Secularism is important, but (for me) it’s not enough
Sunday’s post on humanism has gained lots of attention, including the National Secular Society’s, who shared it on their homepage. (Thanks to them for the readers that sent us.)
One issue I mentioned half way through that post, and that I’ve brought up a lot elsewhere recently, is that I want to focus my activities on skepticism – and in particular, atheism – not just on separating church and state. I differ in this sense from many humanists, but also from the NSS, which works ‘exclusively’ toward a secular state.
Their president Terry Sanderson, who I’m told liked the humanism post, said two years ago ‘We will leave humanism for the humanist groups, atheism to the atheist groups and fix our sights uniquely on secularism.’ A secular charter, illustrating their campaign aims, was announced at the same time.
Don’t read this post as a criticism of the NSS – I share their aims, support their work and am fine with that being their focus. This post is just about why, personally, mine is different.
The issues strict secularists address legitimately matter. It matters that Anglican Bishops sit as of right in Britain’s parliament, for example; that ‘broadly Christian worship’ is required in our state schools; that parallel court systems exist for minority religions; that oaths to God are taken by our national rulers; that faith groups get exemptions a priori from a host of laws; that they effectively have automatic charity status; that religious bodies run at least a third of maintained schools here; that public money funds chaplaincies in hospitals, the armed forces and education, and that we still have an established church. These are just some of the issues the UK has – elsewhere, things are sometimes far worse – so I’m glad there are people on the case.
But in terms of religion’s impact on the world, and on this country, it’s not just these church-and-state issues that matter to me. In fact, if I had to list all my concerns, they would only constitute a small fraction.
It also matters to me…
- …that according to a 2006 Ipsos MORI poll, only 48 percent of British people believe in evolution, and that in a 2009 survey by ComRes, 32 percent said it was probably or definitely true ‘that God created the world sometime in the last 10,000 years’, and that 51 percent said intelligent design was probably or definitely true. It matters that many children are presumably taught this by their parents and not just in school, that entire churches of typically-educated adults believe something so clearly absurd, and that students at well-respected universities boycott lectures on Darwin.
- …that in churches and living rooms everywhere, people are taught that God created humans as two separate genders, whose function was to ‘cleave unto’ one another, and that this is used to justify misogyny, transphobia and bigotry toward queer people in general. These beliefs manifest themselves as dirty looks in the street, heteronormative language and other entirely legal microaggressions.
- …that people in enjoyable, consensual relationships put huge amounts of effort into not having the sex each of them wants, because they think it will make baby Jesus cry – because they think creating the universe gives someone else authority over their sex life.
- …that people give up sometimes-huge quantities of money to their churches or religious organisations, many of which spend that money on egregious or dishonest things, when they could use it to help loved ones, vulnerable people or good causes.
- …that people die when they stop taking their medicine, because they believe prayer will cure them of serious illness. Advertising regulations will not stop this happening, because these beliefs are often acquired in pews, over coffee with friends or family members, from reading holy books or from prayer itself.
- …that people with serious mental health issues are taken, or go willingly, to ask pastors, priests and other religious leaders for advice, who it’s presumed on no evidential basis have access to ultimate knowledge but who frequently have no medical or psychiatric training whatsoever. It matters when totally unqualified believers and religious leaders go out of their way – entirely legally, most of the time – to tell people they have depression or other MH issues because they lack humility before God, rather than because they’ve got an illness.
- …that parents tell their children they’re possessed by demons, and sometimes perform vivid, traumatising rituals to drive them out.
- …that the same parents and other adults terrify children with vivid, traumatising statements about Hell.
- …that children are threatened with Hell for not believing, and that adults are too. Not rarely. Not even occasionally. Like, all the fucking time.
- …that children are indoctrinated with unfair, unbalanced presentations of beliefs as obvious facts.
- …that people who aren’t especially religious feel a sudden need to ‘do God’ on becoming parents, and lie to their children about what they believe. It matters that children grow up believing sometimes-absurd things because their parents were dishonest.
- …that people who aren’t especially religious feel they need to have religious weddings, child-naming ceremonies or funerals. Particularly at funerals, this can be enormously alienating for some attendees.
- …that when some atheists die, believers insist they have religious funerals which don’t represent their lives and which they wouldn’t have wanted. For some attendees, this makes bereavement even more heartbreaking than it is already.
- …that believers with no knowledge or understanding of other religions spread hateful, dehumanising propaganda about one another, including when the religions at stake are in many respects highly similar from an outsider’s perspective.
