Newsline 7 April 2017

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Much of the news cycle on Tuesday was dominated with the traditional nonsense story about Easter eggs. This time the Prime Minister decided to wade in, and it fell to us to point out how ludicrous the whole story was. The Church put out an overblown statement complaining that religion was being "airbrushed" out of the National Trust-Cadbury Easter egg hunt - when in fact both websites used the word Easter countless times (including in the Cadbury's website address...)

Most shocking of all was the fact that the Prime Minister was on a trip to Saudi Arabia when she decided to make a statement on the story. Cadbury doesn't persecute Christians, Saudi Arabia most certainly does. Guess which one she criticised.

Newsline will return on Friday 28th April.

News & Opinion

	Salafi school pulls “male only” job advert News \| Wed, 5th Apr 2017 An independent Islamic school in Birmingham has been forced to withdraw an advert for a "male science & Islamic Studies" teacher. After the Birmingham Mail contacted the school they took the advert down, but they told the paper that they would create a new advertisement and that they still "hoped" to recruit a male teacher. The advert described the Salafi Independent School as a "vibrant school in the heart of England". It educates more than 150 pupils, aged between five and eleven. The school has links to a Salafi mosque. Headteacher Dr Perwaiz Saeed Alam claimed, "We as a school first and foremost have an equality policy throughout our school. We employ 27 members of staff and 18 of those are female and nine are male. It is quite evident that is predominantly female staff." The school was criticised by Ofsted in 2015 and described as "inadequate" for the poor progress of pupils. This is not the first male only job advert for an Islamic school that the National Secular Society has seen. NSS campaigns director Stephen Evans commented: "There is simply no justification for any school to discriminate against job applicants on the basis of gender. "All schools have a duty to promote fundamental British values and any school that fails to respect the law and promote gender equality is clearly unfit to educate young people. "By accommodating faith schools we already tolerate religious discrimination and segregation on a scale that would be totally unacceptable in any other area of public life. "Action must be taken to ensure that no school is permitted to normalise or promote gender-based discrimination, or any other regressive attitudes that are at odds with liberal democracy." In 2014 the Society warned that the "proliferation of religious schools could be opening the door to gender discrimination in the employment of teachers." It made that warning after another job advertisement for a "male science teacher" was placed by an Islamic boys' school in Leicester.
	Prime Minister and CofE promote fake ‘war on Easter’ Opinion \| Tue, 4th Apr 2017 After several media outlets falsely claimed that the National Trust and Cadbury were 'airbrushing' Easter out of their Easter egg hunt, Terry Sanderson argues that the Prime Minister's involvement in this trumped-up propaganda exercise was the real disgrace. Theresa May took time out from negotiating the future of our nation to become embroiled in a trumped-up publicity stunt contrived by the Church of England. The Church threw a hissy fit, claiming that Cadbury had failed to include the word Easter in the promotional material for the egg hunts it organises at National Trust properties. In fact, the website address itself even contains the word Easter, and both the National Trust and Cadbury websites mention Easter numerous times. It is quite clear that, like previous similar episodes (the Lord's Prayer advert in cinemas for instance), this stunt has been carefully planned by the CofE to get itself on the front pages of the papers. Leaving aside the manipulative elements, and ignoring the fact that the media was such a willing accomplice, we were also given the Prime Minister's two pennies worth. "I'm not just a vicar's daughter, I'm a member of the National Trust as well," she told ITV during a visit to Amman, Jordan. "I think the stance they have taken is absolutely ridiculous. I don't know what they are thinking about frankly." The CofE's propaganda machine must have thought all its birthdays had come at once. With the country standing on a cliff edge with no guarantees about its future, I would have thought that Mrs May would have more important things to concern herself with. Getting embroiled in what is so clearly a publicity stunt does her no favours. The CofE has recently employed in its press departments two of the leading newspaper religious affairs correspondents to add to its already burgeoning PR department. They know how to angle stories for maximum effect, they know how to create a controversy out of nothing. Perhaps in employing them, the CofE has made one its best investments ever. But underneath the hype we have a non-story – fake news, indeed.
