to their Christian faith".
And therein lies the root of the problem. These charities are permitted to promote gay conversion therapy, or the idea that even to think sexual thoughts about people of the same sex is wicked, because they do so in the name of religion. "The advancement of religion" is legally recognised as a charitable purpose, and all of the charities named here are classified under this purpose.
There are encouraging signs that society is growing less tolerant of the homophobic idea that gay people need 'curing' or encouragement to live a life of celibacy. In 2018 the government announced that it would bring forward proposals to end the practice of conversion therapy in the UK. And earlier this year, the Northern Ireland health minister expressed an interest in investigating the issue further.
An obvious place to start is to look into the law that enables conversion therapy to take place in the name of charity: the law that classifies 'the advancement of religion' as a charitable activity.
While many people are motivated by religion to do good in the world, it should never be assumed that advancing religion in and of itself benefits the public. As conversion therapy so devastatingly demonstrates, religious ideology and activities are sometimes downright harmful to individuals and to society. But allowing organisations that promote 'conversion therapy' to register as charities gives them access to tax breaks, extra funding via Gift Aid, and a veneer of respectability.
Including 'the advancement of religion' among the list of charitable purposes does not merely privilege religion – it hands religious institutions the tools they need to exploit the vulnerabilities of religious people themselves, including those experiencing religiously-rooted feelings of guilt or fear about their sexual orientation.
That's why we need to take religion out of the picture when deciding whether or not an organisation should be a charity, and instead ensure all charities, whatever their religious or secular ethos, demonstrate a tangible and recognisable public benefit.
Read the NSS's report on religion and charity law, For the public benefit?: The case for removing 'the advancement of religion' as a charitable purpose.
Image by Ulrike Mai from Pixabay.
Scotland’s new hate speech law will be too censorious
A new offence of 'stirring up hatred' on religious grounds is too restrictive of free speech, says Chris Sloggett.
A couple of weeks ago it emerged that the Scottish government had brought forward a proposal to abolish the blasphemy law as part of its newly-proposed bill on hate crime.
The National Secular Society and others have long lobbied for this, largely to send a signal about the permissibility of criticising religion and to show solidarity with those persecuted under active blasphemy laws worldwide. Ministers appear to have accepted these arguments and decided it should be removed from the statute book.
That's the good news. But nobody has been prosecuted under Scotland's blasphemy law since 1843. And the bill has worryingly created the risk that new offences relating to religious hatred will enact a de facto clampdown on freedom of expression.
The bill would create a range of new 'stirring up hatred' offences – including 'stirring up hatred' on the basis of religion. It's already an offence in Scotland to 'stir up hatred' on some other grounds – such as race and nationality. Now the Scottish government, which is concerned by the growth of bigoted attitudes, wants to expand it.
The crime of 'stirring up hatred' is similar to an offence which applies in England and Wales under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. But the title of the offence is vague and likely to be weaponised to restrict debate: accusations of 'stirring up hatred' are ten a penny on social media alone. It also sends a confusing message about the reach of criminal law. It isn't a crime to hate, so why should it be a crime to encourage others to hate?
And 'stirring up hatred' offences have a paradoxical effect: they give the state too much power while making it harder to do the job we expect it to do. Consider the response to Boris Johnson's infamous article about burka bans in 2018. During the lengthy frenzy the Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick asked experts to look into whether Johnson had committed a hate crime. Perhaps you think his article was crassly and unhelpfully worded, and a poor reflection on someone who now occupies the highest political office in the country (I would agree with you). But the suggestion that it was worthy of police attention, particularly at a senior level, was ludicrous.
Ministers would be better served ditching the idea of 'stirring up hatred' and relying on easily-defined, clear offences. Credibly inciting violence against a group of people should be off-limits. And if someone has been the victim of an existing offence – for example they've been harassed, attacked or threatened – on the basis of their religious identity, it should be an aggravating factor. Otherwise we should be wary.
And as currently drafted the Scottish law would be more restrictive than its equivalent in England and Wales.
A successful prosecution for 'stirring up hatred' on religious grounds in Scotland would require two criteria to be met. Firstly an individual's behaviour would need to be "threatening or abusive". In England and Wales the law only uses the word "threatening". So why include "abusive", which could easily be misinterpreted? A memorandum accompanying the bill cites a judge who reviewed hate crime legislation – Alastair Campbell, also known as Lord Bracadale. It says he "considered that the requirement for 'threatening' behaviour alone sets the legal threshold too high" and goes on:
"He is of the view that abusive conduct which was not necessarily threatening could still be intended to stir up hatred in relation to a characteristic or could give rise to the likelihood that hatred could be stirred up."
