Sheffield Christian Free School are hoping to set up a creationist Free School in 2013, as are the previously rejected Everyday Champions Church. And yet, the Government was clear in its rejection of the latter. Richy Thompson asks, why do these groups keep applying?

Fairy DNA by kyz

Richy Thompson is the BHA’s Education Campaigner. The BHA’s e-petition, Teach evolution, not creationism!, is now approaching 15,000 signatures. If you’re a UK resident, please sign, and urge all your friends, family and colleagues to do likewise.

Last week we broke the news that a group applying to open a Free School, Sheffield Christian Free School, intends to teach creationism throughout the curriculum. The group behind the bid, Sheffield Christian Family Schools Ltd, already runs two private schools in Sheffield, including the Bethany School. The group has said that it is ‘unashamedly creationist’.

We have been leading the way in countering creationism in the UK. For example, in September we coordinated the new campaign, Teach evolution, not creationism! This garnered support from big names such as Sir David Attenborough, BHA Vice President Richard Dawkins and Revd Prof Michael Reiss. It was also supported by a number of other organisations, such as the British Science Association, Association for Science Education, Campaign for Science & Engineering and Ekklesia.

The story about the Sheffield school has been picked up by a number of places. It was in Friday’s TES, will be in the Guardian next week, and also led to me debating Ken Walze, head of Bethany School, on BBC Radio Sheffield. You can listen to the full debate, or read a transcript, on the BHA’s website.

Although the government has told us that it does not support creationist schools and even recently rejected Everyday Champions Church’s bid solely for that reason, it has failed to take action on any of the recommendations of the Teach evolution, not creationism! campaign which would prevent many future problems. In fact, Everyday Champions Church has said it intends to bid again. Representatives are meeting with civil servants at the Department for Education today in an attempt to get the decision overturned, and their local MP, Patrick Mercer, is meeting with Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove next Monday to attempt the same thing.

Sheffield Christian Free School are also undeterred. In the interview, referring to the government’s opposition to creationist Free Schools, I asked, ‘I wonder if Ken can explain how he hopes to get past this barrier?’ Ken explained that,

‘We’re just offering the model that we’ve got. As I said, we do tick a lot of the boxes about how Free Schools can be set up. We do, obviously, very clearly have creation as part of our curriculum… We’re hoping that Michael Gove, as he begins to investigate this a little bit further, will start to see that we’re providing very good schools… There’s nothing to fear from creationism, it’s a valid part of our society. Millions have a faith, and believe the Christian story and way of life. It’s something I’m hoping Michael Gove – as he gets more and more applications from schools like ours – will begin to investigate a bit further.’

In other words, they’re hoping that Gove will change his mind.

The only way Gove can send the right message to these groups, and stop these and others, like Creation Ministries International, from teaching creationism as science in schools, is to make statutory and enforceable the government guidance that its portrayal as science is unacceptable.

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.

Naomi Phillips, Head of Public Affairs at the British Humanist Association, explains some of the machinations which have led to the flawed question on religion cropping up again in the next year’s census, and how The Census Campaign is working for better representation of the non-religious.

Despite the ONS itself admitting that the Census question on religion, ‘What is your religion?’, is a leading question designed to capture the weakest possible religious affiliation (making it a ‘reasonable proxy’ for an ethnicity question), it still recommended the question’s inclusion in 2011. Yet it is quite unfit for uses such as resource allocation and the monitoring of discrimination.

Although it might seem strange, part of the reason for using a question that measures the weakest possible affiliation (including a cultural connection) was in order to ‘capture’ the large proportion of non-religious people who may consider that they are Jewish or Sikh by ethnicity (as seen in law since the Race Relations Act) but not by religion.

Not ‘losing’ the secular Jewish and Sikh populations in statistics might help government to meet its duties in terms of monitoring race equality. But ‘losing’ millions of non-religious people by encouraging them to tick the ‘Christian’ box (even if they have never been to a church or don’t believe in a god) has serious consequences, not least for equality issues.

Moreover, it is the greatly inflated figure for ‘Christian’ that has a particularly negative impact for non-religious people, as it is the figure that is most influential and most frequently cited by those seeking to retain privileges, such as reserved seats for Church of England bishops in the House of Lords, an increase in Christian ‘faith’ schools and a privileged dialogue between government and the churches.

Under the banner, ‘If you’re not religious, for God’s sake say so!’, the Census Campaign seeks to raise awareness of the dangers and real damage that can be done by the non-religious population not being accurately recorded by the Census.

