It's time to listen to the faithless millions

[kdenby]

This article was published in the Western Morning News on Friday 8th May 2009 under my byline and a small photograph of me but with a large photograph of Tony Blair 'in the pulpit' talking at 'faithworks'. Unfortunately the WMN do not archive these opinion pieces on their website so I cannot provide a link.

It's time to listen to the faithless millions

When Tony Blair left Downing Street nearly two years ago, the press devoted a lot of space to speculation about the legacy of his terms as Prime Minister. Few journalists identified his legacy of bringing faith more closely into the workings of government and education. Like all faith leaders he presumed to speak for everybody, but the reality is that British people want faith to have less influence in national affairs, not more.

The Blair government provided nearly £13 million to build the capacity of faith-based organisations to engage more effectively with public authorities and to promote cohesion between different faith groups through interfaith activity. The idea was to promote multi-faith Britain and to try to use faith groups to reduce conflict and tension after the disturbances of 2001. However many local authorities have realised that they can meet some of the requirements of equality law by using these funds to promote interfaith groups as mouthpieces for opinions on religion and belief in society. The opinions of the large percentage of the population that has no faith and wants nothing to do with faith are largely ignored.

The British Humanist Association seeks to represent the views of those people in modern Britain who choose to govern their lives with reason and rationality rather than 'faith'. The BHA felt that a distinctly non-faith group should also be given funds and applied for a grant under the scheme and were successful. The money has been used to train local development volunteers to represent the secular, non-faith position to local government. Our point is that everyone should be free to practice whatever belief they choose but that nobody should force their beliefs on anyone else nor have special privileges with government because of what they believe.

The Devon Humanists campaign to end the discriminatory practice of councils holding prayers caused shock and anger in some quarters. A number of councils have taken the time to consider the practice of saying prayers at meetings but none have yet abandoned them as a result of the campaign. The campaign received a lot of coverage and a lot of support from ordinary people. In the same way, ordinary people put up their money to fund the extremely successful Atheist Bus advertising campaign, raising more that £150,000 compared to the original target of £5,500. The message for local councils is clear – they are way out of touch with modern attitudes and they cannot use 'tradition' to justify discrimination.

Once Devon Humanists started to try and put their views to local government we were immediately steered towards the funded 'interfaith' groups and told to communicate through them. That misses the point completely – the very nature of our views means that we 'don't do faith' and now we have to campaign to end another discriminatory practice that is a result of the Blair faith legacy.

The division and discrimination of that faith legacy extends of course into education. Blair's naïve ideas about the value of faith schools and the resulting increased funding for them has led to a clamour of faith groups wanting 'me too' rights – against all the evidence and experience from Northern Ireland and the Middle East that sectarian schooling produces a divided and sectarian society. In 2006 religious discrimination in staff and pupil selection for publicly funded faith schools was legalised by Tony Blair's government after pressure from faith communities.

In Devon only a small proportion of publicly funded secondary schools are faith schools but in the primary and junior sector the proportion is very high. Few parents of young children in Devon realise that the head of their local church primary school can now be sacked for not showing the right amount of 'faith' and that the school can withdraw from the regional agreed syllabus for religious education and teach whatever religious viewpoint it chooses. Recent research by the University of London has shown that faith schools do not improve standards but do segregate children along lines of class, ability and religion. Devon Humanists will be highlighting the divisive nature of faith schools thanks to public donations which have once again supported the BHA by funding the salary of their faith schools campaigner.

The question often arises of who do Humanists really represent – there is no humanist political party to stand for election and most members of the main political parties are too afraid to speak out publicly even if many hold humanist views in private. Devon Humanists would like to invite members of every political party to contact us to form a cross party Devon Humanist Political Group. The statistic from the 2001 census that 71 % of Britons are Christian is always wheeled out by government spokesmen, but that figure was distorted by the way the question was asked. Even the 2001 census showed that people with no religion were the next highest group (15.5%). Polls that ask direct questions about beliefs consistently find that less than 40% of Britons believe in any supreme being.

And yet, thanks to Tony Blair 'faith' now has a stronger voice within government. Humanists will continue their campaign to support secular government and education which will most effectively maintain the rights of everyone to believe what they want. The Blair 'interfaith work' would be a much more genuine endeavour within such a system.

Keith Denby is spokesman for Devon Humanists Council Prayers campaign and a BHA Local Development Volunteer.

http://www.devonhumanists.org.uk