- …that believers with no knowledge or understanding of atheists spread hateful, dehumanising propaganda about us – and that educated believers do that who ought to know better.
- …that when I stood at a secular stand on a busy Oxford street with slogans like ‘Not religious?’ and ‘Living without religion’, a passer-by with several children shook his head, in slow revulsion, as if witnessing a fascist parade.
- …that while representing an atheist student group at a freshers’ fair, I had to explain to a fellow student – at Oxford University – what an atheist was, something I learned aged 11.
- …that some believers, including relatively educated ones with very large audiences, claim that ‘our laws, customs, traditions, language, music, architecture, diet, everything you care to name, [.] are all based upon Christianity’.
- …that some believers, including ones I’ve met, say the genocides of the Old Testament were justified explicitly because God (rather than people) ordered them.
- …that some people, including some atheists, think sinking a sharp knife into the genitals of an eight-day-old baby and cutting them apart without anaesthesia is okay, if done for religious reasons, and should be legal. (I’m not even talking about people doing it. It concerns me simply that some people think it’s okay, which they still would if it were banned – which it should be.)
- …that civic and secular authorities refuse to enforce the existing laws against female genital mutilation, for fear of appearing racist or religiously intolerant. (Imagine the results if, instead of Muslim immigrants’ daughters, white girls in Britain had their clitorises cut off.)
- …that civic and secular authorities refrain from using existing laws against churches and religious bodies which for decades have deliberately, knowingly concealed sexual abuse of children.
- …that when it’s suggested these churches not be trusted with children, some believers and atheists react as if something indescribably intolerant, bigoted or aggressive has been said.
None of these issues will be addressed just by separating church from state. If no clergy sat in parliament, all state schools were wholly unreligious, no church had undue exemptions from any laws, and so on – anything above could still be happening. Each results from people’s actual beliefs about the universe, and not necessarily from public funds going to religion. In most cases, we can’t and shouldn’t tackle them with changes to the law, infringing on people’s freedom to believe whatever they want; but by fostering a climate of skepticism where people choose their beliefs carefully, subjecting religious claims to appropriate scrutiny, we might.
I’m glad there’s someone taking the ‘secularism-only’ approach – specifically the NSS – and not focusing on criticising superstitious modes of thought. As Maryam Namazie puts it, ‘Secularism is a precondition for basic rights and freedoms. It’s inclusive unlike religion’; separating church and state can be desirable to believers, and secularist campaigners need as many foot soldiers as they can get, so it makes sense that they don’t religion-bash.
Some of us want to focus on secularism, and some want to help persuade people out of irrational beliefs. It’s entirely up to the individual which to emphasise, and there are very good reasons to keep those efforts separate. Personally, I want to be one of the latter.
Across society and around the world, a conversation is taking place about whether and why religious beliefs hold water or not. I want to be part of that conversation, and there are several reasons I think this is what I should be doing:
- I’m not a lobbyist. As I said in my ‘humanism’ post, secularist work – not always, but often – involves meeting with politicians or national and local authorities, examining legal frameworks and legislation, preparing long term strategies and choosing pragmatic goals – that isn’t me. I don’t have the patience or diplomacy for that kind of work, and I don’t have access to Westminster.
- I’m good at responding to evangelism, and I like doing it. I couldn’t put together summaries of Britain’s complex laws or give speeches to the UN about the Vatican’s history of child abuse, as some of the NSS’s people have – but I do feel at home giving point-by-point responses to arguments the Gospels are reliable. That kind of thing is important too.
- I used to be religious, so I have an understanding of belief – and Christianity in particular – some atheists don’t have. I get what it’s like to belong to a church, and I’m happy to dig into Bible quotes. I understand the differences between different churches. This makes me better informed than some atheists are, and I find specifically that many pure secularists have been raised in atheist households, and don’t always fully appreciate things like deconversion.
- I’m angry – about the things religious leaders do, the things done to atheists in the name of belief, the things done to believers in the name of other beliefs, and generally the harmful ways religion affects the world. Spreading skepticism and organising explicitly in atheist terms, rather than working for secularism in non-confrontational ways, satisfies me; I want to be confrontational. (That doesn’t mean I want to be rude, unfriendly, aggressive or generally a dick – it means I want to have the argument, as part of a broad social movement if not in person.) If I focused on separating church and state, I wouldn’t feel as fulfilled, and that means I wouldn’t be as good at it as I am at atheism-centric work.