Full article: http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/if-youre-not-religious-for-gods-sake-say-so/

The Census Campaign blog rounds up some responses to the campaign from the blogosphere.

Archbishop Cranmer undermines the campaign with his own unique brand of reasoning. We don’t need to worry about non-religious representation in the census, he says, because everyone is religious. The Census Campaign is, he says, just an expression of our own religion, which is to go around “evangelising” non-religious people, our dogma being that they should tick “No religion”. We are “like any other religion.” (But also we are atheists and irreligious and therefore wrong about everything.)

Cranmer then briefly exaggerates the claims of the Census Campaign: the religion data is used “constantly” to bolster religious agenda (well, we didn’t say “constantly“). And the handful of well-publicised court cases in which Christians have fought to discriminate against others, enthusiastically backed by a cadre of Christian lawyers, are themselves exaggerated to summon a distorted vision of persecution:

We have just been through a decade of some of the most illiberal, anti-Christian legislation in centuries. Christian beliefs on marriage, conscience and worship were subsumed to an aggressive secularism under the guise of ‘equality’. There were numerous dismissals of practising Christians from employment for reasons that are quite unacceptable in a civilised, liberal democracy.

Are Christians banned from getting married according to their Christian beliefs on marriage? No. But gay people can’t get married, and humanists can’t do it legally on their own terms. Can Christians worship as they please, identify as they please? Yes. But apparently our reminding non-religious people to identify as non-religious in a government survey when asked that specific question, is beyond the pale!

Full article: http://census-campaign.org.uk/2010/10/census-campaign-in-the-blogosophere/

The last census cut the number of non-religious people in half. It looks set to happen again this coming March, unless our campaign can raise a lot of public awareness, says Bob Churchill.

A mockup of the Census Campaign slogan on billboard

“What hat do you wear?”

Thinking about the last time you wore a hat, or the hat you wear in winter on very cold days, you may be able to find an answer to this question. But such an answer won’t tell us if you wear a hat regularly, or if you think of yourself as a hat-wearer, let alone if wearing a hat is important to you. If someone answers this question, “Well, I guess I wear a deer-stalker”, is it really right to call that person “a hat-wearer”?

There are ways we could further reduce the information contained in your answer, if we wanted to. Even if we must include a “No hat” option, we could still  place the question in the middle of a number of other questions all about clothes that you do wear (“What do you wear on your legs?”; “Do you wear t-shirts, shirts, blouses…?”) encouraging you to think of the hat question as one that you probably should give an answer to. We could also restrict the give-away language you might include in a written answer (such as “Well, I don’t really wear hats, but when I do…”) by providing a series of pre-defined tick boxes and by only including a very small space in which to write an alternative.

This in effect is exactly what the Census does in its question on religion.

The question to be included in the 2011 Census, and the answer you should give if you are non-religious

Above is the question as it will appear in the 2011 Census. It is flawed in the exact same way as the question was flawed in 2001.

A closed question which assumes that respondents would have a religion undoubtedly inflates the number of respondents ticking a religious box, in particular ‘Christian’, and reduced the number of those ticking ‘none’. The figures were probably also distorted by the fact that the question appeared immediately after a series of questions on ethnicity and language, which may well have encouraged people to respond more on the basis of culture than actual beliefs, practice, or any real personal affiliation with religion.

Beliefs and viewpoints are not easy to measure and any statistician faced with questions that are hard to frame may have to reduce things down (“how greatly do you believe?”; “do you practice?”;  ”is it actually important to you?”; “do you just say you believe because you always have?”). However, what is certain is that the single, leading question on religion in the UK census produces results which are wide off the mark compared to all other reputable data in recent years.

A closed, leading question

As a result of all this, the 2001 census gave a far higher figure than all other surveys for the answer ‘Christian’. The ‘Christian’ box was selected by 71.74% of respondents in England and 71.90% in Wales. The Scottish figure, where respondents were asked first about what religion they were brought up in, and only then what religion they currently had, showed significantly fewer respondents ticking ‘Christian’: 65.08%, in spite of far higher figures for Church attendance in Scotland.  The figures for those answering “No religion” were: England 14.6%, Wales 18.63% and Scotland 27.55%.

(How many people in England would really say that less than three in every twenty friends they have is non-religious, and that conversely more than three quarters of their friends actively adhere to one religion or another. The Archbishop of Canterbury himself probably couldn’t make such a claim for his social network. Given that this data is used as if it measured some important kind of religious affiliation, it doesn’t even pass the most basic test of reasonably correlating to reality.)