Me neither.
An individual would also either need to intend to "stir up hatred" against a religious group or it would need to be "likely that hatred will be stirred up" against one. In England and Wales only intent applies; likelihood is irrelevant. Judging a speaker's intent is itself difficult; assessing the likelihood that "hatred will be stirred up" is likely to be even harder.
In its defence the Scottish government cites a free speech protection in the bill. This says behaviour or material shouldn't be considered threatening or abusive "solely on the basis that it involves or includes discussion or criticism of religion or religious practices". This is better than nothing, but weak and clumsy.
The fact ministers have considered a free speech clause necessary is a sign that the drafting of the bill is too open to interpretation. A better approach would be to ensure any offences are clearly and narrowly defined, and better justified, in the first place.
And the clause again compares poorly to its much more robust equivalent in England and Wales. This explicitly says the law shouldn't restrict "discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents". It also reserves similar protection for criticism of belief systems and for proselytising. In Scotland, by contrast, over-sensitive complainants will quite easily argue that speech they dislike isn't "solely" a discussion or critique of religion.
The remarks of the minister responsible for the bill, Humza Yousaf, are also discouraging. As he introduced it last month, he said: "Stirring up of hatred can contribute to a social atmosphere in which discrimination is accepted as normal." But the idea that speech "can contribute to a social atmosphere" is flimsy grounds for prosecuting those who say it. He added that "we all have a responsibility to challenge prejudice". That's a fair point for society at large, but too broad a goal for criminal law.
And this week Yousaf sought to defend the legislation by publicising photos of eight unpleasant tweets which were posted in response to a critical article on the subject. Had he complained to Twitter, perhaps some of these would have been removed. But none of them were deserving of criminal sanction.
He and his fellow ministers seem to have fallen into a familiar trap, and told themselves they must use the law to clamp down on unsavoury sentiments. Making society more welcoming for people from all religious backgrounds is a worthy goal. But disempowering ordinary people by restricting their freedom of expression is likely to antagonise, rather than create social harmony.
This vague law will undermine open debate, along with citizens' confidence that they'll be treated equally under the law and they won't be prosecuted unfairly. And it won't achieve what it's set out to achieve. Ministers should take another look at it.
Update, December 2020: The bill has passed its first parliamentary stage, meaning MSPs have backed the "general principles" behind it.
Since introducing the bill the Scottish government has said it will introduce several amendments which would mitigate the threat to freedom of expression, including on religion. The NSS has welcomed these but said the bill continues to pose a threat to free speech.
Image: The Scottish parliament building, © Mary and Angus Hogg [CC BY-SA 2.0]
The 2015 General Election
Tackling CofE privilege unites Anglicans and atheists at NSS event
Politicians and priests united to challenge Church of England privileges at a National Secular Society event in parliament yesterday.
Four speakers joined the NSS's discussion on the future of church and state to argue why separation between the two would benefit both the UK state and the Church itself.
The event at the Houses of Parliament was held in the wake of King Charles' Anglican coronation this month, which shone a spotlight on the intimate relationship between church and state in the UK.
The Church's established status has also come under increased scrutiny over its continued discrimination against LGBT people and women, and its recent safeguarding scandals.
The four speakers called for an end to the CofE's many privileges, including automatic seats for its bishops in the House of Lords and Christian prayers imposed in parliament and schools.
Tommy Sheppard MP: Church in parliament "offends against a sense of democracy"
The event was opened by Scottish National Party MP Tommy Sheppard, who sponsored the event. He said he was "surprised and shocked" by the extent to which the Church permeates parliament, and that both prayers in parliament and bishops in the Lords "offend against a sense of democracy".
Pointing to the recent Census results for England and Wales, which revealed Christians are a minority for the first time, he said we are "no longer a Christian country" and that the role of the Church in parliament is "incredibly unrepresentative" of the population. He said it was incumbent on the government to make parliament more representative. He plans to arrange a debate on the bishops' bench and put questions to ministers that "they will find hard to answer".
Jayne Ozanne: The established Church 'doesn't serve anyone particularly well'
Jayne Ozanne, a prominent gay evangelical who works to ensure full inclusion of LGBT+ people within faith communities, highlighted that only 55% of British people trust clergy to tell the truth. This is less trustworthy than taxi drivers, and is 30 points behind trust levels in 1983.
