Claire Rayner OBE

“People who show off about how good they are make me throw up.” Claire Rayner OBE discusses proselytising through charity, and the hidden humanists often pulling the levers.

On a bitterly cold night on London’s Embankment a few years ago I was standing on the pavement surrounded by a number of very unhappy and ill people. They were homeless people with no source of income apart from begging (for which they were often harried by police) who had colonised a couple of benches not too far from the bridge arches. Beneath these they had fashioned structures of cardboard and plastic sheeting to huddle into when they wanted to settle for the night.

These people were labelled as ‘rough sleepers’ by the powers that be, who were ashamed that there could be people in London so poverty-stricken they had no roof beneath which to sleep nor money to feed themselves. I had even heard one Civil Servant say “These people choose to live like that, the way that Gypsies do,” which showed a breathtaking failure to recognise the circumstances of the people who were standing around me on that bitter cold night.

However, I’m not about to launch into a political tirade against the set-up that allowed people to reach so low a level in society. That is for another time and another place. I want to talk about the people who had brought me to the Embankment that night in a battered old white van filled with trays of homemade sandwiches, rich cakes, hot soup and coffee urns, quantities of chocolate and trays of fruit. The van had a motto on its sides. ‘Council Of Churches’ it read.

I had been approached by someone from a local Methodist church (in my experience Methodists like other Non-Conformist Churches are very much up-and-at-’em when they perceive Good Works are required) asking me to lend my name to their efforts to help deal as much as possible with the needs of as many of London’s homeless people as they could. Who could say no? Who would want to say no? I certainly wouldn’t, and though I was too pushed for time in a hectic writing schedule to make sandwiches, I could buy lots of biscuits (especially real shortcake – high in fat and therefore very nutritious and comforting) and milk chocolate (ditto) and all sorts of fruit. The other people on the run were friendly and charming, and I liked them a lot. There was nothing of the holier-than-other-people-ness about them. They had as job to do, and were getting on with it.

But I began to feel a little uncomfortable. Here were religious people sitting beside me; an angry non religious person all the way though to my middle. (I rage over the way one Church’s doctrines, which ban any practical and reliable forms of contraception, have caused dreadful hardship and misery in South America and in parts of Africa and elsewhere.) I felt I was behaving very dishonestly in not telling them of my stand on religion. I said, in as casual a voice as I could muster, “Which of the local churches do you represent? I wouldn’t know, you see. I’m a humanist which means I am also a secular atheist and find no personal value in religion. Is that a problem for you?”

One of them – I seem to remember his name was Dave – laughed. “Oh, me too. In fact,” he looked around, “I think most of us are the same as you.” Several people nodded.

“So why,” I asked, mystified “are you all working for the churches?”

“We aren’t” Dave said. “We’re working for the homeless.  We didn’t have a van big enough to carry not only us, but all of the food and the urns for the hot soup and coffee, so I asked the Methodist minister if he could help, and he was delighted to lend us this.”

“But he isn’t with us?” I looked around.

“Um, no,” Dave said gently. “It’s Sunday, you see, so he has other fish to fry.”

It will be a long time before I’ll feel quite such a fool again. But I learned something from Dave and the others that night; that there are a great many people who are humanists, like me, who turn out to muck in on important jobs when they’re needed. We do it just because we care for people, and not in the name of a supernatural being. We don’t have vans with religious information on them, which proclaim where virtue is coming from. What we do – (and watch out!  I’m about to quote that big compendium of assorted historical fragments, poems and stories: the Bible) – is hide our lights under bushels.

I have no problem with that. People who show off about how good they are make me throw up. But it is rather nice to know that we non-believers – over 49% of the population, I am told – would appear to be doing all sorts of Good Works all over the place. I’ve checked with other people I know to be my sort of atheist all over the country during the years that have intervened since that night, so I know whereof I speak.

What’s your experience?

Claire Rayner OBE is a writer, broadcaster and Vice-President of the British Humanist Association.

Also see: Homeless and Preached To by Noel Long.