	“No evidence” that denominational schools are academically superior, study finds News \| Mon, 3rd Apr 2017 A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research has found that there is "no evidence" to suggest Scotland's denominational schools achieve better results than their non-denominational counterparts. The study, on efforts to reform the governance of Scottish schools, reviewed policies aimed at closing the "persistent and entrenched gap in attainment" between students from richer and poorer households. The analysis considered both denominational and non-denominational schools "to consider whether school types in Scotland have an effect on attainment." When controlling for intake, the researchers found that, "overall attainment does not differ significantly between denominational and non-denominational schools, and there is no evidence to suggest that one school type or the other has better performance." The director of IPPR Scotland Russell Gunson, who worked on the report, said: "Once you take account of intake, there is no evidence to suggest that denominational schools, or non-denominational schools see better school performance or attainment. "It may or may not be the case that different school types add value in other ways, but on the issue of pupil attainment, the hard evidence shows that a religious ethos in itself doesn't make a difference." Claims of superior academic results are one of the arguments made by proponents of more faith schools in England. But recent research by the Education Policy Institute found that after adjusting for "disadvantage, prior attainment and ethnicity" pupils in primary schools with a faith ethos "seem to do little or no better than in non-faith schools". Pupils in secondary schools with a faith ethos record only "small average gains" over non-faith schools or "just one-seventh of a grade higher" in GCSE results. The Education Policy Institute study concluded that such minute gains came with a risk "of increased social segregation". It also noted that "the average faith school admits fewer pupils from poor backgrounds than the average non faith school." Stephen Evans, the campaigns director of the National Secular Society, said: "This research demonstrates again the falsity of arguing that faith or denominational schools are more rigorous and successful. "Faith schools can operate extremely convoluted admissions procedures and many are able to select their pupils from more affluent backgrounds than non-faith schools." Academics at Leeds Beckett and Missouri universities published a paper last month arguing that excess time spent on religion in schools harmed progression in other subjects including maths and science. Professor Gijsbert Stoet of Leeds Beckett University said, "Our research suggests that education might benefit from a stronger secular approach."
	Religious programming isn’t popular, and no amount of hounding from the Church will change that Opinion \| Tue, 4th Apr 2017 The BBC still produces a considerable amount of religious programmes – but the numbers who watch it are so small they barely register in viewing figures. More religion on TV isn't what the public want, and it won't be good for the BBC, writes Terry Sanderson. The Sunday Times reported this week that the BBC has "decided to shut down its in-house religious affairs television production department." The story was based on a leaked email from a BBC executive, Lisa Opie, who said that the loss of Songs of Praise to an independent producer had forced a "rethink of its business model" and "means we will no longer have a permanent religion and ethics department in Salford." The Sunday Times understands that there are something like 40 or 50 people working producing religious programmes for the BBC. To those of us who think the BBC already devotes far too much of its fast-dwindling resources to religious programming, something that has audiences so small they barely register in viewing figures, this is good news. Naturally for the Church of England's spokespeople on media matters, this is a terrible blow to the platform for evangelism they have taken for granted since the days of Lord Reith. The Bishop of Norwich, Graham James, is quoted in the paper as saying "It is a failure of the BBC as a public broadcaster." He said he found it "strange" that the BBC had reached the decision when Ofcom, the watchdog that started to regulate the corporation from this week, has told it to boost religious programming. The Church is, of course, putting the BBC under enormous pressure not only to stop it reducing the time it devotes to religion but to actually increase it. The Bishop waves the "religious literacy" flag as a warning that the nation will be deprived of this apparently essential knowledge if the BBC doesn't force it down unwilling throats. But what precisely is "religious literacy"? One can't help feeling that in this context it is just another cover for proselytising. Those who want to explore religion, and think it has some kind of relevance, have thousands of churches to choose from where the knowledge is imparted with vigour. Those who couldn't give a damn about religion or are even hostile to it will nevertheless have to pay to have it piped into their living rooms via our national broadcaster. But the corporation is also under severe financial constraint with thousands of jobs at risk and constant threats from the Government to cut the licence fee. Some Tory backbenchers even want to abolish the Beeb entirely. The vested media interests – particularly those of Rupert Murdoch (who, of course, owns the Sunday Times) – means that there is an unending propaganda war being waged against the BBC in the press. This latest religion