She said this decline in trust in the Church "should cause greatest concern", but comes as "no surprise" in the wake of sexual abuse scandals and cover-ups, including the recent report into bishops' inaction over rapist priest Trevor Devamanikkam. She also condemned the "toxic nature of institutional homophobia" in Church culture. She said the "tide is turning" on the "hypocrisy" of the Church "lecturing" the government on morality.
Ozanne said that bishops should not be automatically elevated to the House of Lords, and criticised them for using their privilege to obtain exemptions from equality law to discriminate against LGBT people.
Finally, she questioned who establishment serves. She said doesn't serve the monarch, the country, God or even the bishops, because serving in the House of Lords interferes with their role of running a dioceses. She concluded that establishment doesn't serve "anyone particularly well", ending with: "We need champions who will defend all the vulnerable, who will speak and be heard, and whose voices are ones that the nation recognise as trustworthy and true.
"And I'm sorry to say that this is no longer, in my mind, automatically that of the bishops – and so their privileges must now go".
Dr Martyn Percy: Established Church is an overcrammed "vestry cupboard"
Ozanne was followed by theologian and ordained CofE priest Dr Martyn Percy. He compared establishment with an old, dusty "vestry cupboard" overcrammed with things no longer needed. He said that he was "really struck" by the Church's efforts to make things "look clean and tidy", when underneath is "chaos, confusion and even corruption". He said he is still a Christian but has "lost faith" in the Church of England to reform itself.
Dr Percy criticised Church law as "out of touch" with employment and human rights law, and Church safeguarding as a "catastrophic mess", with too many conflicts of interest and conflation of power and authority.
He echoed Ozanne's concerns about the Church's failure to solve issues like same-sex marriage, and said the bishops in the Lords are "highly problematic" as they should be there on merit rather than appointed by right.
He said "parliament must act" to repeal the Church's privileges and that it would not take much time to set things in motion.
Finally, quoting Michael Caine in The Italian Job, he said the solution to the 'vestry cupboard' of the established church is to "blow the bloody doors off".
Polly Toynbee: Coronation a "turning point" for the established Church
The final speaker, writer and broadcaster Polly Toynbee, said the coronation was a 'shocking wake up moment' for many people, who were left "gobsmacked" by the highly religious and "peculiar" nature of the ceremony and the vows King Charles took to maintain "the Laws of God" and the "Protestant Reformed Religion established by law". She pointed out this meant the archbishop "had more powers than the King did", and that the coronation was therefore "quite a turning point" in making disestablishment relevant.
Toynbee highlighted how the Church's privileges support state-funded Church of England faith schools, many of which are "socially selective" due to their religiously discriminatory admissions policies, and the law requiring collective worship in all schools.
She criticised the bishops using their privileges in parliament to oppose a range of social reforms, including same sex marriage and assisted dying. She stressed that we have to remember the Church still has an "enormous impact on how we live and how we die".
NSS chief executive" "Really heartening to see a growing 'broad church' in favour of replacing privilege with equality"
NSS chief executive Stephen Evans, who chaired the event, said: "This discussion not only emphasised why it is more important than ever to disestablish the Church of England – it demonstrated that the appetite for separation of church and state is growing among Brits of all religions and beliefs.
"It is really heartening to see a growing 'broad church' in favour of replacing privilege with equality. And our excellent speakers last night embodied this perfectly.
"A huge thank you to Tommy Sheppard, Jayne Ozanne, Martyn Percy and Polly Toynbee for so eloquently putting into words what increasing numbers of individuals, both within and outside of the Church, are thinking."
Image: (From left): Martyn Percy, Tommy Sheppard, Stephen Evans and Jayne Ozanne
Hold the Church to account for abuse – separate it from the state
The Church of England's increasingly dire record on safeguarding should have consequences for its established status, says Megan Manson.
It didn't take long for the glitz and glamour of the coronation to fade, and for the Church of England to find itself back in the quagmire of abuse scandals.
Within days of their Westminster Abbey extravaganza, the UK's established Church found itself having to answer to damning findings of an independent review into the case of Trevor Devamanikkam, a CofE priest who raped Matthew Ineson in the 1980s. Ineson was just 16 years old.
Days later, victims of alleged abuse at the hands of CofE preacher Mike Pilavachi called for an independent investigation into his actions, as they don't trust the Church's own internal inquiry.
Pilavachi's victims and survivors have every right to be sceptical of the Church's ability, in their words, to "mark its own homework". The Devamanikkam review, and responses from those implicated, make plain why.
