Labour Humanists

Labour Humanists warn Government on opening up welfare to religious groups

Labour Humanists recognise the desire on the part of the Government to raise standards of service delivery and to make Britain a world leader in welfare provision.

Within this, however, we would warn against the continued drive for religious organisations to take on a greater share of welfare services. Such organisations are currently exempt from sexual orientation equality legislation and are able to discriminate on the grounds of religion or belief. The delivery of welfare services by groups whose primary interest is not the delivery of those services, but rather the promotion of a particular religion, do not accord with the principles of free and fair access to all members of society.

We therefore call upon the Government to ensure these principles will not be compromised. We urge it to ensure our welfare system retains its secular and inclusive character, and take steps as a matter of urgency to remove the rights of religious groupings to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation and religion or belief.

The BHA’s report Quality and Equality: Human Rights, Public Services and Religious Organisations, tackles the issues touched upon above, and is available here: http://tinyurl.com/25w2hb

   

Labour Humanists reject Archbishop sharia stance and give cautious welcome to Government response

Labour Humanists reject the Archbishop of Canterbury's view that some elements of sharia law should, and will, be incorporated into British law. The idea that the law should itself change to accommodate alternative allegiances of religious minorities is unacceptable not only to those professing no religion but to many religious believers too.

The Government's robust response is to be welcomed, but, in the light of the comments, Labour Humanists urge a thoroughgoing rethink of its continued support for 'faith' schools. Their existence strengthens the case for modern-day segregation in other spheres of society: the Government’s belief that ‘faith’ schools will clear the path to social cohesion is strongly echoed in the Archbishop’s notion that a diversity of legal systems will do the same. Separation on the grounds of religion, in any walk of life, is a recipe only for division, not cohesion.

The British Humanist Association also said that “Singling out certain groups for separate treatment will also surely undermine work towards good relations and social cohesion rather than assist it.” The BHA was also active internationally in preventing the (successful) campaign to prevent the introduction of sharia family law in Canada. Labour Humanists urge all members and other humanist groups to remain similarly active.

For more information, please get in touch with Adam Harrison at secretary@labourhumanists.org.uk

Comment: Baroness Massey on debating belief and non-belief in Parliament

Comment: Labour Humanist Group member Baroness Massey of Darwen on issues of faith and the House of Lords

"It has been an interesting and controversial time for faith issues in the House of Lords.  We have debated the expansion of faith schools with some unlikely combinations of protagonists.  During the passage of the Education Bill, I put an amendment to stop any expansion of faith schools.  Lord Baker then put an amendment to insist that 20% of any intake to a faith school should be of a different faith or no faith.  I went along with this amendment as offering a pragmatic approach.  It was debated with vigour but defeated.

What was clear from these debates is that there exists a distinct opinion that faith school are better run and help pupils achieve better results than other schools.  Of course, this is often because their intakes are highly selective.  It is still the case that parents are sometimes prepared to go through all kinds of hoops to get their child into a faith school, including becoming temporarily religious or moving house, or even borrowing a house to be eligible.

Faith schools can divide communities.  Parents as well as children are separated off from those of other faiths and the school fails to be part of a community.  Schools need communities and communities need schools in my view.

The second debate was a debate, with no votes, led by Lord Harrison “to call attention to the position of those who profess no religion”.  In opening, he pointed out that “religion has all too frequently meant division and separation.”. He emphasised that attacks on those who profess no religion should be rebutted and that Government should recognise the more secular Britain which is emerging.

The Archbishop of York, in his speech, seemed to imply that spirituality and access to “the mystery” were the province only of believers, something which I strongly reject. The notion that “…Belief in God, whose face I have beheld in Jesus Christ, means not only that he makes me see things in a new light but that he sets me free to do things in a new way…” I find the implication objectionable that being free to do things in new ways should also be the premise of those who have faith.

The Bishop of Worcester called for  “a programme in which we develop together a common vision of society in which we face the fact that there are serious disagreements but on the other hand rejoice in the points of common life that we can create together.  Here surely is a starting point for respect for others without recourse to dogmatism or discrimination.