story is just one example of the way the Murdoch papers constantly portray the BBC as an institution that is failing its audience and the country. But why does the Church (and religion generally) imagine that it has an automatic right to the airwaves that nobody else has? Religion in Britain is a minority interest. Research has shown that, where people have a choice, they switch channels in their droves when religious programmes start. Anglers might say that there are far more of them than there are churchgoers (which is true), but they get hardly any time at all devoted to their sport. Yes, the BBC is a public broadcaster. It is bound by its charter to be inclusive of the whole nation and to reflect the interests of the country. So, religion has a place, along with sport and news and music and whatever else interests people. But it needs to accept that its place in the nation's affections has fallen way, way behind Eastenders and Holby City. When programmes attract audiences so small that they don't register, what justification can there be for continuing with them? Opera also attracts tiny audiences and the BBC reacts accordingly – when was the last time you saw an opera on the BBC? This week the BBC published its plans for religious broadcasting over Easter. It seems like a defensive response to the attacks on its supposed neglect of religion – who is going to watch all this stuff? Surely the real enthusiasts will be at church anyway. So, does the Church have a point? The last time it was measured, in the 2016 annual report, the amount of time devoted to religious broadcasting was: BBC1 92 hours; BBC2 50 hours; BBC4 24 hours; BBC Radio 573 hours. How much more time do they want? There is a certain arrogance among the bishops and others who are bullying the BBC into producing programmes that may be important to the Church but appeal to few other people. These churchmen get a lot of press for their demands, but viewers remain indifferent. The corporation's bigwigs should stand firm against the constant episcopal heckling and get religion in proportion.
	Ireland sees 73% increase in number of non-believers News \| Thu, 6th Apr 2017 Census figures released by the Irish Central Statistics Office show a huge increase in the number of non-believers, as the number of self-identified Catholics continued to drop. 451,941 people in Ireland said they had no religion, and that included 347,034 Irish nationals. The census found that "Those with no religion now account for just under 10 per cent of the population (9.8%)." The group stating that they had no religion saw the largest percentage increase by far. 20 to 39-year-olds made up 45% of the non-religious group. The number of Catholics in Ireland has fallen by 132,200 since the last census in 2011 (or 3.4%), and the Church of Ireland also declined by 2% in the five years between censuses. The census report said that while "Ireland remains a predominantly Catholic country" the "percentage of the population who identified as Catholic on the census has fallen sharply." Back in 2011, 84.2% of Ireland's population said they were Catholic. But in the 2016 census just 78.3% identified with the Church. The Muslim population saw rapid growth of 28.9%, as did the comparable Orthodox (37.5%) and smaller Hindu (34.1%) groups. These three were the "fastest growing religions" in percentage terms. The Presbyterian and Apostolic churches both showed declines.
	The Catholic Church in Scotland is still playing the victim card to stifle criticism Opinion \| Thu, 6th Apr 2017 There is some lingering anti-Catholic bigotry in Scotland, writes NSS vice president Alistair McBay, but the Church is playing victim while supporting a segregated education system which can only worsen prejudice. "As one brought up a Catholic, I know only too well of Scottish Catholicism's lovingly nurtured persecution complex - part masochism, part self-justification for its own pet bigotries." So wrote a cradle Catholic to the Daily Express in May 2011. I'm reminded of it every time I see a new report published on sectarianism in Scotland which almost inevitably concludes that Catholics are enduring victims of discrimination and prejudice, it's everybody's fault but theirs and something must be done. Of course Scotland has a history of anti-Catholic bigotry, frequently confused as it might be with simple objections to Vatican doctrine and dogma - the Catholic Church in Scotland has long played the sectarian victim card to close down criticism and debate. There is no better example of how religious division has been stoked in Scotland than the Church of Scotland's infamous 1922 report 'On the menace of the Irish race to our Scottish nationality'. It was not an anti-Catholic crusade as such, as Professor Tom Devine (a Catholic) eloquently explained at the Glasgow Newman Association talk he gave in 2013. Nevertheless, Catholics did pay a price as a result. Aside from the more obvious examples of attacks on Catholics during the 1930s, notably the anti-Catholic riots at the Eucharistic Congress in Edinburgh in 1935, Devine believes with its campaign the Kirk inaugurated a period of discrimination in the labour market. He concludes this was only abandoned between the 1960s and 1980s, and can still be seen today in indices of mortality, low income and health. Professor Devine pointed to the Church of Scotland apology in 2002 for this