The review paints a picture of a chaotic and bumbling Church, unclear of what to do when safeguarding disclosures are made and incapable of providing important paperwork relating to the case in a timely manner (if at all).
But most troubling of all are the bishops who failed to act despite Ineson, himself now a CofE vicar, making multiple verbal and written disclosures of abuse. Bishop of Oxford Steven Croft (pictured; left) and retired archbishop of York John Sentamu (right) in particular stand out. Both of them sit in the House of Lords thanks to the unique CofE privilege of having 26 seats reserved for their bishops. Croft is a current member of the bishops' bench and Sentamu is now a Lord Temporal; all former archbishops of Canterbury and York are offered life peerage.
Croft has admitted his inaction was wrong and, 10 years after Ineson's disclosure, has finally apologised. Ineson, not unreasonably, has called for Croft to step down: "You cannot ignore disclosures of rape by a priest and do nothing."
But Sentamu's reaction has been quite different. Let's not forget he was archbishop of York at the time of the disclosures – second only to the archbishop of Canterbury in the church hierarchy. He was copied into Ineson's letter disclosing the abuse to Croft in 2013. In any place of work, you would hope a safeguarding issue, especially one raised by a current employee, would be taken with the utmost seriousness by senior management. But Sentamu's only action was to reply to Ineson: "Thank you for copying me into the letter, which I have read. Please be assured of my prayers and best wishes during this testing time."
The review rightly criticised Sentamu for failing to use his authority to ensure Croft responded to Ineson, or to write to Ineson directly, or to seek advice from his Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser, instead of merely sending 'thoughts and prayers'.
Unlike Croft, Sentamu's reaction to the review was not to admit wrongdoing, but to double down. He said the reviewer's conclusion that no church law "excuses the responsibility of individuals not to act on matters of a safeguarding nature" is "odd and troubling". He even made the extraordinary claim that "Safeguarding is very important but it does not trump Church Law".
Sentamu appears to be incorrect; the review concluded Sentamu failed to act according to the Church's own procedures. But his statement is not only wrong – it reveals the extremely warped sense of moral priorities that many Church leaders operate under. If a church's rules meant a victim of child sexual abuse could not get justice, surely a moral person could not tolerate being a leader within that church?
Sentamu has since been asked to step down from his CofE role while the Church considers the review. But he is by no means the first CofE leader to seemingly prioritise institutional agendas over the safety and wellbeing of children and young people. Consider the case of bishop Peter Ball, whose victims of abuse were branded liars by the Church while Ball was afforded all sympathy and support – even from former archbishop of Canterbury George Carey and then-Prince Charles, who is now the Church's supreme governor.
Even former culture secretary Nadine Dorries MP, not usually a sceptic of faith groups, has criticised the Church's response to the Devamanikkam case. She was abused as a child by an Anglican priest but was met with "silence" when she disclosed what happened to her, and probably to other young girls, to bishops in the House of Lords. She rightly asks: "How many more of us — people like Matthew Ineson and myself — are there out there? People who were abused as youngsters and then ignored."
She adds: "The Roman Catholic Church has, with good cause, been the focus of much of the historic child sex abuse in recent decades, and that has suited the Church of England. But it cannot escape the evil that lurks within its own cloisters any longer."
But what is the state's response to the Church's failures on child abuse?
Very little, it seems. The Church continues to sit comfortably in the constitution as the state religion, luxuriating in the status and privilege this brings. Its bishops, even those at the heart of safeguarding failures, continue to sit in the House of Lords as of right. Our head of state must pledge to uphold the Church's privileges at an Anglican ceremony costing millions in taxpayers' money – as we speak, plans for William's coronation are already afoot. The Church is allowed to lead prayers at the start of every sitting in both houses of parliament. And it controls over a quarter of all primary schools, making it the largest academy provider in England. Hardly a responsibility we'd usually grant an institution with such an appalling record on child abuse.
The Church uses its supposed 'moral insight' to argue for its privileges. Its record on sex abuse surely shatters this argument – together with its increasingly outdated institutional homophobia and sexism.
Survivors and campaigners rightly call for a zero-tolerance approach from the Church of England towards abuse. But this responsibility should also apply to the UK state. If we want to demonstrate we take protecting children from abuse and justice for victims seriously, we must show there are consequences for institutions that repeatedly fail in safeguarding. That should include stripping the Church of its exclusive, unearned and increasingly unjustifiable privileges as the state religion.