Baroness Greengross presented another angle-the vision of the new Commission for Human rights.  This presents “A Britain at ease with its diversity, in which all people are treated with respect and fairly and where they can be certain that they will be treated equally under the law…”  This must surely mean that in all matters of policy all faiths and those of no faith must be consulted and must participate in decision making.

The Minister, Baroness Andrews, affirmed that it is the role of Government to “have a responsibility to ensure that people who do not identify with a faith do not have fewer choices or are less able to live their lives in the way they would choose, to contribute to the life of the nation, or to take opportunities when they arise”

The two instances I refer to here, one a piece of legislation, one a more relaxed debate point out for me  how Peers, at least those who took part, have a wide spread of perceptions and feelings about their own beliefs and how  Britain, with all its diversity,  might function.  I wonder if these views would have been put so strongly, say, ten years ago.  I have been surprised by the number of my colleagues who profess no faith and are prepared to argue for that standpoint. I am always surprised by the dogmatism of some who profess a faith, but heartened by others who are prepared to seek reconciliation and debate. The quality of debate in the House of Lords, is usually very high.  The debate on religion was no exception.  However, it is interesting that on the issue of faith schools, there is such resistance to think logically about the implications for communities and for children in general, or even to think at all.

What is clear is that the humanist voice is strong and that we can use it to encourage further debate in Parliament, to insist that we, as humanists are represented in public fora, and that we can, with justification, seek publicity for the secular voice."

Comment: Lord Harrison's speech in the Lords on "the position in British society of those who profess no religion"

Comment: Labour Humanist Group member Lord Harrison's speech in the Lords on "the position in British society of those who profess no religion"

"My Lords, all my life, religion has all too frequently meant division and separation. At school, non-Anglicans were excluded from morning assemblies until prayers were said—an infelicitous image of separation lodged in the minds of young, impressionable boys. When my own children came of school age, my wife and I had to choose between sending them to the local church school or exporting them out of area and so separating them from their circle of friends in our closely knit local community. It scarcely rated as parental choice. When I came to this House, I once again found myself segregated as this Chamber—my workplace—is daily transmogrified into a church.We non-churchgoers troop in afterwards like guilty office workers returning from a quick inhalation of inspiration from the street outside. Perhaps those who wish to pray could copy our Muslim colleagues and use the private prayer room. Those are three examples of the regular experience of those of us who profess no religion and those non-churchgoers who are the silent majority.

It is time to speak up, especially as a more strident note is now sounding. The Anglicanism of my youth, more sedative than stimulant, now gives way to the harsher tones of those like the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, who describes us as “illiberal atheists” and “aggressive secularists”. We learn thatto combat this perceived intolerant public atheism,the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish leader will meet this summer in a holy alliance to plot the counterstrategy—a less than ecumenical approach. Indeed, it seems to me that the religious today do not lack leaders but they lack leadership.

Religious belief continues on its long-term decline in Britain, as the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York recently acknowledged on the “Today” programme. However, his remonstration of us non-churchgoers as the authors of this steepening decline is neither warranted nor deserved. My debate today seeks to rebut those charges and to tabulate those areas of public life where we feel unacknowledged, unprized and under-represented. I hope, too, to ponder on what government and the wider community might do to reflect better this modern and more secular Britain that is developing, in particular in its public policies and institutions.

In that, I call for fair play. I invite our religious colleagues to debate how we can find common ground to establish a new consensus. I offer my own credentials in this quest for consensus by reminding your Lordships of the debate that I led two years ago highlighting the urgent need for the church, the state and those of religious beliefs and none to unite, perhaps on a more equal basis, to save Britain’s unparalleled architectural and cultural heritage revealed in the wealth of its parish churches and city cathedrals. I believe that the right reverend Prelatethe Bishop of Worcester, who is with us today, contributed to that.