You could offer me a job with the NSS, or a similar group, starting tomorrow, and convince me totally that in five years I’d have made a huge difference – but if it meant I had to shut up about religion and not have the ‘beliefs’ conversation, the cost to me personally would be too high.
I know that, since secularism is important, not everyone can take that stance – and happily, not everyone does. I’m glad there are people most fulfilled by church-and-state activism. (Tessa Kendall, who formerly worked for the NSS and to whom this post is in part a response, is one of them.) Sadly, and as I suggested in Sunday’s post, my happiness to part ways isn’t always returned.
If U.S. atheists are reading this, I know this may seem strange, but I’ve heard it said by pure secularists, and especially by humanists, that the kind of activism I and lots of other atheists pursue – the kind which involves persuading people out of their religions, making them look critically at their beliefs, encouraging atheists to come out in religious communities and talking about harm caused by irrational beliefs – gets in secularism’s way. The implication is that by criticising religion, we put believers off supporting a secular state.
I want to ask: what’s the point in secularism, if it means we all have to be nice about religion? Isn’t that enormously object-defeating? I’m a secularist because I think bashing beliefs should be allowed, and I’m as happy for people to bash mine as I am to bash theirs.
But I’m going to take a moment and say just what else I think is wrong-headed about that, because I think that activism promoting skepticism and combating irrational beliefs is of great use to secularism.
If more people are skeptics and atheists…
- …it’s very likely more will be secularists. How many people join the NSS due to getting involved in atheism – at least in part, say, because they read The God Delusion or went to a Tim Minchin concert? Quite a lot, I bet. We can talk, legitimately, about why religious people should be secularists, but the fact is that an emphatic atheist is likely to want bishops out of parliament far more than, say, an Anglican – in fact, if you meet someone at their local atheist group, you can be almost certain they want that. Whatever extra members those groups get, the more potential memberships fees, donations or volunteers the NSS might get.
- …fewer will be in religious groups, for church leaders or theocrats in general to use against secularists. We know that the Catholic church, for example, takes every opportunity to rally its schools and congregation against marriage reform, something the NSS supports, and we’ve seen Evan Harris lose his parliamentary seat, due at least in part to the organised smearing by Christian pro-life groups. Let be clear, cold-blooded and Machiavellian: when it comes to achieving secularist political goals, the fewer people the churches have, the better.
- …religion’s privileged status, and Christianity’s in particular, will be further questioned. The 2001 census, which misleadingly suggested 71 percent of Britons were Christians, has been waved like a flag by Christian theocrats and evangelicals (also known as The Daily Telegraph). The suggestion is that since Christians are numerous, we ought for example to retain the Lords Spiritual – even on its own terms, that argument is bad, but the more people in our country tick ‘No religion’, the more absurdly unrepresentative bishops’ seats will look. Bigotry shown toward emphatic nonbelievers, like the man’s our ‘Not religious?’ slogan disgusted, will presumably be rarer too, since more people’s friends and relatives will be atheists.
- …more people will see religions just as ideas, like political philosophies or economic schools of thought, which have to earn their keep in the marketplace of ideas. They’ll stop thinking of them as inherent parts of people’s identities, like where their parents come from or their gender identity, and understand that it’s entirely fair – and helpful – to criticise them, just like any other ideas. That helps create an environment where no one’s beliefs get a free ride or an unfair advantage over anyone else’s. Isn’t that what secularism’s about?
- …fewer theists will be theocrats, and some theocrats will become atheists. One inherent problem with selling secularism to believers is that some feel they know without doubt that their religion is the right one – as far as they’re concerned, it’s simply a fact that Christianity is the truth, and so of course no other worldview should get seats in parliament. To them, treating other religions the same is like treating flat earth-ers and astronomers the same. Atheist activism, if it deconverts these people, can make them secularists; and if it doesn’t, it might at least help them understand that their beliefs aren’t watertight facts.
This can and does work. It’s often said that you can’t reason someone out of religious beliefs – but very clearly, that’s untrue. I was reasoned out of mine. A significant number of people at any atheist gathering you care to attend, I’m willing to bet, have been reasoned out of theirs. Across society and around the world, more and more people are generally leaving religion; and in relatively unreligious societies like Britain, my experience is that fewer and fewer atheists are apathetic.
Atheist-specific activism is a valid option. It works. And it’s not a waste of time.
Damn straight.
I didn’t grow up with any religion at all, so it’s never made any sense to me. But after having kids, and having people (relatives, school principles, our housekeeper!, strangers…) questioning whether or not I was doing the right thing by not encouraging religion (and damning us all to an eternity in hell), I started to get very angry.