The 26th Social Attitudes Survey, on the other hand, found that the “non-religious” had risen from 31% to 43% between 1983 and 2008. A recent ICM poll for the Guardianreturned even high figures, with around 63% of people saying they are not religious, ccompared to 33% that do. For a comprehensive look at various aspects of religion and belief in the UK, see Religion and belief: some surveys and statistics, put together my wonderful colleagues at the BHA.

In other words, the distorted figures from the Census approximately cut the number of non-religious people in half.

This pattern is set to be repeated in the 2011 census, because the same single, flawed question on religion will be used again. The 2011 Census will be held on the 27th March with forms being sent to more than 25 million households.

Unfortunately, the Office of National Statistics has decided to reuse this same flawed question in the 2011 census. See Our campaign so far.

Why it even matters

My colleagues in Public Affairs at the BHA worked with the Office of National Statistics (ONS) to try and improve the question for the 2011 Census. However, despite agreeing to the testing of alternative questions, and admitting that the existing question was flawed, the ONS took the decision to keep the same inadequate question for the 2011 Census. See Our campaign so far.

The data obtained by the census is used by government for policy making, service planning and funding allocation. The disproportionate number of individuals labelled as religious is used to defend a number of policy decisions, from the right of some Church of England Bishops to remain in the House of Lords to the existence and expansion of state-funded ‘faith’ schools.

Importantly, there have been suggestions this may be the last decennial census compiled, with other forms of data collection currently being explored. If 2011 does witness the final census taken, the resulting statistics on religion and belief may be quoted long into the future. See Why does it matter.

The Census Campaign

The Census question is now set, despite being known to return data which is completely unusable for any responsible purpose – and worse still is used anyway, to bolster the institutional position of religion in the UK.

The BHA’s new Census Campaign has three aims.

The Census Campaign wants non-religious people to tick “No religion” in the 2011 Census.

We want people to know why the question on religion is flawed and why so many non-religious people didn’t tick “None” in the 2001 Census.

We want people to know that real decisions on resource allocation and policy are based on Census data and if it’s wrong then we all stand to lose out.

You can read more about the campaign at census-campaign.org.uk and donate at justgiving.com/census . Also see Facebook and Twitter.

Ask a silly question…

One question which is coming in regularly to the BHA right now is about other ways of protesting against the Census question on religion. Given that the data is so bad, and given that the case for having a question on religion at all is hardly watertight (it was positively unlawful to include the question before 2001!), it is not prima facie obvious that you should even answer the question. Or, perhaps thinking “Ask a silly question, get a silly answer” we’d rather answer “Jedi” or “Pastafarian” as a kind of protest. The BHA Public Affairs team considered these options, however The Census Campaign’s recommendation is that non-religious people are best served by answering the question, and in particular by ticking “No religion” as opposed to answering “Jedi” or similar. It’s not as fun, but a plain “No religion” is less likely to be omitted summaries about how people answered. Yes, the data shouldn’t really be used at all because it’s not fit for (any) purpose, but it was used after the 2001 census and it may be used again, so giving an accurate answer is important. Meanwhile the Census Campaign will have the dual effect of not only encouraging more straight forward “No religion” answers, but of raising awareness about how flawed the question is, in the hope that the data will become an unusable by politicians in the near future, as it will be by historians in the further future.

Bob Churchill studied philosophy at the University of Warwick and Queens University, Canada, and is Head of Membership at the British Humanist Association, which is running The Census Campaign. @bobchurchill

Jean Davies tells us why Ludovic Kennedy, the author and journalist, is her Humanist Hero.

Ludovic Kennedy

My humanist hero is Ludovic Kennedy. I’ll never forget the opening words of his Memorial Meeting in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford last November. “We are here to celebrate the life of a great man. Ludovic was a four-square atheist.” The speaker was one of the most senior Church of England dignitaries on the staff of the Cathedral.

Ludo’s book All in the Mind – a Farewell to God (1999) is every bit as compelling as The God Delusion in revealing the absurdity of postulating the existence of God on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. In this book Ludovic explores the idea that it is time to see God as just a man made creation that is there just to satisfy needs that we have. The book is also a personal account of Kennedy’s thought processes as he became less involved with the Church and became an atheist.

Kennedy played major role in the abolition of capital punishment. One of the most influential ways that he did this was through his book 10 Rillington Place.  This book was about the life of Timothy Evans. His wife and daughter, on moving to the eponymous address, were murdered and Evans was arrested and hung. In 10 Rillington Place Kennedy gives evidence that it was not Evans who was the murderer but the landlord. With the help of this book, Evans was granted a posthumous pardon from the Queen in 1966. He once told me that this book was the only one of his books that had never been out of print.