I have unswervingly and religiously voted for the Government over the past seven years but I confess to qualms about their so-called faith agenda, whichhas the merit of being well meaning but whose consequences have all too often been ill directed.The Government fulfilled a 2001 manifesto promiseto encourage co-operation between religious communities and themselves by publishing a paper entitled Working Together but their compass on promoting togetherness is too unsteady. They signally fail to canvass the views of non-churchgoers about religious matters despite the fact that, as the 2001 Home Office Citizenship Survey asserts, four out of five of us find that religious belief is not central to our self-identity.

Working Together is lax in the way in which it elevates obscure religious groups such as the Jains and the Zoroastrians to a significance way beyond their numbers. It too eagerly equates religious belief with specific ethnic communities, thereby overlooking the authentic non-religious views and needs of, say, our Chinese and Caribbean communities. It is seduced by using religion as a key to revealing other problems and opportunities. It passes over the myriad other groups and subsets who make up the mosaic of Britain and deserve to have their substantial and unique voices heard. Most egregious, though, is the omission of those for whom religion is either perfunctory or defunct—we the silent majority. The report compounds its diagnostic errors by proposing therapies that are dubious. The use of public moneys and resources to seek out and harvest the views of small, unrepresentative religious groups is problematic.

However, I am particularly perturbed by the Government’s companion paper, entitled Building Civil Renewal, which apparently encourages civil servants to dilute the strength of the secular voice,

      “by preparing to mount publicity and media-handling strategies to answer adverse criticism from the secular quarter”.

That is neither wise nor even-handed. Groups suchas the National Secular Society and the British Humanist Association, of which I am a member, should be encouraged, not discouraged, from commenting on the development or the framing of relevant laws and policies. Had those groups been dispassionately asked and thoughtfully answered, some of the rough edges of legislation regarding religious hatred or religious schools might well have sat better with the very communities such laws are designed to serve.

However, let me turn to other, sometimes unintended incivilities visited on us, the non-churchgoers, arising from the muddled miasma of thinking about the role of religion in Britain today. Why on state occasions such as Remembrance Day is no representative from the non-religious community invited to attend the Cenotaph? How appropriate is it that the commemoration of those killed in London in the bombings of 7 July takes place in an Anglican cathedral, when such buildings have lost their once universal numinosity? Indeed, one of those murdered was a prominent secularist. Would a Christian be content with a humanist funeral if that was all that was on offer?

The various standing advisory panels set up by the Government to garner the views of religious groups forgo—indeed, avoid—the contribution that non-churchgoers might proffer. So too with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Religious Freedom Panel, bereft as it is of the humanist voice. Also, the chaplaincy services found in the armed services, in NHS hospitals and the Prison Service—important services offering comfort and advice—are provided exclusively by the church. Why should they not be extended beyond that? After all, our prisons are not overcrowded with regular churchgoers.

I harbour anxieties that the Government are devolving community services to religiously motivated groups and that it will further erode the clear principle that public funds should be disbursed in a non-discriminatory manner. A further discomfort is the fact that humanist marriage ceremonies—which I have had the privilege to be invited to and to preside over—are not recognised as a legal marriage. Why not? My view, for what it is worth, is that the churches should open up their premises to the wider community, who value the local church as a fine building redolent of the local community. Indeed, why should they not preside over humanist marriages?

My hair shirt itches on the question of public service broadcasting. “Thought for the Day” is a dusty desert in the oasis of political and current affairs reporting on the “Today” programme, but these days the even earlier “Prayer for the Day”strays beyond the bounds, as witness yesterday’s unchallenged criticism of the Government’s liberalising legislation on gambling. No one should be deaf to criticism, but I deplore the abuse of that unearned licence as the nation's reveille at 5.45 am.

