Richy Thompson describes a typical day in the office

Richy Thompson

Richy is the British Humanist Association’s Campaigns Officer (Faith Schools and Education) and the UK’s only dedicated campaigner against ‘faith’ schools. The BHA is currently fundraising to support the post for 2012. Please donate today at http://www.justgiving.com/nofaithschools

It’s been a while since I’ve written an article for HumanistLife. The previous two were both written when I was President of the AHS, before I started working as the BHA’s ‘faith’ schools campaigner. I’ve been in this job for slightly over four months now, and I thought it’d be interesting to talk about some of the things I get up to by exploring a typical day – yesterday.

I started the day doing our internal media review, replying to some queries from parents about collective worship, worked in support of local campaigns against ‘faith’ schools, and navigating creationist attack mail. The first big thing I looked at was an email I had received from a member of Milton Keynes Humanists, who I had arranged last week to attend a public meeting being held by anti-choice group, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), in association with a number of local Muslim groups. SPUC’s “Safe at School” campaign works against good Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) in state-funded schools, particularly focussing on the primary level. Our local member took extensive notes, which should prove very helpful in understanding their tactics. We had another member at their Wakefield meeting last night, who I’m looking forward to hearing more from shortly.

After that, I spent a while investigating a tip-off I had received about a bid from some creationists for a Free School. The bid, on the surface, appears to be from an evangelical Christian group that has nothing to do with creationism, but someone who had met them found that the leadership privately holds creationist beliefs, and intends to ‘teach creation and evolution, but not creationism’ – whatever that means. A number of evangelical groups have bid for Free Schools – more evangelical than any group already providing state-funded education – and serious questions need to be asked about what these groups actually believe, and what they intend to teach, about all sorts of things, not just creationism. I imagine many will have seen the negative publicity that Everyday Champions Church’s bid has attracted, and decided to mask their true colours, perhaps even from the Department for Education. With regards to this particular bid, we’re considering appropriate further steps.

The Education Bill finished its Committee Stage in the House of Lords yesterday, and we’re busy preparing for the Report Stage. Our aim for the law to be changed to put an end to discrimination against teachers and pupils and, really importantly, to stop the huge proliferation of new ‘faith’ schools of all different denominations that we are seeing. We worked with peers in the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group to get a wide range of amendments tabled during Committee Stage, and during Report Stage we’ll be looking to take a number of these forward for further debate, though perhaps tightening the focus on some in response to what was said during Committee Stage. So yesterday I prepared an internal document where for each of the amendments debated, I looked at what we wanted, what was said, what the Government’s response was, and what I would recommend for further action at the next stage.

Finally, I’ve been doing a lot of work lately around Standing Advisory Councils for Religious Education (SACREs). About half of the 151 SACREs in England and the 22 in Wales have a humanist as a member, but ideally we’d like to see that expanded to all of them. Yesterday we gained three new humanist reps. One of them, Zelda Bailey, I arranged to observe a meeting of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets’ SACRE  last week, and she attended that first meeting this week. At the meeting they happened to be putting the finishing touches on the RE Syllabus for the borough, and she found that it didn’t mention the non-religious in any way. Thanks to her last minute interventions, she was able to add “secular worldviews” to the religions and beliefs to be studied each year in Tower Hamlets’ community, voluntary controlled and foundation schools, and most of the Academies – therefore meaning that thousands of children should now learn about non-religious beliefs such as atheism, agnosticism and humanism, when they otherwise wouldn’t have done. New RE syllabuses are only agreed once every five years, so Zelda’s appearance at the meeting was particularly well-timed! And the meeting finished with her being unanimously voted onto the SACRE as a co-opted member.

I finished the day looking at the Humanist SACRE Reps handbook, and how we can improve it to help further instruct all reps in how they can best carry out their role on their SACREs, and doing some preparation for a talk I’m giving to King’s College London Atheist, Humanist and Secular Society I’m giving next week.

All in all, I think this is a really great, tremendously interesting job, but also a hugely important and highly unique one – there’s no-one else in the country (perhaps the world?) working full time to abolish ‘faith’ schools, and yet many non-religious people in the UK would agree that education is the single biggest area in which we are disadvantaged due to our lack of belief.

I would very much like to continue this job, and I think it’s really vital that the British Humanist Association continues to employ a ‘faith’ schools campaigner. So please donate to our JustGiving appeal at http://www.justgiving.com/nofaithschools so that this work can continue.

Marilyn Mason explains why humanists should act together on climate change – and why we need another humanist interest group.

Global Warming

The ground at night - a detail from the H4BW website

“Global warming” might not sound too bad right now, as we come out of one of the coldest winters in recent years to an delightful April sunny spell. But, counter-intuitively perhaps, global warming and the melting of the polar ice-caps, which cause changes to ocean and air currents, appear as likely to cause freezing winters in Britain as they are to intensify desertification in hotter parts of the world and to bring other unpredictable extremes of weather. Globally, we seem to be seeing more of these extremes: not just our unusually snowy winter, but more floods, more droughts, more forest fires.

“Climate chaos” is in fact a more apt description of our future, and the chaos is unlikely to stop at climate. We can expect increasing conflicts over diminishing resources such as oil, land and water, escalating extinctions of wildlife, more frequent humanitarian disasters, and mass migrations of refugees from areas where food crops no longer grow.

The end of this century, when most of us will be safely dead, is often given as the time when a 2 or 4 degree rise in the Earth’s temperature will cause this chaos, but of course it won’t suddenly start then – it will be a gradual process and may already have begun in Africa and Australia and even closer to home. If future humanity and the planet’s ecosystems are to survive in anything like good shape, radical action is needed now.

Acting together and personal choice

Organised Humanism in the UK has been surprisingly slow to take on the ethical challenges of reducing carbon emissions and mitigating climate change. Individual humanists are doubtless doing their bit, convinced by the scientific consensus that things will go very ill for our children and grandchildren, perhaps even for some of us, if we do not change our wasteful life-styles. I’m sure many of us switch off our lights and computers, eat less or no meat, avoid unnecessary travel, cycle, recycle, buy less stuff and local stuff, go on climate change marches, join environmental groups and campaigns, write to our MPs… but we have done little collectively. Why is this?