contribution to sectarianism but alleges the Scottish nation has not apologised for the impact this discrimination has had on life chances, illness and mortality. The absence of full acknowledgement and transparency, he argued, still produces among some Catholics (perhaps the Church hierarchy?) a sense of victimhood which is based not on evidence but on rhetoric. Fast forward to a research report published this week by, among others, Scotland's sectarianism tsar Duncan Morrow. This research alleges an equality gap in Scotland compared to Northern Ireland, which has had specific legislation to tackle religious inequality in an attempt to heal the wounds caused by 35 years of sectarian conflict. The research plots this inequality gap along the lines Devine identified, in terms of a poorer set of statistics for Catholics than Protestants on the basis of health, longevity, deprivation, home ownership etc. The research is evidence-based, using a sample of 156,448 Scots and 248,255 people from Northern Ireland aged between 25 and 74 during the 2001 census. They were observed during a follow-up period of nearly seven years. Duncan Morrow hit the headlines with a previous report for the Scottish Government which concluded that Scotland's segregated Catholic schools were not in any way, shape or form responsible for Scotland's lingering sectarianism. This was a surprise, given that the Catholic Bishop Joseph Devine of Motherwell had opined in 2002 that of course they were a contributory factor and "divisive", but nevertheless a "price worth paying" for unchallenged access to innocent minds. It was also a surprise given that the fiercely Presbyterian Peter Robinson, first minister of Northern Ireland, put down much of the sectarian troubles in the province to the 'benign apartheid' of segregated schooling in a famous speech delivered in 2011 that promoted integrated schooling as the way ahead. But Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond, anxious to secure the Catholic vote for an independent Scotland in 2014, had been praising Catholic schools to the hilt for some years alongside his good friend the now disgraced Cardinal O'Brien and had even urged the non-denominational sector to be more like them. The cynic in me says there was hardly likely to be a condemnation of sectarian schools in the long build-up to the Indyref vote. Recently an SNP MP, a member of the Humanist Society of Scotland, made some comments about Catholic schools and set out his preferred secular alternative that brought an accusation of 'chilling intolerance' from the bishops and a swift slap down from the Scottish Government itself. The nerve of some politicians, wanting to end segregation, indoctrination and discrimination in Scotland's education system! Dr Morrow's latest research suggests Northern Ireland is now less of a sectarian place than Scotland, and that Catholics in Scotland suffer from a higher risk of death and are at greater economic disadvantage relative to Protestants, although there doesn't seem to be a comparison with people of other faiths or none. There is however some other empirical analysis from which we might draw a different conclusion on the inequality gap Dr Morrow has chosen to highlight. In 2015 The Tablet newspaper published a list of the Top 100 lay Catholics in Britain, claiming to show how "a relatively small faith community has come to obtain a leadership presence in virtually every part of British society". The list includes some of the country's foremost public servants who occupy leading positions in business, academia, charities, the arts and entertainment and other spheres. The Tablet says "their rise is a tribute to the quality of Catholic education, both public and private. Many are the children of immigrants and come from modest or even impoverished backgrounds." In Scotland, leading Catholics include the afore-mentioned historian Tom Devine, the composer James McMillan and Lord Gill, most recently the head of our Judiciary and now a member of the Supreme Court. The article also features Dame Elish Angiolini whom it says "went from a crime-ridden council estate in Glasgow to become the Lord Advocate of Scotland, the country's most senior legal officer". The Tablet goes on to say that the list "portrays individuals who are part of a vibrant faith community that has become fully integrated into British life." On that empirical evidence basis, then, there seems no compelling reason without further analysis to suggest that there is an inequality gap affecting Scotland's Catholics that needs greater effort to be closed. Does this Tablet report indicate that discrimination, impoverished background or indeed religious belief itself are key factors that hinder the life chances of Catholics in Scotland or anywhere else in the UK? There are of course localised examples of lingering anti-Catholic bigotry that gnaw away under the radar at the fabric of Scottish life. In a village near my home, the local Kirk minister got somewhat sniffy that the new head of the local non-denominational primary school was a Catholic, and sniffy enough that one of his church elders resigned in protest at his stance. But the new head's faith was no barrier to her being appointed to a non-denominational school, although of course if she had no religious faith she would never be appointed to be head of a Catholic one. So much for an inequality gap!