The Government must redouble their efforts to ring-fence moneys provided for education in schools and other institutions, but that becomes an increasingly difficult task—indeed, a Sisyphean task—when a school is deliberately encouraged to develop a Christian ethos. I still believe in the principle of schools being charged with the clear task of imparting knowledge, skills and the ability to reason and think. Religion should be confined to the Sunday school. At the very least, religious education should restrict itself to the disciplines of historyand the study of ideas. Neither school, hospital, prison nor public or community services should be metamorphosed into the vessels of promoting religion.

The Queen has done an outstanding job as our head of state, but is it not an unfair burden to place on her—or on her successors—that she should combine being head of state with the role of titular head of the church, especially given that belief in God is a very personal decision and not one that should be assumed or, for that matter, particularly expressed? I join those in the Anglican communion who believe that the Church of England should be disestablished. The Government should canvass views widely about the desirability and practicality of that.

I hope to hear the Minister’s views not only on that but also on those other areas of public policy. I hope her response will be positive and that there might be a consensual meeting between those who represent the religions and our own people, so that we can strike a way forward that is both profitable and modern for a modernising Britain. I beg to move for Papers."

Comment: Andrew Copson on the increasing disadvantages suffered by the non-religious

Labour Humanist Group Executive member, Andrew Copson, had this article on how the non-religious are being increasingly marginalised by government initiatives published by the Guardian yesterday:

"It may seem rather eccentric to some that the House of Lords has dedicated this morning to a debate on the rights of the non-religious. After all, Britain is an increasingly secular place. Social attitudes are largely non-religious and the personal freedoms we enjoy have expanded over the last 60 years as religiously motivated restrictions that caused so much misery - laws against divorce, against abortion, against homosexuality - have been removed. Unlike in some countries, we don't have to fear a death penalty for giving up our religion, or even the sort of social opprobrium that atheists face in countries like the US. What have the non-religious got to complain about?

The answer is quite a lot and, although this debate may have seemed unnecessary even a decade ago, right now it is timely - if not overdue. Ten years ago no one dreamt of the increase in the number and type of state-funded religious schools that the current government has promoted (before 1997 applications for new faith schools were being turned down). A third of state schools are already faith schools and expanding this provision can only worsen the situation for non-religious parents, who often cannot get their children into their local state school because it happens to be a faith school. Ironically, in some areas - especially rural ones - non-religious parents face the opposite problem: they have no choice but to send their child to a faith school because it is the only state school in the area and once there, children can find that their own developing non-religious beliefs and values are ignored and the beliefs of their parents denigrated or censured. It is not just non-religious pupils and parents who are disadvantaged in this way - faith schools are also permitted to discriminate in their employment, and in November last year the government actually extended the rights of faith schools to discriminate.

The faith-based approach that the current government has adopted over the last decade is not limited to the unpopular increase in faith schools. As part of its determination to contract out the provision of public services, the Department for Work and Pensions is actively encouraging religious groups to take over aspects of our welfare state. This is certainly going to impact on non-religious workers in this sector, if current examples of religious public service providers are anything to go by. Crossreach, "one of the largest social care agencies in Scotland", is a social care agency run by the Church of Scotland. Most of their funding is public money - it comes from local authorities - but take a look at the recruitment section of their site and you find that applicants for every job currently advertised are "required to have a Christian commitment". Might health and social care professionals soon find they have to lie about their beliefs or get a letter from the local church if they want a job, in the same way as so many parents already do in order to ensure that their child can attend a local school?

In employment and education the situation is certainly getting worse for the non-religious (even as we increase in number) but there is another process in train, with the potential to be just as pernicious. The government now isolates religion as the principle marker of identity, and with "multicultural" increasingly used to mean "multi-faith", we risk making a fetish of one attribute which, while very important to some, is a total irrelevance to many more. The website of the Department of Communities and Local Government, under whose auspices this work now falls, says: "The traditions of all major faiths contain teachings commending the fundamental values of equality and respect which are so important to community cohesion." The appropriation of key human virtues as the typical characteristics of religious believers, with the implicit or explicit suggestion that these virtues are not shared by the non-religious, is becoming a constant offensive irritation to non-believers, and politicians all-too often aggravate the situation. Hazel Blears, for example, in a recent speech to rabbis and imams, contrasted the virtues of the religious with the idea of society becoming "more secular, more consumerist, [and] more avaricious".