I can think of several reasons. Firstly, existing humanist organisations have their hands more than full with the day-to-day concerns of their members and the wider non-religious public: the provision of advice and ceremonies for the non-religious, campaigns for recognition and equality, and other domestic issues. The BHA can campaign against faith schools securely supported by its membership, but is there less consensus about human responsibility for climate chaos? the best ways to tackle it? whether it is really happening?

Perhaps it stems from our lack of (or freedom from) individual leadership. Humanism brings together freethinkers, and has no system, democratic, autocratic or sacred, for choosing, or following, personal leaders. Pronouncements from religious leaders on the environment and what their followers should do about it have been coming thick and fast recently (on the coat-tails of science, of course), but humanists have no equivalent figureheads. Many of us would resent being told what to think or do, even about something on which there is overwhelming agreement, including, remarkably, not just scientists but  the world’s politicians. Despite their failure to achieve fair and legally binding agreements at Copenhagen in December 2009 and at Cancun in December 2010, disagreements between world leaders seem to be about how best to mitigate climate change and who should bear the financial burden, not about whether to bother.

For humanists, whether or not to bother about climate change remains a personal choice. Some may in fact prefer the line of “skeptical environmentalist” Bjørn Lomborg that we should focus first on the problems that we can overcome, problems such as poverty, education and hunger, and that the resulting growth in prosperity will then produce environmental solutions; for example, less deforestation, stable populations, and technological advances. But the new humanist interest group Humanists for a Better World (H4BW) recognises that these global problems are indeed interrelated: for example, poverty can exacerbate deforestation and thus increase carbon emissions; education, particularly of girls, can help to stabilise population and thus reduce demands on land and water. Working and campaigning on these issues does not preclude working and campaigning on environmental sustainability, and the environment cannot necessarily wait while we solve these other problems: forests may not recover from the damage we inflict while, say, extending agriculture or growing bio-fuels; extinctions tend to be irreversible; and as developing nations develop out of poverty they pump yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thus accelerating climate chaos. We need to act on all fronts, though not necessarily all of us on all fronts all the time.  H4BW intends to enable and encourage collective and individual humanist action on many of them.

The unique humanist position

Being a humanist should not involve ignoring the fate of people who live far away or who will exist in the future, or indeed the fate of other species; neither should it entail the Pollyanna-ish belief in human perfectibility and inevitable progress that some accuse us of. Progess is certainly not inevitable on most of the issues that H4BW is concerned about, and there are far too many vested interests and too much short-termism around to feel great confidence about solutions emerging in time without considerable pressure for change . Human beings can choose to act for the common good or not, but I hope that enough humanists are concerned enough to be a real presence in environmental campaigns and to add a strong collective voice to the pressure for change.

Humanists can offer something distinctive and constructive to the debates about sustainability, climate change, renewable energy and peak oil. We may well be more rational and far-sighted than most politicians about the economic and human costs of global warming and the investment and actions necessary to mitigate and perhaps ultimately adapt to it. Unlike some “deep greens”, we will not dismiss out of hand the technological solutions that are probably our best hope if we are to have enough food, clean energy and water. Unlike some commentators, we will tend to accept the scientific consensus rather than denying that there is a problem or hoping that it is just part of a natural cycle that will sort itself out or about which we can do nothing. Unlike a few of the more misanthropic environmentalists, we are unlikely to gloat over the mess that humanity has got itself into and rejoice that at least the planet and cockroaches and rats will survive even if we don’t. Unlike some religious believers, we will not oppose family planning or look forward to “end times” and eternal paradise or anticipate rescue by a deity if this life fails.

We know it’s up to us, we surely hope that our children and grandchildren and people in the most vulnerable parts of the world are not going to have lives immeasurably worse than ours, and we know that humanist ethics require us to consider the consequences of our actions – or inaction.

“Four out of five people think that the number of cars in use is having a serious effect on climate and two thirds agree that everyone should reduce their car journeys. These figures apply as much to car drivers as to anyone else. However, the figures suddenly drop when people are asked whether they are willing and able to match words with actions. Less than half said yes to reducing car journeys. Another 12 per cent admitted that they could use the car less, but did not seem willing to. And 23 per cent say that people should be allowed to use their cars as much as they like.” (British Social Attitudes, published January 2008)

I believe that committed humanists are more willing than most to match words with actions, and that together we can help to bring about much needed change and counter any perception that humanists believe the Earth exists just for us to exploit, that there is a “great gap at the heart of …liberal secular humanism”. To do so, humanists need to be more vocal and more visible, and I hope that the new website H4BW.org.uk (still in development) will enable many more of us to be so, and to work together on climate chaos and the other linked global issues. Though Humanists for a Better World will be mainly a virtual community sharing news, ideas and actions, we hope it will occasionally have a physical presence too, as there is always considerable positive interest when humanists appear at demonstrations and meetings, and support from the British Humanist Association will tie us in to existing structures and networks. Do please have a look at the website and take action as and when you can.

Marilyn Mason was a teacher for 20 years before working as Education Officer of the British Humanist Association (BHA) from 1998 to 2006. She is a campaigning member of South West London Humanist group, affiliated to the BHA and co-founder of H4BW.

Professor Sir Harry Kroto laments that his friend Martin Rees has accepted the Templeton Prize money. From behind the Times paywall he explains why – and makes a novel recommendation about what Rees should do with the money!

Martin Rees is a brilliant astrophysicist and a personal friend of mine, but I believe he has made a mistake in deciding to accept £1 million from the Templeton Foundation.

In doing so, he supports its primary aim, which is to undermine the most precious tenet of science: that it is the only philosophical construct we have to determine truth with any reliability.

… The Templeton Foundation awards its prize to the most prominent scientist it can find who is prepared to say that he or she sees no conflict between science and religion.

… I regret that my friend has accepted this award. Perhaps he could make amends by donating his million to the British Humanist Association, to support the sensible humanitarian secular attitudes that our society today so desperately needs.