I don’t always have the energy or inclination to argue with people about it. But everything you’ve said is correct… in my opinion. And I dearly appreciate your speaking out. Keep up the good work.
I tatally agree with this post. I joined both the NSS and BHA in order to become an atheist activist of some kind. I was shocked when neither organisation was willing to actally do this, despite the NSS selling badges with the word “Atheist” on them and atheists getting shot down at the AGM for suggesting that it campaigns on atheism. I was also shocked by the attitude of some humanists at meetings I attended. The idea that we shouldn’t challenge religous beliefs amazed me, and then they go on to claim they speak for non-believers.
I admit I am still a member of both as they both do good work, for the most part, but that is why a group of us that were fed up with this attitude formed Atheism UK in the first place. We wanted to advance atheism in the UK and try to challenge these irrational (and in many cases demonstrably untrue) beliefs.
Yes secularism IS vitally important we NEED to separate church and state in this country, but we also need to do more to challenge these erroneous and ultimately harmful beliefs!
(by the way did I see a Brookes Atheist Society logo on a previous post, and is that Oxford Brookes as I’m an ex-Brookie myself?)
Yes, it is. I actually designed that logo. (I used to run the equivalent group at Oxford-Oxford, and was around when the Brookes society got set up.) http://www.facebook.com/BrookesASH
As I say here, I’m fine with the NSS not being an atheist organisation – in fact, I positively approve of that, and like you I’m happy to sign petitions/attend events/generally support their work. It’s just not my work, for the most part.
Itzippy – I’m disappointed to hear of your experience of Humanists not wanting to challenge religion and promote atheism. We certainly include that in our Dorset Humanists schedule of events, talks, discussions and debates. We recently challenged a local theology college on the reasonableness of Christianity and the historical existence of Jesus. We had capacity turnouts at both debates staged at Bournemouth University. Humanism (at least our version of it) is not single-issue – it includes all the main strands including secularism, atheism etc.
Alex – I was an evangelical Christian in my teens and was reasoned out of it by a degree in theology. So yes I agree with you that people can be reasoned out of belief over a period of time if their beliefs are challenged.
Nice post. Says the things I think but unfortuntely not clever enough to say. Sad to hear Suzanne has problems at school, my children (eldest 10) have always been withdrawn from RE and prayers in assembly, and to be fair the teachers, including heads, have never had an issue. I don’t think many parents realise that they can withdraw their children, or even worse, they can’t be bothered, which is a dreadful shame. Would like it if their were more (or even any) atheist events nearer to me (Mansfield) but they always seem to be in London. Off to wait at the door now in the hope a ‘witness’ knocks. Always fun.
Invite them in – they’re not used to that, it completely throws them.
If there Mansfield has no atheist events, why don’t you organise some? Always happy to suggest things/people.
Never mind if you couldn’t be a writer, I couldn’t be a mechanic. Different strokes for different folks. And I think parents’ right to withdraw their children from R.E. indicates it’s still not intended just to be informative.
You might like to check out http://www.nottinghamsecularsociety.org.uk
Alex, I guess that all makes you a Skeptic, a Humanist, an Atheist and an Anti-theist (all of which I would also label myself). Like most of us, you seem to be many things. It also seems absolutely rational to subscribe to groups working in similar and overlapping areas which do not stress the same goals and do not appeal to exactly the same constituency.
As to being reasoned out of faith: Most lack the training to reason in any depth. That is where groups like the BHA and NSS do support atheism… campaigns that modify schools to neuter indoctrination and foster critical thinking skills provide the raw material for a brighter, rational (atheist) future in which more people can either reason themselves out of faith or respond rationally when faced with reasoned arguments. The main problem I have encountered in arguing faith with believers is that argument requires adherence to logic and rationality while true believers are proud of their irrationality (faith with evidence is not faith). Consequently such a discussion amounts to smacking your head against a locked door unless the other person is actually internally prepared to unlock it, abandon their faith and allow you to turn the handle for them.
Happy to be called any of those (preferably in lowercase) – except humanist, as I say here!
Vis arguing with believers, I get why not everyone wants to or feels able to, and they don’t have to. Certainly, I think promoting critical thinking and scientific method in education is a helpful idea. I do want to do that, though, and it’s far from always that it’s a fruitless endeavour. I’ve changed a not-insignificant number of minds before now, and some people who do this have changed lots – Sam Harris says he gets literally thousands of e-mails to that effect, and I’ve heard similar things from Matt Dillahunty and Greta Christina.