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NSS Speaks Out

Executive director Keith Porteous Wood appeared on ITV and BBC News 24 to discuss the Easter (non-)story. We also spoke to BBC 5 Live, BBC Essex, BBC Hereford and Worcester, BBC Radio London and Talk Radio on this and we were quoted in the Guardian.

On other topics we were quoted in the Guardian on who should fund hospital chaplaincy, and the Birmingham Mail, Metro, Daily Mail and Telegraph all quoted the Society on the revelation that an Islamic school had posted a job advert for a male-only science teacher. Campaigns director Stephen Evans spoke to BBC Sussex and BBC Surrey on religion in the workplace, and NSS vice president Alistair McBay had a letter in the Scotsman on sectarianism.

Quotes of the Week

"Really? The church can't think of better things to get upset about than chocolate bloody Easter eggs. Quite pathetic".
Reverend Giles Fraser (@giles_fraser)

"The disconcerting feeling when you agree with @NatSecSoc about #EasterEggHunt - A prime eggsample of skewed priorities."
Danny Webster (@danny_webster), Evangelical Alliance

Essays of the Week

Is the liberal state secular? How much state-religion separation is necessary to secure liberal-democratic ideals
Cécile Laborde, LSE.

Why Islamist extremism has such a hold in our prisons
Ian Acheson, Spectator.

The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain by Sayeeda Warsi - review
Maryam Namazie, Evening Standard.

Upcoming Events

Defending progressivism conference

Sat, 29th Apr 2017

International Conference on Freedom of Conscience and Expression in the 21st Century