Link: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article2975757.ece

In light of the BHA’s new annual Shelley Lecture, the first of which was held last week, Andrew Copson writing in the Guardian at the weekend explains why we should remember Percy Shelley and his controversial atheism.

As an Oxford undergraduate in the early 19th century, Percy Bysshe Shelley developed an argument for the non-existence of God. He entitled it The Necessity of Atheism, and 2011 is the bicentenary of his being expelled from the university for printing it.

… Atheists today are too often castigated as materialistic calculators whose lack of spirituality sucks their universe empty of all beauty. Remembering Shelley’s atheism gives us an opportunity to counter this stereotype and to reflect on the aesthetic of enchantment with which a non-theistic world-view can be associated. The works of Shelley join the novels, poems, songs, sculptures, paintings, architecture and plays of generations of godless artists in exposing the straw man of the desiccated rationalist for what it is, and showcasing a humanist vision of life.

More timely is a remembrance of the social and political consequences of Shelley’s argument. In The Necessity of Atheism he reminds us of the mistake that people make when they think that “belief is an act of volition, in consequence of which it may be regulated by the mind” and the way that “continuing this mistake they have attached a degree of criminality to disbelief of which in its nature it is incapable”. We cannot pillory someone for their disbelief – it is not an area in which choice operates.

Today in Britain, non-religious people are not thrown out of universities because they don’t believe in God, but in other parts of the world many suffer this fate – and worse. There are still places where it is illegal to declare yourself as non-religious on your identity papers or official records.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/02/shelley-the-necessity-of-atheism

Update: Also see a not entirely sympathetic Channel 4 News report.

Concerned primarily with questions of ethics and the good live, learned, “extravagantly erudite”, dog-loving and not at all vain. The philosopher AC Grayling, announced this morning as new President of the British Humanist Association, speaks to the Guardian about this new book, The Good Book : A Secular Bible. Is it his own God Delusion or God is Not Great, the Guardian asks?

“No, because it’s not against religion. There’s not one occurrence of the word God, or afterlife, or anything like that. It doesn’t attack religion, it’s a positive book, there’s nothing negative in it. People may think it’s against religion – but it isn’t.” But then he says, with a mischievous twinkle: “Of course, what would really help the book a lot in America is if somebody tries to shoot me.”

With any luck it shouldn’t come to that, but Grayling is almost certainly going to upset a lot of Christians, for what he has written is a secular bible. The Good Book mirrors the Bible in both form and language, and is, as its author says, “ambitious and hubristic – a distillation of the best that has been thought and said by people who’ve really experienced life, and thought about it”. Drawing on classical secular texts from east and west, Grayling has “done just what the Bible makers did with the sacred texts”, reworking them into a “great treasury of insight and consolation and inspiration and uplift and understanding in the great non-religious traditions of the world”. He has been working on his opus for several decades, and the result is an extravagantly erudite manifesto for rational thought.

In fact everything about Grayling is extravagantly erudite. We meet at his south London home, where he sits surrounded by teetering piles of books, great leaning towers of learning, and the conversation frequently detours into donnish tutorial mode. Spotting me glance at one of the volumes, which bears the title Epiphenomenalism, he launches at once into a detailed explanation of the concept – but then breaks off in delight as his dog trots in and rolls at his feet.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/03/grayling-good-book-atheism-philosophy

In an article accusing humanists of missing the point of the census religion question, the Christian Institute takes the time to explain that:

The BHA is missing the point. The census question does not seek to measure religious devotion or practice, it simply measures affiliation.

Funnily enough this point is far from “missed” by the BHA’s Census Campaign. Under the heading “What does the Census really measure?” the Census Campaign website says:

However, the high percentage of people who ticked the ‘Christian’ box, coupled with falling Church attendance and evidence from other surveys on belief and practice, suggests that the question actually measures a vague cultural affiliation…

It’s the immediately subsequent point that is actually the point of the Census Campaign, and the beef with the religion question, namely that vague cultural affiliation is:

– something that does not affect people’s needs with regard to policy.

And the problem is that sometimes the census data is used exactly as if the ‘religion’ answers were meaningful.

So we all agree that cultural affiliation is (at best) what the Census can be said to measure. Can we now all agree that obviously this will mean that Census religion findings and vague nominal affiliations won’t be used when it comes to defending social attitudes or informing policy formation or allocating funding? That’s the point.

Whenever an organisation gets a tiny bit more attention than in the average few weeks, one of the most predictable consequences is that media commentators will gather round and hit it with a few sticks for a while. This is true even of commentators who largely agree with the aims and objectives. But agreeing would be a boring story, and there’s plenty to pick over if you paraphrase your target hard enough.

Deborah Orr, writing in the Guardian, seemingly intended to write a piece about the Census Campaign, the title being “Should we tick ‘No Religion’ on the census?”. It quickly becomes a fuzzily-aimed pot shot at the British Humanist Association. This is despite agreeing with the Census Campaign, with secularism, and at one point half-heartedly even with the description of humanism given by the BHA.

Orr first falls into the hoary old trap of assuming that any vaguely collective action on passingly philosophical terrain must be a “religious” operation. Is it really so impossible to imagine that some non-religious people can use a descriptive term for the bits of their views they share, without immediately descending into dogma and group-think?

She agrees with the Census campaign, though not the tone, Orr’s tastes compel her to share. But actually she disagrees with the tone only after she paraphrases it, and finds her own paraphrasing too commanding; first she quotes the Campaign, ”We urge people who do not want to give continuing or even greater importance to unshared religions in our public life to tick ‘No Religion’ in the census“, then she translates for your convenience:

Actually, I had ticked “No Religion”. But I still don’t like the tenor of this instruction. I don’t want to stand against “believers”.

“Stand against believers!” – hardly BHA house style.

At times the criticism is incoherent. The move from the personality of Julian Assange to humanism seems rather sudden:

Despite great effort to find them, human saints are hard to come by. Julian Assange, for example. Good guy? Bad guy? Perfect guy? Flawed guy? How about a mass of contradictions? That’s where I really become uncomfortable with humanism.