I certainly identify with you knocking your head against the faith wall, but I still find that as a starting point, helpful conversations can be had about why things like evidence and logic are important. I’d also suggest that persuading people out of their religion doesn’t always have to take the form of ‘Let’s sit down and discuss this’. There is such a thing as what I would call ‘micropersuasion’ – indirect actions or consciousness-raising behaviour that can lead people to question their beliefs, like being friends with religious people, giving your perspective on other believers and institutions or being a highly visible atheist in the public eye.
Couldn’t agree more Silversmith
I’m personally of the opinion that the Secular movement is the first crucial step in diminishing the importance and credence given irrational belief systems. I think that the movement does itself justice by not assuming an atheist stance first and foremost, as that immediately provokes a defensive and highly hostile response from the people we secularists are proposing the idea to. I think that if you genuinely want to tackle peoples’ irrational beliefs then you must first focus on pulling religion away from the shadowy safety of government, so that a more unobstructed light can be shone on it. Secularism simply creates a more level platform for irrational beliefs to be addressed across.
Is it okay with you if I do the work I want to do, and let pure secularists do the work they want to do?
You’re more than welcome to. I’m simply saying that I think the first priority should be detaching religion from its governmental, educational and legal privileges so as to direct your criticisms at it free of protective Big Brothers.
“I certainly identify with you knocking your head against the faith wall, but I still find that as a starting point, helpful conversations can be had about why things like evidence and logic are important. I’d also suggest that persuading people out of their religion doesn’t always have to take the form of ‘Let’s sit down and discuss this’. There is such a thing as what I would call ‘micropersuasion’ – indirect actions or consciousness-raising behaviour that can lead people to question their beliefs, like being friends with religious people, giving your perspective on other believers and institutions or being a highly visible atheist in the public eye.”
Isn’t micropersuasion what Secularism is all about? It gives perspective to beliefs. And by addressing education, “being friends with religious people”, bringing about the possibility of a non-religious political and legal systems, creates the level ground for atheism to be a more pleasing (and visible) entity to the public eye?
Not necessarily, because as you say, secularism is entirely accessible to religious believers. It doesn’t aim, on its own, to deconvert people. Would I like to do these things in the context of a secular state? Yes, absolutely. But it’s possible, and I’d suggest useful, to do them without one.
Yes it’s accessible to religious believers, but you’ve posited that your micropersuasion would entail befriending religious people anyway to engage them in a dialogue.
I’m not sure I’ve followed how it is any more useful to deconvert people in a non-secular society than it is in a secular one. Surely it stands to reason that a better-educated populace (and therefore people who are not spoon-fed obnoxious fairy tales) will be more open to both partaking in, and spreading, the dialogue between rational and irrational?
Yes, which is why I’m pro-critical thinking in education. But I want to have that dialogue now, rather than wait for a secular state to be established first. I’m not anti-secularist, that’s just not what I want to focus my personal time and energy on. I’m glad there are those who do focus on that, but not everyone has to.
I’m certainly not suggesting everyone has to. And no one’s stopping you having that dialogue either. Nor does a secular society ask you to wait. It’s simply focusing on one crucial target in a myriad of targets in the discussion about irrationality. I take the fact that the NSS has Richard Dawkins chairing the upcoming September conference as acknowledgement from the NSS that it endorses atheist discussion alongside its fight for secularism.
I would challenge many of the items on your list from a feminist, pro-gay or skeptic angle rather than bundling them in with my atheism. For me, atheism is not believing in gods, and no more.
My blog that you link to is mainly about skepticism and religion rather than secularism, even though, as you rightly say, I support it.
For me, it’s more effective to challenge individual religious claims or actions through these three means. Scientific methodology, logic, rational thinking and evidence can be more powerful than any attempt to diminish or eradicate belief. I’ve written a lot about claims made by the religious, particularly as they affect women and LGBT people, as well as in medicine/healthcare.
You’re right that many of us atheists started out as believers and somehow lost our faith along the way. I didn’t lose mine because of someone trying to show me my thinking was wrong, but by reading science and skeptic texts on a wide range of subjects, which is why I think promoting scientific/rational thought is important – for everyone, not just the religious, as none of us is as rational as we might like to think.
I don’t take any position *because* I’m an atheist, I’m an atheist because reason, logic and evidence matter to me.