It is this tendency, as much as the increase in actual disadvantage suffered by the non-religious, against which peers in parliament are speaking today, and if the next decade is to be any better for the non-religious than the last, we must hope that the government is listening."

Comment: Lord Harrison on Bishops in the Lords

Labour Humanist Group supporter Lord Harrison on why he would "rusticate" Bishops in the Lords

"As I write this piece on the role of the 26 Church of England Bishops in the House of Lords – the second and influential chamber of law-making in the United Kingdom – I am listening to the wonderful Lamentations of Jeremiah by the 16th century Palestrina. As a thoroughgoing atheist I never fail to immerse myself in the wonderful choral music produced by church composers all around Europe. Whilst many were devout in their belief in God, I have always had the uncharitable sense that they composed for the sheer love of hearing the human voice singing in harmony with fellow human beings. And it is that aspect of the music which draws me into their circle; quite why our Christian colleagues are uncomfortable with our annexation of the finest music that humans can produce I don’t know. But uncomfortable they are.

As a working peer in the House of Lords, I too am uncomfortable with the increasingly discordant and outdated note that the phalanx of 26 Bishops of the Church of England bring to our modern discourse in the debating of the Lords. They are there by right supposedly because we are deemed to be a nation with an Established Church and so they, but not other religious representatives, or indeed anyone from the atheist or humanist congregation, alone have the right to decide the laws of this country as they pertain to you and me and the vast majority of Britons who in their daily lives profess no religion, don’t go to church or who are indifferent to the blandishments of the Church.

That this block vote of 26 Bishops does have influence is exemplified in a recent vote in the Lords to extend adoption rights to gays and lesbians under the Equality act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations where, to a man – and they all are! – they supported opposition to this human rights measure invoking mumbo jumbo in preference to tolerance towards fellow human beings, a quality that some of us thought was championed by a certain Jesus of Nazareth. Their opposition failed, but too often their votes in a House where the Government commands only 30% of the vote has prevailed in important issues like the education of our children.

The reform of the House of Lords has so far bypassed the role of the Bishops. The Government in their original proposals foresaw a reduction from 26 to 16 (why 16?)but the votes in the House of Commons recently for an all-elected House eliminates the Bishops en bloc!

My own preference is for an all-appointed House (an elected House will have the unfortunate consequence of establishing constitutional gridlock with the Commons is maintained by not creating a rival democratically elected House); I would rusticate the Bishops and the Law Lords. I would then expect the Appointments Commission, charged with identifying and vetting people to serve in the Second Chamber, to use their judgement in inviting appropriate religious leaders from the wider Christian and of course from other religious and humanist groups representing modern Britain. Nor would it be appropriate as now that those so chosen would be ex officio: the emphasis should be on those who can make a real contribution to our debates and law-making. In embryo, this exists already as we draw on, for instance, Muslim colleagues who arrive in the Lords via their distinction in other walks of life. Or indeed retired Bishops like the former Bishop of Oxford (Cross-bencher, Richard Harries) and the late and outstanding Labour peer, the former Bishop of Liverpool the Rev David Sheppard.

One final gripe: I would be convinced more of the necessity of retaining the 26 Church of England Bishops if they practised what they preach in a more consistent manner in the Chambers itself. Despite their enjoinders to the rest of us to aspire to the virtue of humility, it is a regular occurrence in Lords debates for the good prelates to out-face and out-stare others who wish to speak by remaining standing until any unfortunate Lords wishing to contribute is cowered into sitting down by the chorus from the supporters of the clerics to hear the Bishops first and foremost! This chorus of ungracious intimidation to fellow members of the House is both surprising and discordantly a disharmony that I have no doubt Palestrina some 500 years ago would have found foreign to the canons of his beliefs!"

Lyndon Harrison, 25th March 2007