Did humanism ever claim that everyone was good and consistent?

A statement of best intentions is hardly a description of how everyone is.

If Orr has a problem with humanism it’s not actually easy to lay the finger on what it is. On the one hand the BHA’s description of humanism, Orr seems disappointed to report, offers “nothing much to complain about” (apart from the “tone”), but later the very same ideas are “irreligious mumbo-jumbo”.

Ironically, when it comes down to it, her own conclusion seems a rather tribal point:

there are plenty of reasons to be relaxed about the attractions of plain secularism, as opposed to humanism.

Never mind that the scope is different, that the former concept per se need only be one principle re the state and religion, while the latter is always a term for a whole range of views about a positive, secular moral outlook. One might as well say that it’s easy to be relaxed about the attractions of a plain ol’ principle like one-person-one-vote, but the precise details of a full-blown working democracy are a bit scary and might make us sound like we’re “religious” if we bang on about it, so let’s not think about that.

Nearly two-thirds of people do not regard themselves as “religious”, a new survey carried out to coincide with the 2011 Census suggests.

The British Humanist Association (BHA), which commissioned the poll, said people often identified themselves as religious for cultural reasons.

The online poll asked 1,900 adults in England and Wales a question which is on this month’s census form.

The Office for National Statistics has defended the wording of the census.

While 61% of the poll’s respondents said they did belong to a religion, 65% of those surveyed answered “no” to the further question: “Are you religious?”

…

Among respondents who identified themselves as Christian, fewer than half said they believed Jesus Christ was a real person who died, came back to life and was the son of God.

…

The chief executive of the BHA, Andrew Copson, is running a national campaign encouraging non-religious people to state their unbelief clearly on their census forms.

He said: “This poll is further evidence for a key message of the Census Campaign – that the data produced by the census, used by local and national government as if it indicates religious belief and belonging, is in fact highly misleading.["]

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12799801

Might it be the last Census? The Guardian pits the arguments for and against. The religion question controversy is one among many issues including cost, accuracy, and controversies on security, privacy, intrusiveness, and measuring ethnicity.

This month, we will be asked to fill in the form for Britain’s 21st national census. It will also very likely be its last. At £482m, the whole operation – performed every decade since 1801 with one exception, the wartime year of 1941 – is expensive, inaccurate and inefficient.

That, at least, is the government’s view: Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, is looking for “ways of doing this which will provide better, quicker information, more frequently and cheaper”. The census, he complains, is “out of date almost before it’s done”; data held by the likes of the NHS, councils, Royal Mail, the electoral register, tax returns and even credit card firms and phone companies can do the job.

… The religion question has sparked controversy again this year. TheBritish Humanist Association, for one, objects strongly to its wording: although there is a “No religion” option alongside boxes for the major faiths, it argues that the question “What is your religion?” encourages people to answer in terms of whatever loose cultural affiliation they may feel, rather than actual belief. “The effect is to artificially increase the number of religious people in Britain, and decrease the number of non-religious,” says Andrew Copson, the BHA’s chief executive. In 2001, 77% of us said we were religious – and more than 70% of us Christian – whereas it is plain from, for example, the British Social Attitudes survey that more than 50% of us consider ourselves non-religious, and more than 60% of us never attend religious services.

“It’s important because those figures are then used to justify, for example, an increase in the number of faith schools, keeping bishops in the House of Lords and other policies that are damaging, divisive and don’t reflect the real demographics of British society,” says Copson.

The BHA is urging everyone who isn’t religious to tick the “No religion” box.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/10/census-2011-do-we-need-it

In Australia, the issue of rascals adding “Jedi” as their answer is apparently worse than in the UK. The ONS in the UK count “Jedi” answers in a non-religious category, and the BHA Census Campaign therefore advises only that other organisations reporting the data might sometimes disaggregate “Jedi” answers, reducing “non-religious” numbers. In Australia the situation is even worse however…

It gets counted as ‘Not Defined’ and is not placed in the ‘No religion’ category. This takes away from the ‘No religion’ numbers and therefore advantages the religion count. It was funny to write Jedi once, now it is a serious mistake to do so.

Link: http://censusnoreligion.org/

Meanwhile back in the UK, Spiked magazine doesn’t like the ban either, but as before it struggles to care more about freedom of speech than about telling people how shit they are. Now, you may think that Spiked is about offering “spiky” contrarian responses to randomly chosen issues, but actually it describes its mission as “waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism”. Unfortunately, the magazine manages to exhibit at least a couple of these tendencies itself in the article on the rejected Census Campaign posters. First embracing irrationalism, senior writer Tim Black informs readers that campaigning for more accurate representation for the non-religious is “anti-religious” (in the prejudiced sort of way). Then, dabbling in luddism, the author rejects the Census Campaign position (that comparable data clearly shows how the Census exaggerates religious numbers at the expense of the non-religious to the tune of millions of people) based on the magic of his own intuition, to wit: “the question can’t have skewed results that much”. Finally, the BHA’s stated desire that evidence be used in policy-making is branded “technocratic”. And apparently thereby refuted.

What happens to free speech if everyone blames everyone else for a “ban” and everyone is confused but no one is offended? A “sorry episode” for the Census Campaign sheds light on a confused situation in advertising.

The Census Campaign’s railway posters were first “advised” against by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) on the basis that the phrase “for God’s sake” might cause “widespread and serious offence”. According to the media agency working for the British Humanist Association (BHA) this apparently led to their franchise partner rail companies rejecting the ads. But even with an offer to alter the slogan to something very dry (like “If you’re not religious in this year’s census say so” as now appears on buses) the rail companies still declined to run the ads.

A pedestrian, interested but not obviously shocked and appalled, by the billboards which did make it onto the streets complete with 'offensive' slogan

The slogan was rejected on the basis that “widespread and serious offence” might be caused specifically to religious people. We had argued that ‘for God’s sake’ is a common phrase, selected simply because it chimes ironically with the subject matter and serves to underscore the urgency of the message. We argued too that the ads were clearly aimed at non-religious people (the slogan begins ‘If you’re not religious…’). But still there was this concern that religious people would be terribly offended.