Image: Roger Harris, CC BY 3.0
House of Lords makes politicians out of prelates
Religious leaders should be free to speak out on matters that concern them, but they should do so on the basis of equality, not privilege, argues Stephen Evans.
Justin Welby's recent intervention in the House of Lords debate on the Illegal Migration Bill has sparked much discussion about whether religion and politics should mix.
The archbishop of Canterbury attacked the government's legislation to stop small boat crossings (amongst other things) as "morally unacceptable". Referencing the Bible, he pointed out that Jesus taught us to "welcome the stranger".
Welby's speech provoked a predictable backlash from supporters of the bill. Conservative MP and member of the Home Affairs committee James Daly said: "The unelected archbishop should stick to religion and keep out of politics". Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson was so angry she said she could "cheerfully bop the nitwit on the mitre". Former cabinet minister Lord Forsyth suggested the archbishop should concern himself with "issues spiritual, rather than temporal."
But the fact is Welby is one of 26 bishops of the Church of England given seats as of right as lawmakers in our upper chamber. Their role as members of the 'lords spiritual' gives them direct influence in the secular realm of legislating, making politicians out of prelates.
Whether or not you agree with Welby on this issue, the archaic and unjustifiable arrangement that inserts Anglican clerics into our legislature needs to be addressed. It turns our parliament into a pulpit from which bishops can pontificate on any issues they choose – often in a self-serving way. For example, by imposing their theology through opposition to assisted dying or same sex marriage, or by promoting the use of publicly funded schools for proselytism.
Civil society groups, religious and secular, should be free to speak out on issues that concern them. But there's no good reason why Church of England clerics should uniquely enjoy a privileged platform in parliament to do so.
With the media focussing almost exclusively on the archbishop's intervention, you'd be forgiven for not noticing that scores of other members of the House of Lords lined up to voice strong opposition to the Illegal Immigration Bill, too – along with a coalition of 176 civil society organisations who called on parliamentarians to urge the government to immediately withdraw it.
The bizarre focus on a church leader finding government legislation "morally unacceptable" suggests we still believe a bishop's opinions carry greater moral weight that anyone else's. The idea that religious leaders have access to moral insights denied to the rest of us is as offensive as it is outdated. In the case of most organised religions, it is also demonstrably false.
It's this same outmoded and prejudiced attitude that keeps BBC Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day' ringfenced for religious ideas, Christian worship mandated at the start of school days, and prayers before parliamentary sittings.
Clerics in the legislature, like the heads of state's Christian coronation, is a medieval tradition that sits uneasily in a 21st century pluralistic secular democracy.
Constitutional reforms have often struggled to gain political saliency in modern Britain, but the Labour Party's next manifesto looks set to include plans to abolish the House of Lords, which would automatically take the bishops with it.
When we do finally get around to reforming our second chamber, explicit religious representation shouldn't feature. Practicalities aside, extending Anglican privilege to more faith and belief groups would simply fuel division and neglect the nonreligious and religiously unconcerned. Religious privilege should be ended, not extended.
But Justin Welby and other faith leaders are perfectly entitled to join other civil society organisations in trying to persuade decision-makers to hear and understand their point of view. It's a free country. But there's no reason to give them a privileged pedestal from which to do so.
Image: Roger Harris, CC BY 3.0
Study: Brits wary of religion but at ease with religious difference
People in Great Britain are increasingly wary of religion yet comfortable with people belonging to different religions, figures suggest.
A new survey on global religion by Ipsos found 66% of British people agree with the statement: "Religion does more harm in the world than good".
This is the third highest percentage of all 26 countries surveyed, after India and Sweden. It has increased by 4% since 2017. The average across the 26 countries is 47%.
But the figures also indicate Brits have become more tolerant of religious difference. Eighty-eight per cent agree with the statement "I am completely comfortable being around people who have different religious beliefs than me".
This percentage, one of the highest among the countries surveyed, is the same as other countries in the Anglosphere and has increased by 3% over the last six years.
British people are also largely tolerant of nonreligious people. Only 15% agreed with the statement: "I lose respect for people when I find out that they do not have a religious faith".
And less than three in ten Brits (27%) agree that "people with a religious faith are better citizens".
However, both figures have increased by 5% since 2017, suggesting tolerance for irreligion may be waning. Those in the Gen Z demographic were considerably more likely to hold these views than baby boomers.
Most Brits don't pray and don't see religion as important for citizenship or happiness
Ipsos found there is an almost 50:50 split between religious and nonreligious people in Britain, with 48% identifying with a religion (39% Christian, 6% Muslim and 3% other religions) and 48% with no religion. The remaining 4% preferred not to say.
