Podcasts

Terry Sanderson’s memoir shows gay and secularist activism go hand in hand - Opinion Out Loud Ep 016

Terry Sanderson’s memoir shows gay and secularist activism go hand in hand - Opinion Out Loud Ep 016

Posted: Tue, 4th Jan 2022

Helen Nicholls reviews The Reluctant Gay Activist, the revised memoir of former NSS president Terry Sanderson.

Ep 63: Christian education challenged in court – a Northern Ireland case

Ep 63: Christian education challenged in court – a Northern Ireland case

Posted: Tue, 21st Dec 2021

A ground-breaking case on the right to a pluralistic education in Northern Ireland is currently being considered by the High Court.

A father of a seven-year-old girl at a primary school in Belfast has brought judicial review proceedings against the school and the Department of Education. He argues that the school's collective worship and Religious Education provisions are narrowly Christian, being effectively designed to indoctrinate children and denying their right to a pluralistic education, in which no one worldview is privileged over others. The case was heard by the High Court of Northern Ireland on 22-23 November.

In this episode, Darragh Mackin, solicitor for the applicants, discusses the case with Emma Park. Darragh is a partner at Phoenix Law, a firm of solicitors in Belfast that specialises in human rights. He describes how the girl's family, who are non-religious, discovered her praying late into the night. This led them to investigate the way that her school was imposing Christianity on young children through religious assemblies and RE lessons.

Darragh outlines the main issues in the case and the human rights principles involved. He explains how Christianity is embedded into the legal framework governing education in Northern Ireland. He also argues that proselytising religious instruction can reinforce the divisions at the heart of the region's historic troubles, and that it is therefore all the more important to ensure that children are brought up with open minds.

Follow-up

Christianity being 'wrongly promoted and privileged in the classroom', court hears – Irish News

Laws requiring exclusively Christian RE to face court challenge in NI

Bill to replace worship with inclusive assemblies heads to Commons

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Podcast produced by Emma Park for the National Secular Society (2021). All rights reserved.

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Ep 62: Islamist ideology and free speech

Posted: Tue, 7th Dec 2021

An interview with journalist Kunwar Khuldune Shahid on Islamist ideology and jihadism, blasphemy, and the importance of free speech.

Islamist extremism has been in the news again recently, with the murder of David Amess MP. But discussion in the British media has tended to focus more on the rise in attacks on Muslims than on the ideological motivations behind Amess' murder and cases like it.

In this episode, Emma Park interviews Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, a political journalist and Pakistan Correspondent for The Diplomat.

For Kunwar, 'political Islam' is almost a tautology, since Islam is intrinsically a 'political ideology'. In his view, the difficulty with the term 'Islamophobia' is that it is used by Islamist extremists around the world to silence criticism of their regressive interpretations of their religion. He argues that criticism of religion must not be demonised as racism, and talks about the real damage which accusations of blasphemy, backed up by national law, can inflict on dissenters within Muslim-majority countries.

He also explains why Western media need to do more to acknowledge that it is possible to be culturally Muslim without believing in Islam, and to interpret Islam in a way that differs from the dogmas propounded by religious leaders on behalf of 'all Muslims'.

Correction, 7/12/21: Nadia Murad was wrongly described in the podcast as Muslim. In fact, she is a Yazidi from Sinjar, Iraq.

Follow-up

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Podcast produced by Emma Park for the National Secular Society (2021). All rights reserved.

‘Inclusive language’ in the army is meaningless without inclusive culture - Opinion Out Loud Ep 015

‘Inclusive language’ in the army is meaningless without inclusive culture - Opinion Out Loud Ep 015

Posted: Tue, 30th Nov 2021

The Armed Forces must dismantle their institutional Christian privilege if they are truly committed to inclusivity, says Megan Manson.

Bob Forder, Maddy Goodall

Ep 61: Books for Secularists

Posted: Tue, 16th Nov 2021

Looking to explore the currents of thought behind secularism? Here are nine books to begin with.

In this episode, Emma Park and two guests discuss books that help contextualise Britain's secularist intellectual tradition, tracing a route through classical, Enlightenment, freethought, and humanist history. Each speaker proposes three books which, in their view, embody these interconnected currents of thought in one way or another, and which celebrate free speech and open enquiry.

Bob Forder is the National Secular Society's historian, and the great-great-grandson of Robert Forder, its first paid secretary.

Maddy Goodall is Humanist Heritage Coordinator at Humanists UK and in charge of the Humanist Heritage Project.

Got a suggestion for more 'books for secularists'? Email us at podcast@secularism.org.uk or tweet to @NatSecSoc with #BooksforSecularists.

Nine books for secularists, in order of publication:

Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe (mid-first century BC). Prose translation e.g. by R. Latham.

Thomas Paine, Age of Reason (1794-5)

The Trial of the Rev. Robert Wedderburn for Blasphemy (1820)

– Edward Fitzgerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (first edition 1859)

Charles Bradlaugh, Speeches (1890)

Florence Dixie, Towards Freedom (1904)

Dora Russell, The Tamarisk Tree (1975)

Caroline Fourest, In Praise of Blasphemy / Éloge du blasphème (2015)

Barbara Smoker, My Godforsaken Life (2018)

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Podcast produced by Emma Park for the National Secular Society (2021). All rights reserved.

Laurence Quinn

Ep 60: Atheists in foxholes – religion and the army

Posted: Tue, 2nd Nov 2021

In an increasingly secular country, why does the British army retain its exclusively Christian practices?

There are many institutions in Britain whose entrenched Christian characteristics are out of step with the country's increasingly diverse and secularised population. Among these are the monarchy, the Church of England, and, closely linked to both, the armed forces.

In this episode, Emma Park speaks to Laurence Quinn, a civil servant and former lieutenant colonel in the Royal Engineers. During his career in the army, Laurence came to discover that he was not religious. He began to notice the institutionally Christian features of the army and their implicit exclusion of non-Christians like himself. Three of the most striking of these features concern chaplaincy, language and culture, and, above all, the services conducted by the army to remember fallen comrades.

Laurence talks to Emma about his own efforts to make the army's practices more secular and inclusive. He argues that its Christian characteristics no longer reflect the views of the majority of its members.

Watch this episode on YouTube | Direct MP3 Link | Transcripts

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Podcast produced by Emma Park for the National Secular Society (2021). All rights reserved.

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