Agreed, but I don’t think the labels we use have to describe an overarching life stance. I’m an atheist because I’m a skeptic – skepticism and rationalism are my ‘worldviews’ – but I emphasise religion where Rhys emphasises alt med, or where Hayley emphasises paranormal claims. If you want a word that illustrates what I write about and do, ‘atheist [activist]‘ does that best.
I don’t talk about method in this post, though I do think the more people deconvert, the less of a problem the things on my list will be. Certainly I’m not in favour of a ‘YOUR BELIEFS ARE WRONG AND YOU ARE EVILLLL’ approach, and I don’t think sitting down with believers and deliberately Discussing It is the only way forward. Here are some specific goals for me:
AG said:
– Helping atheists to come out as such, and providing a community that will support them.
– Helping one another deal, where appropriate, with personal issues relating to religious upbringings.
This sounds suspiciously like Humanism.
If you want to do that, and call it humanism, go for it. Meanwhile, I’ll label my work how I want.
Alex I’d be interested in your response to the claim that secularism is calling for a ‘neutral’ society – one that is neutral towards all worldviews including atheism and humanism. Critics claim that a ‘neutral’ society is logically impossible – we have to base our policy-making on some basic philosophical and values commitments. So, for example, a secular society would be based on democracy, human rights, liberal values, evidence-based policy, some kind of utilitarianism etc. In other words, it’s anything but ‘neutral’. Now if a significantly large group of people in that society come along and say we actually want to bring a different perspective to bear here based on Christian values you then have two competing magisteria. We could call their proponents Secularists and Christianists (throw in Islamists if you like). How can these incommensurable value systems be reconciled? I think the answer is some form of pluralism which is arguably what we’ve got in Britain (or call it good old British muddle and compromise). Perhaps this is why, in a predominantly secular system of government, we have 3% of seats in the appointed chamber allotted to bishops and why, in a predominantly secular media, we have a 3 minute slot for a religious thought for the day. These are attacked as ‘religious privilege’ but maybe they are modest attempts at giving the religious people a voice in the predominantly secular public square?
We have things which gives religious people a voice. They’re known as pulpits.
(On the point of some religious people’s values being incommensurable with secularism I agree – I refer you to my ‘fewer theists will be theocrats’ bullet point.)
David Warden – Secularism does promote pluralism by making sure that everyone is equal before the law (for example) rather than allowing some groups privileges so that many different views/beliefs can be espoused without fear of persecution or disadvantage. The positive side of secularism often gets forgotten and it is seen as a ‘Thou shalt not’ position. We certainly don’t have pluralism in the UK where only Christian bishops and no other religious leaders sit in the House of Lords, for example. The solution is not a plurality of religious leaders in the Lords, but none. Pluralism doesn’t mean everyone able to do everything (as I’m sure you know).
Most importantly, pluralism shouldn’t be confused with relativism.
Tessa – thanks for your point. But why wouldn’t a pluralism-promoting secularism (which is supposedly neutral about all worldviews) want a plurality of representatives from all different groups including religions, trade unions, business, women’s groups, atheists and so on? My MP recently wrote to me to tell that this is what the appointments commission would be required to do in a reformed House.
One problem that I can foresee is that, unlike the other groups you mention, religious leaders rarely represent anyone except the most orthodox – and their own interests. Poll after poll shows that a large number of believers disagree with much doctrine, particularly on issues affecting women and LGBT people (eg contraception, gay marriage, abortion). .
Another problem is – where do you stop? Does every sect get a representative?
In addition, the other groups you mention have some sort of selection process for their leaders, which is more or less democratic, whereas religions don’t.
If we are going to have a democratic second House, then it would seem equitable for its members to be elected (in some way) rather than demanding their right to sit. For me, this would rule out hereditary peers and religious leaders on the same grounds.
The Human Right to freedom of belief would not be curtailed by having no religious representatives in the second House. Religious leaders would be free to voice their opinions in public the same as anyone else is – and they already get privileged media access. I don’t think democracy is served by any group defending its institutional interests rather than the interests of the public (or sections of it). Religion and governance have rarely been a healthy mix.