Ludovic spent years looking into miscarriages of justice. He also presented the current affairs programme Panorama for several years and used his broadcasting platform to highlight the campaign against capital punishment.

After success with abolishing capital punishment, years later he concentrated on campaingning for reform of the law on assisted dying. Kennedy was a great contributer to the Voluntary Euthanasia Society as a co-founder and former chair. He attended most Committee meetings, even though he had no vote. His strong views on legalising euthanasia led him to resign from the Liberal Democrat party after Charles Kennedy would not take a pro-euthanasia stance.

Ludovic Kennedy died last year. See the obituary from the BHA.

This post is part of a series written by members, friends and Distinguished Supporters of the British Humanist Association about their own “humanist heroes”.

You can find out more at www.humanism.org.uk/humanism/humanist-tradition/heroes

Jean has been a BHA member for many years and spoken at national and international Humanist conferences. Jean has been a humanist representative on her local SACRE for a number of years.

A new campaign by disability rights activists to limit the right to die launches at Westminster on Thursday.

The campaign – called Not Dead Yet UK Resistance – will be asking MPs to sign a charter in support of its aims.

It says that disabled and terminally ill people should enjoy the same legal protection as everyone else.

Those in favour of assisted suicide argue that opposing assisted suicide will condemn terminally-ill people to suffer needlessly.

The Not Dead Yet UK’s charter includes a commitment to oppose any changes to existing laws which state that assisting a patient to commit suicide is illegal.

The campaigners claim that the prevailing view is that disabled people’s lives are not worth living, and that this contradicts the perception that many disabled people have of themselves.

Their charter also states that disabled and terminally-ill people should have access to the health and social care that they need.

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8718581.stm

The BHA campaigns for the legalisation of assisted dying for the terminally ill.

Last week the British Humanist Association outlined the need for constitutional change, removing the Bishops from the House of Lords, for epolitix.com.

We want a secular state. By this we mean a state where public institutions are separate from religious institutions and treat all citizens impartially regardless of their religious or nonreligious beliefs.

This would include, for example, a separation of church and state so that the Head of State was not also Head of the Church of England and an end to Bishops sitting as of right in the House of Lords.

We want a government that shares our ideal of an open society.

The UK is the only democratic country to give seats in its legislature to religious representatives as of right.

We want a reformed chamber so that Bishops no longer sit as of right in the House of Lords.

The presence of the Church of England in the House of Lords entrenches a privileged position for one particular branch of one particular religion that cannot be justified in today’s society, which is not only multi-faith but increasingly non-religious.

http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/parliament-an-end-to-bishops-sitting-in-the-house-of-lords/

The British Humanist Association campaigns on a range of ethical and policy issues.

A leading campaigner for reform of the law on assisted dying, Dr Michael Irwin, is currently on bail after taking a man to a euthanasia clinic in Switzerland. He has demanded to be charged.

Dr Michael Irwin said he had taken three people to Dignitas

Dr Michael Irwin, 79, of Surrey, was arrested last year after Raymond Cutkelvin, of London, died at Dignitas.

The retired GP has been answering bail every six weeks and has now written to Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC asking for a decision.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it was reviewing the evidence.

In a statement, a CPS spokesman said: “We are reviewing a file of evidence concerning the involvement of a number of individuals, including Dr Irwin, in the death of Raymond Cutkelvin.

“We will decide if any charges should be authorised in due course.”

Dr Irwin, a former chairman of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, now called Dignity in Dying, said he had taken three terminally-ill people to Dignitas in the past four years.

He said the last person he accompanied to the organisation in Zurich was Mr Cutkelvin, in February 2007, who had advanced cancer of the pancreas.

For the full article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8648703.stm

Dr Michael Irwin was medical director of the United Nations in New York before he retired, and is a long-time campaigner for voluntary euthanasia. He has helped several of his terminally ill patients to die by offering fatal quantities of drugs to ease their suffering.  He is a distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association. The BHA campaigns for the legalisation of assisted dying for the terminally ill.

As part of a series focusing on election issues, ePolitix features BHA Head of Public Affairs, Naomi Phillips, on ending religious privilege in education.

The British Humanist Association campaigns for an inclusive education system, where students and staff are not discriminated against because of their religion or belief, and where children are provided with a balanced and objective education that prepares them for life in a pluralistic society. This is what we want and what we believe the law should ensure, but unfortunately in many schools this is not the case.