Well, were they?

In reality the slogan has rarely been an issue. It had been publicised for fundraising purposes since October, after all, and even appeared on buses in Leicester and billboards already booked in London, without complaint. We have had some messages and calls from religious people critical of the overall campaign, usually owing to a misperception about our aims given by others, and in most cases we could amiably explain away any concern to their satisfaction. The slogan itself they took in their stride.

A Census Campaign poster bearing a hypothetically offensive slogan

In fact some religious fans of the campaign wrote specifically to agree with our modest aim of attaining more accurate results. Jay wrote to say, “As a Christian I fully support the campaign”, going on to argue that what it meant to be a Christian can only be “diluted” if people gave meaningless answers. Chris emailed, “I agree with your campaign to clarify the question. I myself am Christian but I agree that the questions are ‘hazy’ and can lead to misleading numbers.” Martin wrote to say, “I… firmly believe that if you are not religious (i.e. don’t regularly attend a church/mosque etc) then you should tick no religion.”

It wasn’t only the advertisers who misjudged the response of the average believer. The only religious people who did seem to disagree with the campaign were journalistic commentators and think-tanks, ironically accusing us of trying to “boost our numbers”!

So how did this “ban” happen? The situation, it turns out, is far more bizarre than a simple question of the language of one series of posters.

CAP have protested that they have no power to “ban” anything, but this seems rather coy, since their advice has two effects. First, it can be used both by advertisers or by the owners of different media spaces to reject a campaign.

Second, CAP’s advice and the media agency’s response to that advice (or lack thereof) can be used by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) itself, if they ever open a case on an advert. Now, CAP states that whether it says yea or nay to an ad, this is no guarantee that the ASA would in the fullness of time come to the same decision, but second-guessing hypothetical complaints to the ASA are what CAP base their advice on in the first place. So not only do CAP in part base their advice on whether or not the ASA  might itself uphold a complaint if any were made, but in such an eventuality the ASA would then refer back to CAP’s advice for reference! (No wonder CAP’s advice to media agencies is meant to be confidential.)

BHA Chief Exec Andrew Copson over on the Index on Censorship blog has more.

This sorry episode raises two serious questions about advertising in a free society.

Firstly, how is offence to be measured? We received emails at the office from Christians who weren’t offended by our slogan and at least two Christians I discussed the issue with on radio said the same thing. On what grounds did CAP believe that offence at our slogan would be “widespread”? And what would make that offence – taken in response to a common idiomatic phrase as thoroughly secularised as Christmas – so “serious”? And why did the owners of the railway station spaces shy away from our posters when posters from the Trinitarian Bible Society saying that anyone who doesn’t believe in god is a “fool” are a perennial part of my daily commute? Is offence only serious if people who believe in a god feel it?

The second question is, although we all know that the ASA is responsible for dealing with complaints about adverts once they are up, who is responsible for deciding whether an advert gets up in the first place?

Especially in an area as sensitive as censorship, simple principles of the rule of law would demand that any regulations should be clear, accessible and universally applied and that, in the event of a decision being made, it is clear who has made it, why they have, and how it can be appealed. In our situation, this was all impossible. Both parties – CAP and the owners of the advertising space – were able to place responsibility for the censorship of the adverts on the other.

If a committee’s advice is used both by advertisers deciding whether to take ads and by the Advertising Standards Authority in judging whether ads are acceptable, then exactly who is “banning” what? We may never know. But it seems clear that religious observers are largely taking the slogan in their stride, even perplexed by the ban, and as the subsequent media coverage shows, institutional trepidation and a habit of presuming to know the sensitivities of others is likely to backfire.

Bob Churchill is Head of Membership and Promotion at the British Humanist Association.

Penman of Penman and Sommerlad investigates a “victory for religious lobbyists, a defeat for freedom of speech”.

I have written here and here about how I’m not a fan of state faith schools because they devide society and I don’t want children indoctrinated – especially not at the taxpayer’s expense.

You may have heard that this year’s census will include a question asking about your religion. Rather than just ignoring this question, should you be in the vast majority who are not “of faith”, the British Humanist Association is urging you to tick the “no religion” box, otherwise the skewed data will be used to justify more taxpayer’s money being spent on faith schools.

Trouble is, posters by the Association carrying the slogan “If you’re not religious, for God’s sake say so” have been banned from appearing at train stations. Apparently the phrase “for God’s sake” could cause offence, according to the companies that own the advertising space.

“This censorship of a legitimate advert is frustrating and ridiculous,” says the Association’s chief executive Andrew Copson.

The Christian Institute, as you might expect, is delighted by this “major setback” for the Humanists.

This is from its online report: “In its attempt to have British citizens declare themselves non-religious, the BHA has a mountain to climb.

“According to the last census, for every one atheist/humanist in England and Wales there were 2,037 people who identified themselves as Christian.”

If Britain really is as Christian as the Institute suggests, it does make you wonder why churches are so empty (expect ones next to successful state faith schools which can use their control over admissions to get non-believers through their doors).

Continues, with an update from the Humanist Society of Scotland: http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2011/03/religious-attack-on-british-hu.html

The Freethinker isn’t impressed with the ban, but isn’t entirely disheartened either…

AN idiotic decision by companies owning advertising space in railway stations to ban British Humanist Association census campaign posters has caused puzzlement and outrage among secularists.

… Personally, I am rather pleased about the ban, because it has served to further publicise the very real importance of getting the figures right this time around.

The BHA points out here that there are real, practical problems with the use of skewed data.

Both central and local government use such data in resource allocation and for targeting equality initiatives. And the figure stating that around 72 percent of the population are ‘Christian’ has been used in a variety of ways, such as to justify the continuing presence of Bishops in the House of Lords, to justify the state-funding of faith schools (and their expansion), to justify and increase religious broadcasting and to exclude the voices of humanists in Parliament and elsewhere. The question is not fit for the purposes for which it was included, for the first time, in 2001.