Sat, 22nd Jul 2017

	Salafi school pulls “male only” job advert News \| Wed, 5th Apr 2017 An independent Islamic school in Birmingham has been forced to withdraw an advert for a "male science & Islamic Studies" teacher. After the Birmingham Mail contacted the school they took the advert down, but they told the paper that they would create a new advertisement and that they still "hoped" to recruit a male teacher. The advert described the Salafi Independent School as a "vibrant school in the heart of England". It educates more than 150 pupils, aged between five and eleven. The school has links to a Salafi mosque. Headteacher Dr Perwaiz Saeed Alam claimed, "We as a school first and foremost have an equality policy throughout our school. We employ 27 members of staff and 18 of those are female and nine are male. It is quite evident that is predominantly female staff." The school was criticised by Ofsted in 2015 and described as "inadequate" for the poor progress of pupils. This is not the first male only job advert for an Islamic school that the National Secular Society has seen. NSS campaigns director Stephen Evans commented: "There is simply no justification for any school to discriminate against job applicants on the basis of gender. "All schools have a duty to promote fundamental British values and any school that fails to respect the law and promote gender equality is clearly unfit to educate young people. "By accommodating faith schools we already tolerate religious discrimination and segregation on a scale that would be totally unacceptable in any other area of public life. "Action must be taken to ensure that no school is permitted to normalise or promote gender-based discrimination, or any other regressive attitudes that are at odds with liberal democracy." In 2014 the Society warned that the "proliferation of religious schools could be opening the door to gender discrimination in the employment of teachers." It made that warning after another job advertisement for a "male science teacher" was placed by an Islamic boys' school in Leicester.
	Prime Minister and CofE promote fake ‘war on Easter’ Opinion \| Tue, 4th Apr 2017 After several media outlets falsely claimed that the National Trust and Cadbury were 'airbrushing' Easter out of their Easter egg hunt, Terry Sanderson argues that the Prime Minister's involvement in this trumped-up propaganda exercise was the real disgrace. Theresa May took time out from negotiating the future of our nation to become embroiled in a trumped-up publicity stunt contrived by the Church of England. The Church threw a hissy fit, claiming that Cadbury had failed to include the word Easter in the promotional material for the egg hunts it organises at National Trust properties. In fact, the website address itself even contains the word Easter, and both the National Trust and Cadbury websites mention Easter numerous times. It is quite clear that, like previous similar episodes (the Lord's Prayer advert in cinemas for instance), this stunt has been carefully planned by the CofE to get itself on the front pages of the papers. Leaving aside the manipulative elements, and ignoring the fact that the media was such a willing accomplice, we were also given the Prime Minister's two pennies worth. "I'm not just a vicar's daughter, I'm a member of the National Trust as well," she told ITV during a visit to Amman, Jordan. "I think the stance they have taken is absolutely ridiculous. I don't know what they are thinking about frankly." The CofE's propaganda machine must have thought all its birthdays had come at once. With the country standing on a cliff edge with no guarantees about its future, I would have thought that Mrs May would have more important things to concern herself with. Getting embroiled in what is so clearly a publicity stunt does her no favours. The CofE has recently employed in its press departments two of the leading newspaper religious affairs correspondents to add to its already burgeoning PR department. They know how to angle stories for maximum effect, they know how to create a controversy out of nothing. Perhaps in employing them, the CofE has made one its best investments ever. But underneath the hype we have a non-story – fake news, indeed.
	“No evidence” that denominational schools are academically superior, study finds News \| Mon, 3rd Apr 2017 A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research has found that there is "no evidence" to suggest Scotland's denominational schools achieve better results than their non-denominational counterparts. The study, on efforts to reform the governance of Scottish schools, reviewed policies aimed at closing the "persistent and entrenched gap in attainment" between students from richer and poorer households. The analysis considered both denominational and non-denominational schools "to consider whether school types in Scotland have an effect on attainment." When controlling for intake, the researchers found that, "overall attainment does not differ significantly between denominational and non-denominational schools, and there is no evidence to suggest that one school type or the other has better performance." The director of IPPR Scotland Russell Gunson, who worked on the report, said: "Once you take account of intake, there is no evidence to suggest that denominational schools, or non-denominational schools see better school performance or attainment. "It may or may not be the case that different school types add value in other ways, but on the issue of pupil attainment, the hard evidence shows that a religious ethos in itself doesn't make a difference." Claims of superior academic results are one of the arguments made by proponents of more faith schools in England. But recent research by the Education Policy Institute found that after adjusting for "disadvantage, prior attainment and ethnicity" pupils in primary schools with a faith ethos "seem to do little or no better than in non-faith schools". Pupils in secondary schools with a faith ethos record only "small average gains" over non-faith schools or "just one-seventh of a grade higher" in GCSE results. The Education Policy Institute study concluded that such minute gains came with a risk "of increased social segregation". It also noted that "the average faith school admits fewer pupils from poor backgrounds than the average non faith school." Stephen Evans, the campaigns director of the National Secular Society, said: "This research demonstrates again the falsity of arguing that faith or denominational schools are more rigorous and successful. "Faith schools can operate extremely convoluted admissions procedures and many are able to select their pupils from more affluent backgrounds than non-faith schools." Academics at Leeds Beckett and Missouri universities published a paper last month arguing that excess time spent on religion in schools harmed progression in other subjects including maths and science. Professor Gijsbert Stoet of Leeds Beckett University said, "Our research suggests that education might benefit from a stronger secular approach."