Around a third of the state schools in Britain are faith schools. Most of these schools can show favour to and discriminate against pupils in their admissions, and to teachers in their recruitment and employment, on the basis of their religious beliefs. Most can also provide religious education that does not have to teach about a broad range of beliefs and values, but can teach that their world view is the true one.

More generally, all state schools in England and Wales are required to provide a daily act of collective worship that is ‘wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character’. Furthermore, state schools do not have to provide age-appropriate sex and relationships education beyond the basic sex education provided in science lessons (or at all in Scotland). It is little wonder that the UK has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe.

Continues: http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/education-ending-religious-privilege/

Tim Stephenson is the secretary of the Hull and East Riding Humanist Group, which is affiliated to the BHA.

I have been invited back on to the BBC Radio Humberside equivalent of the BBC Radio Four Thought for the Day, on Andy Comfort’s breakfast show which is a 2 minute slot called Pause for Thought at a quarter to eight each morning (for a week in April). Yes, I know, I have a face for Radio. I am the first Humanist to be involved with this in our region, though other local stations have Humanists doing the same. Hopefully I will be the first of many. I did the week before Christmas – which was a bit of a surprise and took the opportunity to refute the old chestnut about atheists trying to ban Christmas. I pre-recorded all five sessions the week before, the day after our office Christmas party and was feeling a bit hung-over. Hopefully that didn’t come across in the recording. A friend suggested that I was a bit didactic, but being a bit platitudinous goes with the territory. It’s hard to sound natural when you are reading from a script but at least you can re-record if you mess up, which is not an option if you are going out live. A work colleague suggested I try a more light hearted approach, but that’s not really me. I am quite a serious person when it comes to my Humanist beliefs and I want to at least try to say something pensive without sounding as if I am stood in a pulpit. The British Humanist Association has been running a long campaign to have Humanists included in the rota of speakers on the national Thought for the Day slot on Radio Four. They [the BBC] allowed Richard Dawkins and Ariane Sherine (of Atheist Bus Campaign fame, above) to do a one off each but they have yet to agree to regular Humanist speakers.

http://timstephenson.blogspot.com/2010/02/good-morning-humberside.html

The BHA supports a network of affiliated humanist groups across the country | Read more about the BHA’s  campaign on Thought for the Day | Read about other humanist ‘thoughts for the day’.

Ed Balls’s controversial amendment to the bill on sex education, allowing faith schools to opt out of new rules on teaching about issues such as homosexuality and contraception, was passed in the Commons yesterday by 268 votes to 177, giving the government a majority of 91.

The amendment, which was passed without debate due to a lack of time at the report stage, allows faith schools to teach personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) lessons “in a way that reflects the school’s religious character”, and has been condemned by teaching unions and the National Secular Society, which said the government had betrayed children in faith schools.

Balls insisted there was “no watering down”. “There’s no opt-out for any faith school from teaching the full, broad, balanced curriculum on sex education,” he said. “Catholic schools can say to their pupils that, as a religion, we believe contraception is wrong, but what they can’t do is say they are not going to teach about contraception.”

Story continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/feb/24/sex-education-faith-schools-opt-out

Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association, Andrew Copson spoke on the BBC News of the Government’s plans for faith shools and its changes to the sex education bill. Monday’s live interview can be watched in full below.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel here: http://www.youtube.com/BritishHumanists

Mr Brown’s warning comes a day before Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, will set out final guidelines on assisted suicide. He is expected to make it clear that those who help others end their lives are unlikely to face court action if they acted out of compassion. The guidelines, which follow a series of high-profile court cases, are seen by many as effectively decriminalising assisted suicide by the back door.

Mr Brown says that while Mr Starmer should be free to clarify the legal guidelines on assisted suicide, the law itself should not be altered by Parliament.

Creating a legal “right” to die, no matter what safeguards were in place, would put unacceptable pressure on the sick and old, Mr Brown claims.

“Let us be clear: death as an option and an entitlement, via whatever bureaucratic processes a change in the law on assisted suicide might devise, would fundamentally change the way we think about death,” he says.

“The risk of pressures – however subtle – on the frail and the vulnerable, who may for example feel their existences burdensome to others, cannot ever be entirely excluded.”

Two attempts to legalise assisted suicide have failed in the House of Lords in recent years. In his article, Mr Brown suggested that, rather than heralding a change in the law, Mr Starmer’s guidance could weaken the case for new attempts to legalise assisted suicide.