Link: http://freethinker.co.uk/2011/03/06/atheists-must-stand-up-and-be-counted/

And BHA Chief Exec Andrew Copson appeared on Five Live in an excellent discussion on Saturday night. Listen again at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00z62yz/Stephen_Nolan_05_03_2011/

Sometimes what it takes to get a message out is someone else trying to prevent it!

BBC Census Campaign story

Today was the day the media woke up to the Census Campaign. They were prompted by news that train companies (as franchise partners of a media agency) had declined to host ads featuring the Census Campaign slogan ‘If you’re not religious for God’s sake say so’. This followed advice from the Committee of Advertising Practice that the ads could cause offence of a religious nature. But the ensuing coverage isn’t all about the “banned” ads – it’s got people talking about the issues as well. Witness the BBC:

The campaign slogan was changed to drop the words “for God’s sake” after advice from advertising regulators.

The secular groups want people who are not religious to tick the box saying “No religion” on the census.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has unveiled a series of posters on buses and billboards across the country.

Using the slogan “Not religious? In this year’s census, say so”, they hope to persuade people to think carefully about which option to tick on the census form, which is being delivered to every household in the country this month.

The question about religious belief allows respondents to choose from several possible answers, including “No religion”, “Christian”, or “Hindu”

But BHA chief executive Andrew Copson believes the wording of the question in the last census resulted in 72% of people being classed as Christians – a figure which is much higher than other surveys.

“Instead of asking, ‘Do you have a religion and if so, what is it?’, the question asks ‘What is your religion?’, a closed question that funnels people into giving a religious response, even if they don’t go to a church or a mosque, even if they don’t believe in God.”

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12637201

The Guardian similarly quote Andrew Copson, this time on the ban itself, before going on to explain the campaign in the banned posters’ own terms:

The posters ask those who are not religious to tick the “no religion” box when they fill in forms for the 2011 census.

“We used to tick ‘Christian’ but we’re not really religious. We’ll tick ‘No Religion’ this time. We’re sick of hearing politicians say this is a religious country and giving millions to religious organisations and the pope’s state visit. Money like that should go where it is needed,” says one of the banned posters.

…

The Humanist Association says that those who profess to have no religion rose from 31% in 1983 to 51% in 2009 and believes that many who ticked “Christian” in the 2001 census did so for cultural rather than religious reasons.

The organisation argues that unless this year’s census gives a more accurate picture of the non-religious population, the data will be used to justify increased state-funding for faith schools and other religious organisations.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/04/humanist-census-posters

Some more friendly articles at New Statesman (“the association is trying to persuade non-believers to declare themselves as such on the census form, so it will be a more accurate representation of the religious/non-religious make-up of the country. It’s an important point”), at New Humanist (“The definition of “offensive” appears to have widened significantly”!); and a rare appearance from the official Atheist Bus blog (“Now, if a commercial company put out an ad saying “For God’s sake buy our brand of detergent you idiots” maybe there’d be a point that the advertisement was being rude and aggressive toward everyone reading it. But the ironic use of a common phrase [for God's sake] simply to highlight the importance of the message is hardly “offensive”.”) There’s also a less friendly response from Christian thinktank Theos who claim obscurely that the ads are “patronising” because “the British people are quite capable of judging for themselves what box they should tick” — as if Theos didn’t know a thing or two about how easy it is to distort reality with badly constructed and deceptively interpreted surveys.

(Meow.)

Meanwhile, the Census Campaign blog features some supporters’ letters in local press and has a bunch of links and mentions of today’s media appearances and a few more upcoming in the next few days.

Those who take the time to investigate the census results see clearly that they are ridiculous. If we believed them, we would believe that there are more Jedis in England and Wales than Jews, Buddhists or Sikhs. We would believe – contrary to government research that showed 65% of 12- to 18-year-olds were not religious – that in fact 62% of them (along with 58% of under-4-year-olds) were Christian.

The reasons why the data from the 2001 census was so aberrant are simple and well known. They mostly have to do with the fact that the question is a closed and leading one: “What is your religion?” This question is demonstrated to produce a much higher number of “religious” responses than non-presumptuous questions such as: “Do you have a religion?” and much higher than questions that ask about belief or practice. Faced with the closed and leading census question, people who do not believe in God, and who, if asked: “Are you religious?” would say “No”, nonetheless tick “Christian” or “Sikh” or whatever.

Perhaps this would be tolerable if the census data on religion was accepted as measuring nothing more than a weak form of cultural affiliation rather than as a proxy for strong religious belief, and only used with this in mind. But the results from the forthcoming census will not just give us an interesting overview of the demographic of England and Wales for academics to critique when the results are released and for our descendants to pick over in future centuries. They will constitute a basis for policymaking over the coming years.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/feb/28/census-religion-question

Andrew Copson is Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association which is running The Census Campaign, raising awareness on the misuses of census data and encouraging non-religious people to answer simply: “No religion”.

Monday’s Dispatches programme on Channel 4 is, for some reason, still not available to view online on the usual Dispatches page at the time of writing. The documentary featured scenes filmed undercover appearing to depict teachers and other adults (sometimes visiting) in Islamic independent schools  hitting children and delivering hateful messages about non-Muslims, encouraging the children to shun non-Muslims and even Muslims deemed not Muslim enough.

The BHA responded by pointing out that the problems in the schools reflect wider concerns and stand to be replicated in new ‘free schools’. New education campaigns officer, Jenny Pennington, commented, ’It is very worrying that a school that has been given a clean bill of health in this area from inspectors can teach young children abhorrent, intolerant views about people of other religions and non-religious beliefs. The evidence presented by the documentary is especially concerning at a time when the Government is moving to give state funded schools much greater autonomy over their curriculum whilst actually proposing to reduce the scope of Ofsted inspections.’

The usual anonymous idiots have threatened to fire-bomb the building (as if the bricks and mortar are to blame, and as if that’s going to solve anything). One of the schools will complain to Ofcom claiming that the footage was selectively chosen and/or out of context. A man shown physically striking children at the school has already been arrested.