Ipsos' findings are largely consistent with the 2021 Census of England and Wales, which found 38% of people have no religion, while 46% are Christian and 6.5% are Muslim.
Other figures in the Ipsos report suggest that religion does not play a major role in the lives of most Brits. Only 18% pray at least once a month at a place of worship and 25% pray outside a place of worship (for example, at home).
However, the percentage of Gen Zers who pray in either setting is higher than for than Boomers. They are also more likely to believe in God. Ipsos said this reflects a global trend in which countries where young people are more likely to be Muslim, they are also more likely to to view their religion as a marker of their identity, and to associate religion with morality.
The 2021 Census found Islam is the youngest religion or belief group in England and Wales, while Christianity is the oldest.
Less than half of Brits agree that their religion defines them as a person (27%) or that people with a religious faith are happier (39%).
Ipsos said globally, the percentage who say religious people are happier tends to mirror the percentage who regularly attend a place of worship. Additionally, the higher the proportion of believers in a country, the more likely believers are to feel they benefit from their faith, Ipsos found.
NSS: Politicians should refrain from divisive pro-religion rhetoric
Megan Manson, head of campaigns at the National Secular Society, said: "Pro-religion politicians and religious leaders alike frequently use the argument that religion makes people happier or better citizens to push for more religion in public affairs.
"But this survey reveals most Brits feel very differently. They think religion causes more harm than good, and that religious and nonreligious people are equally worthy of respect. This should be reflected in policy on religion and society.
"It is heartening to see that despite their critical views on religion, most Brits are very comfortable with people of different religions and beliefs.
"But the slight decline of tolerance, especially among young people, for those with no religion is cause for concern. That's why politicians should refrain from rhetoric which implies religious people are somehow better than the nonreligious. Not only is such rhetoric untrue – it can cause needless division and prejudice in an otherwise tolerant Britain."
Kettlethorpe: New guidance on ‘non crime hate incidents’ approved
Guidance saying 'non crime hate incidents' should not be recorded at schools has been approved following a high-profile case involving a Quran.
The revised guidance, which comes into effect in June, was drafted in response to events at a Wakefield school earlier this year when police recorded a 'hate incident' against a pupil after a copy of the Quran was allegedly slightly damaged.
The NSS raised concerns with the Home Office after police recorded the NCHI but took no action relating to death threats issued against the boy from Kettlethorpe High School.
On social media local councillor Usman Ali described the pupil's actions as "serious provocative action which needs to be dealt with urgently by all the authorities", including the police.
Following the incident in February, Kettlethorpe High School suspended four boys and met with Muslim community leaders, councillors and police at the local mosque. Footage from the meeting on social media showed the mother of the boy who brought in the Quran apologising for her son, who she said had received death threats.
The new NCHI guidance says that if a report is made to the police about an incident at a school which does not amount to a crime, the "appropriate police response" is to "refer the matter to the school management team, and to offer advice to the complainant about available support".
It adds: "An NCHI record should not be made on policing systems, and the personal data of the subject should not be recorded."
The guidance clarifies that "offending someone is not, in and of itself, a criminal offence".
It also says "special regard should always be given" to the impact of NCHI recording on "freedom of expression, including the potential risks of a record having a chilling effect on an individual's right to freedom of expression".
The revised guidance also cautions against the recording a NCHI where a complaint is trivial, irrational and/or malicious.
Introducing the new guidance to parliament in March, Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire Chris Philp said it establishes a "proportionate and common-sense approach to the recording of non-crime hate incidents" and emphasises "the importance of the right to freedom of expression".
NSS: kowtowing to fundamentalists only emboldens them
NSS executive director Stephen Evans said: "The clarification that NCHIs should not be recorded in school incidents or where a complaint is trivial or irrational is a welcome response to the disturbing case of Kettlethorpe High School.
"In that case, the recording of a NCHI appeared to legitimise the 'blasphemy' accusations levelled at the school and its pupils. Schools should be protected from religious fundamentalists. Kowtowing to their intimidatory demands will only embolden them.
"We still have broader concerns about the recording of NCHIs and their implications for free speech. The NSS and other campaigners worked for decades to repeal Britain's blasphemy laws – they must not be allowed to reappear through any sort of 'back door'."
Image: Meeting at Jamia Masjid Swafia mosque following the incident at Kettlethorpe High School.