Hi Tessa, I’ll try and answer the points you raise. You say that religious leaders rarely represent anyone except the most orthodox. This is a very sweeping statement but the way to mitigate it would be for an Appointments Commission to do its job carefully. For example, you could have a representative of Orthodox Judaism and Reform Judaism. You ask ‘Where does it stop – does every sect get a representative?’. No of course not. You claim that other groups have democratic selection processes – I don’t think this claim would withstand much scrutiny. I don’t think we are talking about demanding the right of people to sit in the House of Lords. It’s about a balanced composition. You claim that the Human Right to freedom of belief would not be curtailed by having no religious representatives in the second House. No one is claiming it would. You claim that religious leaders are already getting privileged media access. I think the point made by the BBC is that most of its output is secular and non-religious and that it has a duty to provide religious slots. If you tried to calculate the relative percentages I suspect that the religious percentage would come out as minuscule. Religious programming is often of interest to atheists anyway. What you seem to be saying is that you want to actively discriminate against religious representatives having any public platform except their own pulpits. The danger of this is that we end up going down the US road where there is a wall of separation between church and state. The unintended consequence of this is that religion becomes a kind of fundamentalist counter-culture which ends up, ironically, having a more extreme influence on the political process.
I can’t see any reason whatsoever for having any form of ex officio religious representation in parliament. There is, after all, no such representative of, for example, medicine, law, sport, art or business. These things are all expected to be covered within the regular membership. If the argument that ethics needs dedicated specialists is to hold water then it is a tacit recognition that the ethical standards of most members is inadequate, it also begs the question whether people with a specific dogma make the best ethical thinkers. At best the argument suggests that whoever promotes Lords should have an eye to elevating philosophers of high repute. Without that argument any ex officio religious representatives simply become privileged partisan sales-people.
@Stonyground: Having gone through the process your daughter went through myself (though my parents were religious), and having a daughter of my own who has done the same, I can see some strength in your argument. However, there will always be many more children who either do not question the information they are fed or do not have the support and/or confidence to challenge it. These are the children, some of whom may come to abandon faith later in life and some who don’t, whose education is damaged. For their sake, the educational environment should be free of dogma. A lot of schools are, too many still aren’t.
Silversmith – you claim that there are no representatives of medicine, law, sport, art or business in the Lords. Surely you are wrong on this? What about Lords Bragg, Lloyd-Webber and Alli and Baroness Bakewell for arts and media, Lord Coe for sport, Baroness Blackstone for medicine, and so on. Hundreds of peers must represent business interests. Even philosophers do sometimes get a look in such as Baroness Warnock. Parliament UK website states “Often with long careers in public service, business, arts and culture, or another area of activity, Members of the House of Lords contribute their expertise and knowledge to Parliament and its work.” Why exclude religious representatives unless you want to actively discriminate?
Absolutely my point David… the Lords you list are not elected ex officio, they are absolutely elevated because of excellence in their field. There is nothing to prevent those who wish to elevate an ethics specialist from choosing a Bishop, an Emeritus Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, a Rabbi etc etc…. but equally, there is no possible argument (beyond unacceptable religious privilege) to constrain the field to holders of specific posts in a specific church.
OK so I think we have established that you don’t mind if bishops are appointed to the House of Lords as long as we don’t have reserved places for bishops as such. We’ll still have bishops in the House of Lords and secularists will be happy?
I can’t speak for all secularists and as an anti-theist myself I would be most surprised at someone who makes their living promoting irrationality being selected as a worthy representative, but the basis of secularism is the removal of unwarranted privilege so I can’t see anyone (myself included) putting forward the idea that they should be specifically excluded.
‘you could have a representative of Orthodox Judaism and Reform Judaism’. I’m not sure there’s any such thing as Reform Catholicism, for example. More liberal Catholics don’t tend to get into senior positions.
‘You ask ‘Where does it stop – does every sect get a representative?’. No of course not.’ Who decides?
As to the media, I wasn’t talking about specifically religious programming but about the way religious leaders are given a platform; they get a lot of news coverage in all media, for example. I’m not saying this is wrong, just that they are hardly short of an outlet for their views.
The reverse of what you call ‘active discrimination’ against the religious is that these leaders often want the right to discriminate against others – exemption from equality laws, for example.
It comes back to the basic question – does religion have a role to play in politics? And if you think so, then why? Why can’t they be separate domains without devaluing either? There is a long tradition of religious leaders interfering in politics or at least demanding a role – for example the relationship between monarchs and the Church before there was even politics as we now know it – but tradition is not reason for it to continue.
Thanks Tessa. To answer your main question, ‘Does religion have a role to play in politics?’, the answer is yes of course just as any other worldview does. If you say it doesn’t then you are privileging secularism and the worldview which goes with that.
May I begin by saying that this is an excellent and thought provoking post.