Police have arrested a man concerning alleged assaults on children at a mosque after viewing a Channel 4 documentary screened on Monday.

Dispatches, Lessons in Hate and Violence, secretly filmed a man apparently hitting and kicking children during Qu’ran lessons at a school in the Markazi Jamia mosque at Keighley, West Yorkshire.

An Islamic school in Birmingham in the same documentary, where a preacher was filmed making offensive remarks about non-Muslims, said it would close early for half-term, amid fears pupils could be the target of far-right groups.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/feb/14/mosque-schools-arrest-channel-4

BBC Radio 4′s Beyond Belief this week featured British Humanist Association Chief Exec Andrew Copson. The programme was a ‘faith’ schools-themed edition. Andrew explained that admissions and employment policies do indeed discriminate,  that many schools with religious character do not follow parts of the curriculum, that (not necessarily deliberate) socio-economic segregation is inflated by ‘faith’ schools, and that with ethnic segregation at least implicit in much of the division occurring in ‘faith’ schools they are “storing up social problems for the future”.

You can listen again: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006s6p6

Read more on BHA campaigns on religion and schools.

AHS President Richy Thompson checks in to explain what’s going on with the students over the next two months – Non-Prophet Week, the AHS Convention and five Reason Weeks!

Non-Prophet Week is currently under way

At the moment, there’s a crazy amount going on with the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (AHS). This week (7th-13th February) is Non-Prophet Week, where our member societies are raising money for charity. About 20 are taking part, putting on over 50 events, and after the first three days we’ve raised about £1,400. We hope this will go some small way to breaking the narrative that the non-religious do less for charity – because the evidence is that it simply isn’t true. And at the same time, we’re doing something good and having a lot of fun

The AHS Convention is 12th-13th March

Then, on 12th-13th March, we’re holding our third annual convention, in central London. Saturday 12th is hosted jointly with South Place Ethical Society and is open to everybody – students and non-students – and features talks from A C Grayling, Johann Hari, BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson, Keith Porteous Wood and All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group Chair Lord Warner. There are also performances from Robin Ince and the BHA Choir. And the day will start with the non-religious organisations fair, featuring stands from the national organisations that campaign for atheist, Humanist, secular and skeptical causes. The fair is a chance to find out more about these organisations.

Sunday 13th is focussed on student committees, and those interested in getting a student society going. We’ve got training workshops, speeches from members, society prizes, and are launching our own campaigns initiative. All in all, a busy two days then! You can find out more about the whole weekend on the AHS website, and buy tickets (just £3 for students, BHA members and others, £6 for everyone else) from the BHA website.

But today I’m mainly going to talk about something happening in between these two events. Every year, many of our societies hold Reason Weeks. This February, four of them are doing so – and a fifth is doing likewise in March.

To explain the concept: A Reason Week, as they are generally (but far from always) called, is an intense week of events which seeks to expose the type of discussion and debate that atheist, Humanist and secular student societies offer to a wider audience than usual, and raise the profile of the issues involved. The week-long series of events tend to involve a combination of talks, debates, panel discussions, workshops, performances and film showings. Events are typically free of charge and open to the public – students and non-students alike. A bit like Christian Union Mission Weeks, only without the proselytising!

Durham Reason Week 2011

The AHS has a guide on how to run a successful Reason Week.

Durham Reason Week runs from the 12th to the 18th February and is Durham University Humanist and Secularist Society’s second Reason Week. It features speakers like A C Grayling, Mike Lake and Gerard Phillips, and a debate held jointly with Durham Union Society. The dates fit nicely such that the week features a Darwin Day event on the 12th and a Non-Prophet Week event in the 13th!

Bristol Thought Week 2011

Bristol Thought Week is the first Reason Week to be held by University of Bristol Atheist, Agnostic and Secular Society, and runs from the 14th to the 18th. Speakers include Peter Atkins, Andrew Pyle and Dennis Penaluna. Bristol also have a number of pub discussions, a screening and a slightly late Non-Prophet Week tie-in.

Oxford Think Week 2011

Oxford Think Week, organised by Oxford Atheists, Secularists and Humanists, together with a number of town groups, is taking place for the second year, from 21st to 27th February. The list of speakers is enormous – Richard Dawkins and A C Grayling are doing a joint event, as are Peter Atkins and Stephen Law, Raymond Tallis and David Papineau, and Evan Harris and BHA Head of Public Affairs Naomi Phillips. The first event will be a panel discussion, featuring Ronan McCrae a number of Parliamentarians – details to be announced. There’s also Mary Warnock, Paula Kirby, Colin Blakemore, Keith Porteous Wood, Samantha Stein and of course, the BHA Choir.

Southampton Atheist Society are hosting Reason Week 2011

Then there’s Southampton Reason Week, Southampton Atheist Society’s third Reason Week, which also looks amazing. Simon Singh and Eric Kaufmann are on the Friday, and the Pod Delusion are doing a live show on the Saturday. There’s also Anne Marie Waters, David Bothwell, Andrew Pyle, and Robert Stovold debating Keith Fox.

Finally, Leeds Reason Week – Leeds Atheist Society’s fifth – is taking place from 8th to 11th March. As the week is a bit further away, details are yet to be announced, but Leeds are the pioneers of the format, one year holding a staggering 33 events! – so it’s bound to be amazing.

AHS President Richy Thompson

On a personal note, I’m looking forward to travelling to all these weeks. I’m doing talks as part of Durham and Bristol’s weeks. I’m taking part in the Pod Delusion live recording at Southampton. And Oxford is where I went to Uni – I coordinated the first Think Week last year – so I’m planning to spend most of the week there again this year.

But if you’re reading this, and are within reasonable distance of one of these five cities (or even at University there!), be sure to come on down and check out what’s going on – you’ll definitely find some very enjoyable events!

Richy Thompson is the third and current President of the AHS.

An evangelical church, which intends to teach creationism as part of its science curriculum, has submitted a proposal to open a free school in Nottinghamshire.

The Everyday Champions Church in Newark handed its plans to open a 625-pupil secondary school in the area to the Department for Education last week.