	Religious programming isn’t popular, and no amount of hounding from the Church will change that Opinion \| Tue, 4th Apr 2017 The BBC still produces a considerable amount of religious programmes – but the numbers who watch it are so small they barely register in viewing figures. More religion on TV isn't what the public want, and it won't be good for the BBC, writes Terry Sanderson. The Sunday Times reported this week that the BBC has "decided to shut down its in-house religious affairs television production department." The story was based on a leaked email from a BBC executive, Lisa Opie, who said that the loss of Songs of Praise to an independent producer had forced a "rethink of its business model" and "means we will no longer have a permanent religion and ethics department in Salford." The Sunday Times understands that there are something like 40 or 50 people working producing religious programmes for the BBC. To those of us who think the BBC already devotes far too much of its fast-dwindling resources to religious programming, something that has audiences so small they barely register in viewing figures, this is good news. Naturally for the Church of England's spokespeople on media matters, this is a terrible blow to the platform for evangelism they have taken for granted since the days of Lord Reith. The Bishop of Norwich, Graham James, is quoted in the paper as saying "It is a failure of the BBC as a public broadcaster." He said he found it "strange" that the BBC had reached the decision when Ofcom, the watchdog that started to regulate the corporation from this week, has told it to boost religious programming. The Church is, of course, putting the BBC under enormous pressure not only to stop it reducing the time it devotes to religion but to actually increase it. The Bishop waves the "religious literacy" flag as a warning that the nation will be deprived of this apparently essential knowledge if the BBC doesn't force it down unwilling throats. But what precisely is "religious literacy"? One can't help feeling that in this context it is just another cover for proselytising. Those who want to explore religion, and think it has some kind of relevance, have thousands of churches to choose from where the knowledge is imparted with vigour. Those who couldn't give a damn about religion or are even hostile to it will nevertheless have to pay to have it piped into their living rooms via our national broadcaster. But the corporation is also under severe financial constraint with thousands of jobs at risk and constant threats from the Government to cut the licence fee. Some Tory backbenchers even want to abolish the Beeb entirely. The vested media interests – particularly those of Rupert Murdoch (who, of course, owns the Sunday Times) – means that there is an unending propaganda war being waged against the BBC in the press. This latest religion story is just one example of the way the Murdoch papers constantly portray the BBC as an institution that is failing its audience and the country. But why does the Church (and religion generally) imagine that it has an automatic right to the airwaves that nobody else has? Religion in Britain is a minority interest. Research has shown that, where people have a choice, they switch channels in their droves when religious programmes start. Anglers might say that there are far more of them than there are churchgoers (which is true), but they get hardly any time at all devoted to their sport. Yes, the BBC is a public broadcaster. It is bound by its charter to be inclusive of the whole nation and to reflect the interests of the country. So, religion has a place, along with sport and news and music and whatever else interests people. But it needs to accept that its place in the nation's affections has fallen way, way behind Eastenders and Holby City. When programmes attract audiences so small that they don't register, what justification can there be for continuing with them? Opera also attracts tiny audiences and the BBC reacts accordingly – when was the last time you saw an opera on the BBC? This week the BBC published its plans for religious broadcasting over Easter. It seems like a defensive response to the attacks on its supposed neglect of religion – who is going to watch all this stuff? Surely the real enthusiasts will be at church anyway. So, does the Church have a point? The last time it was measured, in the 2016 annual report, the amount of time devoted to religious broadcasting was: BBC1 92 hours; BBC2 50 hours; BBC4 24 hours; BBC Radio 573 hours. How much more time do they want? There is a certain arrogance among the bishops and others who are bullying the BBC into producing programmes that may be important to the Church but appeal to few other people. These churchmen get a lot of press for their demands, but viewers remain indifferent. The corporation's bigwigs should stand firm against the constant episcopal heckling and get religion in proportion.
	Ireland sees 73% increase in number of non-believers News \| Thu, 6th Apr 2017 Census figures released by the Irish Central Statistics Office show a huge increase in the number of non-believers, as the number of self-identified Catholics continued to drop. 451,941 people in Ireland said they had no religion, and that included 347,034 Irish nationals. The census found that "Those with no religion now account for just under 10 per cent of the population (9.8%)." The group stating that they had no religion saw the largest percentage increase by far. 20 to 39-year-olds made up 45% of the non-religious group. The number of Catholics in Ireland has fallen by 132,200 since the last census in 2011 (or 3.4%), and the Church of Ireland also declined by 2% in the five years between censuses. The census report said that while "Ireland remains a predominantly Catholic country" the "percentage of the population who identified as Catholic on the census has fallen sharply." Back in 2011, 84.2% of Ireland's population said they were Catholic. But in the 2016 census just 78.3% identified with the Church. The Muslim population saw rapid growth of 28.9%, as did the comparable Orthodox (37.5%) and smaller Hindu (34.1%) groups. These three were the "fastest growing religions" in percentage terms. The Presbyterian and Apostolic churches both showed declines.