NSS speaks out at pro-genital autonomy event
The National Secular Society has called for an end to all forms of non-consensual religious genital cutting at the Worldwide Day of Genital Autonomy.
In a speech on Sunday, NSS campaigns officer Dr Alejandro Sanchez urged the government to "ensure that no one is subjected to unnecessary medical or surgical treatment during childhood", as recommended by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
The "bodily integrity, autonomy and self-determination" of children must be protected, he added.
The Worldwide Day of Genital Autonomy (WWDOGA) is held in Cologne each year to commemorate the verdict of a local court in 2012, which held that non-therapeutic circumcision of boys constituted grievous bodily harm and was illegal under German law.
The court ruled that the "fundamental right of the child to bodily integrity outweighed the fundamental rights of the parents". Waiting until the child was capable of making their own decision about circumcision did not compromise the religious freedom of parents, it added.
Then-chancellor Angela Merkel said the decision to protect the bodily integrity of children risked Germany becoming "a laughing stock". The German parliament subsequently brought in new legislation to legalise circumcision.
Other groups represented at this year's WWDOGA included Terre de Femmes, an anti female genital mutilation organisation, and 15 Square, a support group for men affected by circumcision.
Religious genital cutting in the UK
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is illegal in the United Kingdom under the FGM Act 2003. This includes FGM performed for religious reasons. Non-therapeutic circumcision, by contrast, continues to enjoy a presumed exemption to the law against wounding.
Three baby boys, Celian Noumbiwe, Angelo Ofori-Mintah, and Goodluck Caubergs, have bled to death post-circumcision in recent years. Eleven were admitted to Birmingham Children's Hospital in just one year with life threatening haemorrhage, shock or sepsis following circumcision.
An NSS investigation last year revealed circumcisions were leaving children with deformed penises and babies requiring emergency blood transfusions.
In 2015, an English judge held that male circumcision is "more invasive" than some forms of FGM. The practice constituted "significant harm" under the Children Act 1989, he said. But, because it had a "basis in religion" and "health benefits", it fell within "reasonable parenting".
The NHS does not recommend non-therapeutic circumcision of boys and lists "permanent reduction in sensation in the head of the penis, particularly during sex" as a complication.
NSS: 'Religious genital cutting flies in the face of medical ethics and child rights'
Dr Sanchez said: "Subjecting a non-consenting child to a painful, dangerous and irreversible procedure to satisfy the religious wishes of parents flies in the face of medical ethics and child rights.
"The medical establishment and the government must now act, as they have done with FGM, to protect boys from medically unnecessary religious and cultural genital cutting."
Orkney Council ends voting privileges for religious appointees
The National Secular Society has welcomed a Scottish council's decision to end voting privileges for unelected religious appointees.
Orkney Council has joined three other Scottish councils in ending voting concessions for the religious representatives sitting on the local authority's Education, Leisure, and Housing (ELH) committee.
Councillors voted 12 to 9 in favour of removing their voting privileges in a full council meeting last week.
The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 obliges local authorities in Scotland to appoint three religious representatives to their education committees, at least one of whom must be appointed by the Roman Catholic Church and one by the Protestant Church of Scotland.
Such representatives have voting privileges in most councils, enabling them to influence local education policies affecting both faith and non-faith schools. They are generally the only unelected members granted such concessions, an issue raised by members of Orkney Council at the meeting.
The council's decision brings religious representatives in line with the ELH committee's two teacher representatives, who also cannot cast votes.
Green councillor John Ross Scott, who put the motion forward, said he finds it "bewildering" that unelected religious representatives retain the right to vote on education committees, despite the sharp decline of religious affiliation in Scotland. A 2018 poll found almost 60% of Scots were non-religious, including almost 70% of 18-24 year olds.
The legal requirement for Scottish councils to appoint religious representatives is being increasingly challenged by local authorities. In 2019 Perth and Kinross Council became the first to strip them of voting privileges. Following campaigning from the NSS and others, Moray Council and Scottish Borders Council followed suit.
Fife Council is also considering removing voting privileges for religious appointees. They are being lobbied by churches to retain these privileges.
Last year several members of Shetland Islands Council expressed dissatisfaction at being required to appoint a religious representative to the authority's education committee, with councillors describing the situation as both "unconstitutional and undemocratic" and "ridiculous in the 21st century".
Scotland's then-Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville MSP subsequently told the NSS there are "no plans" to end places for religious appointees on education committees. She said the presence of "significant numbers of denominational schools" in Scotland and the "requirement to provide Religious Education" means there "continues to be a role for religious groups in decision making for denominational and non-denominational schools alike".