… Pastor Gareth Morgan, the church leader and the driving force behind the free school bid, confirmed that creationism would be taught across the curriculum, should the school be given the green light.

… According to the British Humanist Association (BHA), seven out of 10 free school applications have a faith-based ethos.

BHA head of public affairs Naomi Phillips said schools such as the Everyday Champions Academy reaffirmed the association’s concerns over free schools.

“This type of school holds up our fear from when Michael Gove first put forward his proposals – that they would be schools with faith-based and sometimes extreme views that would largely be applying to take over the running of our state-funded schools,” Ms Phillips said.

“This is despite Michael Gove saying that the Government would protect against creationists and other extreme religions … It’s clear there are no such protections in place.”

Full story: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6069260

The British Humanist Association has consistently opposed state-funded ‘faith’ schools for many years.

Musical comedy act and all-round good guy Tim Minchin is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association, as he proudly name-drops in his latest show.

Praise for his musicianship seems to please him more than compliments about his wit. He goes on at length about the hi-tech nature of the show: the dynamic range and levels of amplification. The fact that each musician wears an “in-ear foldback monitor”. Throw in on-stage asides about his honorary membership of the British Humanist Society [Association!]; the fact that he quotes Mark Twain (and calls him by his real name, Samuel Langhorne Clemens); and his predilection for books by atheist intellectuals including Richard Dawkins — oh, and his love of the Beatles, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones — and there we have it. A real-life rock ‘n’ roll nerd.

“I am a rationalist-empiricist-humanist-atheist-sceptic,” he says of this art-life crossover. “And a lover of rock,” he adds with a sniff.

…

The laughter of the crowd at the O2 ripples around the stadium in waves. It is only when Minchin stops and places a copy of the Koran on top of his baby grand piano that things turn uncomfortably tense. “Why are 10,000 people nervous?” he inquires impishly. “Why is that book any different to Harry Potter?” he continues, fishing out a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to pin-drop silence. It’s a nail-biting moment, and one that encapsulates Minchin’s need to provoke thought. To set the rational against the reactionary.

“What makes something sacred is the cumulative belief it is sacred,” he says after more musing, defusing the tension (“Star Wars!” yells a fan). “That is your right — but don’t tell us what we can’t criticise, or what language to use, or what cartoons we’re allowed to draw.”

It isn’t a hugely funny sequence, but it is a big and clever one. When I tell Minchin what a punch it packed, his pale forehead furrows. “Do you think it’s too much?” he frets. “I don’t want some idiot seeing it on YouTube and you know . . .” He pauses, his marmalade hair, dry from constant teasing, sticking out at right angles. “I treat the Koran with respect but I want people to be thinking . . . about the nature of what we hold sacred before I go straight into the Pope Song. There is nothing more empowering than holding an audience before a joke breaks,” he says. “This is why comedians do what they do.”

If you missed Tim Minchin at the O2 this year you may have to be be in Melbourne to catch his next gig!

Full interview and review: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/tim-minchin-on-a-roll/story-e6frg8n6-1225994154054

Last night’s Moral Maze on BBC Radio 4, examines the B&B gay rights case and asks:

Is the application of the Human Rights Act being turned in to a political ideology and being used to persecute a group – the religious – that is now a minority in our society? Should religious beliefs have any privileged status in a democratic society? How do we define the boundaries of liberty? Is the state, through the legal system, defending minorities or encroaching in to the very core of our personal freedoms and telling us what to believe?

Michael Buerk chairs with Michael Portillo, Claire Fox, Matthew Taylor and Clifford Longley on the panel. The guests include Richard Norman, Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Kent, Vice-President of the British Humanist Association, and a member of the BHA’s Humanist Philosophers group.

Listen again: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00xw1t9

A report The Co-operative Funeralcare out today looks at funeral practices in the UK, and finds that the way we mark the death of loved ones is increasingly celebratory and personal. It’s a space that humanist funerals have been occupying for some time.

[The report] The Ways We Say Goodbye is the first study of its kind to draw information from the arrangements being made at funeral homes across the UK as well as from the public. The Co-operative Funeralcare, the UK’s largest funeral provider responsible for 100,000 funerals each year, conducted the research across its network of over 850 funeral homes.

… Funeral Directors at The Co-operative Funeralcare report a significant shift-change in funeral preferences in the last five years; requests have included pink Cadillacs, a milk-float cortege, woodland burials and live jazz at the graveside.  Mourners are watching firework displays, wearing bright colours, blowing bubbles and releasing balloons during funeral events.

These findings are backed by a new independent ICM survey, commissioned by The Co-operative Funeralcare, of 2,000 British adults. It revealed that more than half of the population (54%) would prefer their send-off to be a celebration of life than a simple church service with hymns, and almost half of the population (48%) are keen for their funeral to reflect their favourite, hobby, colour, football team or music.

However, while funerals are becoming more contemporary, the subject remains taboo, as 55 per cent of people admit to never having discussed their wishes for their own funeral with friends and family.

Funerals Without God published by the BHA

Humanist funerals should probably be a subset of ‘contemporary’ funerals, but the report separates them out – “67% traditional funerals, 21% contemporary, 12% humanist” – perhaps recognising the significance of the explicitly ‘humanist’ approach. Even in religious funerals there is often non-religious content, with only 36% of funerals in total having “purely religious music” and nearly half of all funerals (49%) best described as “a celebration of life” which must include some religious services.

Link: http://www.co-operative.coop/funeralcare/about-us/News/First-ever-report-into-UK-funeral-customs-highlights-major-change/

The British Humanist Association describes the humanist funeral or memorial as recognising “no ‘after-life’, but instead uniquely and affectionately celebrates the life of the person who has died… Celebrants in the BHA’s Humanist Ceremonies™ network accredited to conduct funerals are friendly, trained and experienced. They will usually meet with the family or friends who are most closely connected with the person who has died. They will want to learn as much about the person as possible, so that the funeral or memorial tribute justly captures the life and personality of that person. Whatever the circumstances of the person’s life and death, the celebrant is there to be understanding and compassionate, not to moralise, nor to judge.”