	The Catholic Church in Scotland is still playing the victim card to stifle criticism Opinion \| Thu, 6th Apr 2017 There is some lingering anti-Catholic bigotry in Scotland, writes NSS vice president Alistair McBay, but the Church is playing victim while supporting a segregated education system which can only worsen prejudice. "As one brought up a Catholic, I know only too well of Scottish Catholicism's lovingly nurtured persecution complex - part masochism, part self-justification for its own pet bigotries." So wrote a cradle Catholic to the Daily Express in May 2011. I'm reminded of it every time I see a new report published on sectarianism in Scotland which almost inevitably concludes that Catholics are enduring victims of discrimination and prejudice, it's everybody's fault but theirs and something must be done. Of course Scotland has a history of anti-Catholic bigotry, frequently confused as it might be with simple objections to Vatican doctrine and dogma - the Catholic Church in Scotland has long played the sectarian victim card to close down criticism and debate. There is no better example of how religious division has been stoked in Scotland than the Church of Scotland's infamous 1922 report 'On the menace of the Irish race to our Scottish nationality'. It was not an anti-Catholic crusade as such, as Professor Tom Devine (a Catholic) eloquently explained at the Glasgow Newman Association talk he gave in 2013. Nevertheless, Catholics did pay a price as a result. Aside from the more obvious examples of attacks on Catholics during the 1930s, notably the anti-Catholic riots at the Eucharistic Congress in Edinburgh in 1935, Devine believes with its campaign the Kirk inaugurated a period of discrimination in the labour market. He concludes this was only abandoned between the 1960s and 1980s, and can still be seen today in indices of mortality, low income and health. Professor Devine pointed to the Church of Scotland apology in 2002 for this contribution to sectarianism but alleges the Scottish nation has not apologised for the impact this discrimination has had on life chances, illness and mortality. The absence of full acknowledgement and transparency, he argued, still produces among some Catholics (perhaps the Church hierarchy?) a sense of victimhood which is based not on evidence but on rhetoric. Fast forward to a research report published this week by, among others, Scotland's sectarianism tsar Duncan Morrow. This research alleges an equality gap in Scotland compared to Northern Ireland, which has had specific legislation to tackle religious inequality in an attempt to heal the wounds caused by 35 years of sectarian conflict. The research plots this inequality gap along the lines Devine identified, in terms of a poorer set of statistics for Catholics than Protestants on the basis of health, longevity, deprivation, home ownership etc. The research is evidence-based, using a sample of 156,448 Scots and 248,255 people from Northern Ireland aged between 25 and 74 during the 2001 census. They were observed during a follow-up period of nearly seven years. Duncan Morrow hit the headlines with a previous report for the Scottish Government which concluded that Scotland's segregated Catholic schools were not in any way, shape or form responsible for Scotland's lingering sectarianism. This was a surprise, given that the Catholic Bishop Joseph Devine of Motherwell had opined in 2002 that of course they were a contributory factor and "divisive", but nevertheless a "price worth paying" for unchallenged access to innocent minds. It was also a surprise given that the fiercely Presbyterian Peter Robinson, first minister of Northern Ireland, put down much of the sectarian troubles in the province to the 'benign apartheid' of segregated schooling in a famous speech delivered in 2011 that promoted integrated schooling as the way ahead. But Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond, anxious to secure the Catholic vote for an independent Scotland in 2014, had been praising Catholic schools to the hilt for some years alongside his good friend the now disgraced Cardinal O'Brien and had even urged the non-denominational sector to be more like them. The cynic in me says there was hardly likely to be a condemnation of sectarian schools in the long build-up to the Indyref vote. Recently an SNP MP, a member of the Humanist Society of Scotland, made some comments about Catholic schools and set out his preferred secular alternative that brought an accusation of 'chilling intolerance' from the bishops and a swift slap down from the Scottish Government itself. The nerve of some politicians, wanting to end segregation, indoctrination and discrimination in Scotland's education system! Dr Morrow's latest research suggests Northern Ireland is now less of a sectarian place than Scotland, and that Catholics in Scotland suffer from a higher risk of death and are at greater economic disadvantage relative to Protestants, although there doesn't seem to be a comparison with people of other faiths or none. There is however some other empirical analysis from which we might draw a different conclusion on the inequality gap Dr Morrow has chosen to highlight. In 2015 The Tablet newspaper published a list of the Top 100 lay Catholics in Britain, claiming to show how "a relatively small faith community has come to obtain a leadership presence in virtually every part of British society". The list includes some of the country's foremost public servants who occupy leading positions in business, academia, charities, the arts and entertainment and other spheres. The Tablet says "their rise is a tribute to the quality of Catholic education, both public and private. Many are the children of immigrants and come from modest or even impoverished backgrounds." In Scotland, leading Catholics include the afore-mentioned historian Tom Devine, the composer James McMillan and Lord Gill, most recently the head of our Judiciary and now a member of the Supreme Court. The article also features Dame Elish Angiolini whom it says "went from a crime-ridden council estate in Glasgow to become the Lord Advocate of Scotland, the country's most senior legal officer". The Tablet goes on to say that the list "portrays individuals who are part of a vibrant faith community that has become fully integrated into British life." On that empirical evidence basis, then, there seems no compelling reason without further analysis to suggest that there is an inequality gap affecting Scotland's Catholics that needs greater effort to be closed. Does this Tablet report indicate that discrimination, impoverished background or indeed religious belief itself are key factors that hinder the life chances of Catholics in Scotland or anywhere else in the UK? There are of course localised examples of lingering anti-Catholic bigotry that gnaw away under the radar at the fabric of Scottish life. In a village near my home, the local Kirk minister got somewhat sniffy that the new head of the local non-denominational primary school was a Catholic, and sniffy enough that one of his church elders resigned in protest at his stance. But the new head's faith was no barrier to her being appointed to a non-denominational school, although of course if she had no religious faith she would never be appointed to be head of a Catholic one. So much for an inequality gap!