I am not sure that the NSS refraining from criticising religion is a winning strategy, however, I don’t see it doing any harm either. In the early days of the NSS, around a hundred and fifty years ago, non-conformists and minority religions had a hard time, being discriminated against by the establishment in lots of ways. The fact that the NSS fought in their corner, all those years ago, is now largely forgotten. Nowadays, believers of all stripes see the NSS as the enemy. The reason for this is that when minority religions see the Anglican Church enjoying unearned privilages, their position is not the secularist one that such privilages should be abolished, their position is to demand the same privilages for themselves. Our own schools, exemptions from laws, our advocates being paid a salary from the public purse, if the Anglicans get all of this then why shouldn’t we?
Criticism of religion played an important part of NSS campaigning in the early days. One reason for this was that the authority of the Bible, the Word of God, was pretty much a given in those days. “It’s in the Bible so that settles it” was a tool of oppression that the NSS destroyed by studying it and calling attention to its many flaws.
Regarding the withdrawal of children from religious indoctrination in schools. My approach was to be happy to let my daughter attend a CofE primary school and participate fully. I explained to her that some people believe in God but I do not, and that it is up to her to decide for herself*. At fifteen years old she is an atheist, I think that this can be partly put down to my strategy. The other part is that both her (CofE remember) primary, and secondary school followed the PC route of teaching kids about all major world religions and a basic outline of what they believe, and this includes Humanism. More recently she has even been required to write essays on the reasons that people believe in God and the pros and cons of God belief. With the exception of the rabidly sectarian schools, surely this approach is going to produce a new generation of either atheists or salad bar believers.
*Why is this approach not used by religious people? Surely if their religion is demonstrably true, exposure to other, false, ideas will have no effect. It worked for me.
David – the sub-threads are getting a bit convoluted so I’ll carry on here if that’s OK.
‘To answer your main question, ‘Does religion have a role to play in politics?’, the answer is yes of course just as any other worldview does. If you say it doesn’t then you are privileging secularism and the worldview which goes with that.’
Firstly, I would prefer all government to be evidence-based. Government is for politicians and people with evidence-based expertise who advise them.
Secondly, what other worldviews would you include? Do you believe that they are all equal? Is a homophobic, misogynist, racist worldview as worthy of respect and a role in politics as, say, a feminist one? Human rights is about privileging some worldviews over others that are not considered pro-social, even if people holding those views object.
Finally, secularism is a human rights position rather than a worldview. There are religious secularists as well as atheist.
Hi Tessa thanks for your interesting reply. OK well let’s tackle the homophobia point. Some noble Lords may well be homophobic such as the late Lord Jacobovits, Chief Rabbi, who thought it would be a good thing if prospective parents could genetically screen out gay offspring. If we had Catholic bishops in the Lords they would no doubt be ranting against same-sex marriage. Other bishops such as the former Bishop of Edinburgh may well take a more liberal line. Do I deplore anti-gay anti-liberal patriarchal views? Yes. Do I think people holding such views should be barred from a democratic Parliament? No, of course not because that would be anti-democratic and discriminating against people who hold what they consider to be traditional moral positions. You would expect to have liberal and illiberal voices in a democratic Parliament. You seem determined to find any excuse to rid a democratic Parliament of people whose views you find objectionable. Your pluralism seems to be inclusive of everyone – except religious leaders. By any reckoning that’s a plain case of discrimination on grounds of religion and belief. Of course, all of this debate would be swept away if the House of Lords was fully elected rather than appointed but that seems to be off the table again.
David – you’ve not addressed my points about evidence-based governance – I’d be interested to hear what you think.
OK well I think I would say that government is rarely a matter of just looking at the evidence. Evidence is complex, contested, selected, and interpreted in different ways depending on your prior political leanings. Some contentious issues, like same-sex marriage for instance, aren’t settled by an appeal to evidence but by an appeal to philosophical positions on the definition of marriage. So I’m not quite sure how relevant this is?
But in the case of gay marriage, there are claims made about the history of marriage that can be contested or, the case of religious objection to abortion, some MPs and religious leaders lie about the facts (I’ve researched this so I know they do). There may be a moral element to such issues but facts are often casualties when religion gets involved. There are of course religious liberals but, as I said, they rarely achieve power and the men who do can’t be said to represent the mass of followers. If there were religious leaders across all religions and sects who did, you might have a stronger case.
Every time someone votes they attempt to rid government of views they find objectionable.
I suspect we could keep going on this for quite a while but I’m not going to have time to carry on over the next few days so I hope other people will.
OK thanks Tessa it’s been an interesting exchange.