NSS: 'We hope other councils follow suit'
Head of campaigns Megan Manson said: "We welcome Orkney Council's decision to join the growing number of Scottish local authorities who have stripped religious representatives of their archaic and undemocratic voting privileges.
"Religious appointees are the only unelected members given voting concessions. This makes no sense in the context of an increasingly irreligious and diverse society. We hope other councils are watching and will follow suit.
"The next step should be to repeal the requirement for religious representatives on councils. Rather than entrenching existing religious privilege, the Scottish government should be aiming to make Scotland's education equal and inclusive for all."
Cabinet ministers to speak at Christian nationalist conference
The National Secular Society has expressed alarm over plans for cabinet ministers to speak alongside anti-LGBT campaigners at a conference organised by Christian nationalists.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman MP and Communities minister Michael Gove MP will deliver keynote speeches at the National Conservativism conference (NatCon) in London next week, according to the conference website.
Other MPs and peers, including former minister Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, are also confirmed as attending as speakers.
NatCon is based on a 'Statement of Principles' which asserts "public life should be rooted in Christianity" where a "Christian majority" exists.
The Statement of Principles adds that no nation "can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment" and that for millennia "the Bible has been our surest guide" to "public morals" and "political traditions". Christianity's "moral vision", it says, should be "honoured by the state and other institutions both public and private".
It also appears to reject same-sex relationships, stating "the traditional family" is built around a "bond between a man and a woman" and is "the source of society's virtues".
The Statement of Principles embodies many characteristics of Christian nationalism. The Christian nationalist movement in the US, which saw a rise during the Trump administration, holds that the US is meant to be a Christian nation. Christian nationalist campaigners have been linked to the revocation of the right to an abortion and the January 2021 attack on the Capitol.
The conference is organised by the Edmund Burke Foundation, a US group with the aim of "strengthening the principles of national conservatism in Western and other democratic countries".
Same sex marriage is "a really bad social experiment"
Speakers at this year's conference include Kevin Roberts, head of the right-wing US think tank The Heritage Foundation. In an interview with the New York Post, Roberts set out his desire to repeal the constitutional right to same-sex marriage in the US: "We would like to see a court case go up to the Supreme Court and completely tear out, root and branch, Obergefell."
Asked if that would mean existing same-sex marriages would have to be annulled, Roberts replied: "I hope so. That would be good for civil society". He described same-sex marriage as "a really bad social experiment that we're only beginning to see the rotten fruit of" and claimed the effects of children raised in such families are "negative."
Christian group "has contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in paedophilia"
Lois McLatchie, spokesperson of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) UK, a Christian activism group will also be in attendance. ADF-UK is an 2018 offshoot of the US based ADF, which according to the Southern Poverty Law Center has "supported the recriminalisation of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in paedophilia; and claims that a 'homosexual agenda' will destroy Christianity and society."
ADF also seeks to "recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries".
An investigation by openDemocracy found ADF had spent more than £410,000 in the UK between 2017 and 2019.
Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who said the 2020 US election was "stolen", will also speak.
Previous speakers: Tucker Carlson and Josh Hawley
Previous conference speakers include former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson, who once described Iraqis as "semi-literate primitive monkeys" and has said immigrants make the US "dirtier". Senator Josh Hawley, who raised objections to certifying the electoral college count in the 2020 US election, has also spoken at NatCon.
NSS: 'Ministers should think carefully about sharing a stage with virulent homophobes'
NSS campaigns officer Alejandro Sanchez said: "It is alarming to see ministers headlining a conference to promote Christian nationalism.
"As we've seen from its rise in the US, Christian nationalism is corrosive to the principles of secular democracy. It puts theology at the heart of policy-making, making those of other religions and beliefs second-class citizens and stripping LGBT people of basic rights.
"We should be working to disentangle church from state in the UK to guarantee equality for all citizens of every religion or belief. Politicians aligning themselves with Christian nationalists will further entrench Christian privilege in our state, as well as putting the rights of LGBT people, women and non-Christians at risk.
"The government should think carefully about whether it wishes to lend this conference credibility by having senior cabinet ministers in attendance."
The coronation isn’t for us. It’s for the Church.
As King Charles' coronation approaches, Megan Manson says we must stop letting the Church using our affairs of state to promote itself.
Coronation should trigger debate on church and state, says NSS
King Charles' coronation should trigger a debate on the future relationship between church and state, the NSS has said.