Story Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/7304653/Debbie-Purdy-criticises-Gordon-Brown-over-assisted-suicide.html

Christian group Core Issues is holding a conference with the Rev Mario Bergner, who claims to have been turned away from homosexuality by God.

Chicago-based Rev Bergner claims he can cure gays of homosexuality and that Jesus saved him when he was in hospital with symptoms of AIDS at the age of 23.

He said that after “choosing” Jesus, he tested negative for HIV and is now married to a woman.

The conference will be held at Ballynahinch Baptist Church in County Down between Friday and Sunday. According to the brochure, it will include worship, discussions and prayer readings.

A protest has been organised by the Stop Conversion Therapy Taskforce (SCOTT) and Queer Youth Network on Friday evening.

Gay journalist Patrick Strudwick, who set up SCOTT after going undercover to interview ex-gay therapists, told PinkNews.co.uk he hoped 200 people would turn up to the protest.

Continue reading at: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/02/17/anti-gay-cure-group-to-protest-outside-christian-convention/

The BHA is gathering evidence of discrimination against non-religious people.

We are collecting recent (within the last 3 years) case studies to send to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The most useful examples will be from the following policy areas:

Education (Have you or your child been refused entry to a school due to your non-religious beliefs? Have you been treated badly by a school regarding collective worship? Have you been refused membership of a SACRE? Have you been turned down from a job at a faith school due to your beliefs?)

Public Services (Have you ever been refused a service due to your non-religious beliefs? Do you know of any services in your area contracted out by the council to religious organisations? Have you ever felt harassed when receiving a public service?)

Equalities/employment (Have you ever been refused a job due to your beliefs? Have you ever been refused a place on a local authority group due to your beliefs? Have you ever felt harassed at work due to your beliefs?)

Other examples are also welcome! Please send them before the 15th January to campaigns-intern@humanism.org.uk

http://www.humanism.org.uk/campaigns/what-you-can-do-to-help/call-for-evidence

In October this year, doctor, philosopher and author Raymond Tallis, revised his “incorrect assumptions” on assisted dying.

When I was chairman of the Committee on Ethical Issues in Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians, we twice considered Bills put forward by Lord Joffe proposing to legalise the choice of physician-assisted dying for mentally competent people with terminal illness who were suffering unbearably at the end of their lives. On the first occasion, we decided to oppose the Bill and on the second, because we were divided, we opted for neutrality.

The case for such a Bill to me now seems clear. Unbearable suffering, prolonged by medical care, and inflicted on a dying patient who wishes to die, is unequivocally a bad thing. And respect for individual autonomy — the right to have one’s choices supported by others, to determine one’s own best interest, when one is of sound mind — is a sovereign principle. Nobody else’s personal views should override this.

So where did my initial opposition come from? I was in thrall to numerous incorrect assumptions. But the evidence changed my mind.

Several of my assumptions related to palliative care. Wouldn’t assisted dying be unnecessary if the best palliative care were universally available? This is not true and I should have acknowledged this from my experience as a doctor for more than 35 years, when I treated patients whose symptoms were uncontrolled even when they had first-rate palliative care. International experience also confirms that palliative care fails some patients. For the last ten years, assisted suicide has been legal in Oregon under the Death with Dignity Act. Oregon has among the best palliative care of all the states in America and yet nearly 90 per cent of those seeking assisted dying do so from within those services.

I was advised that that the availability of assisted dying as an “easy” option would inhibit investment in palliative care. Again, international experience does not support this. In many countries, legalisation of voluntary euthanasia has been accompanied by increasing investment in palliative care services. In Oregon the proportion of people dying in hospice care has more than doubled since the Death with Dignity Act was introduced.

The Kingdom of Infinite Space by Raymond Tallis

I also shared the worry that legalising assisted suicide would break down trust between doctor and patient. This is not borne out by the evidence. A survey of nine European countries put levels of trust in the Netherlands at the top. And this is not surprising: in countries with assisted dying, discussion of end-of-life care is open, transparent, honest and mature, not concealed beneath a cloud of ambiguity, as it is in the UK. And the knowledge that your doctor will not abandon the therapeutic alliance with you at your hour of greatest need will foster, not undermine, trust.

I was also concerned that legalising assisted suicide would take us to the top of a slippery slope leading to the involuntary euthanasia of people who do not wish to die. In fact, to use the ethicist John Harris’s phrase, if there is a slippery slope, legislation would apply crampons rather than skis.

In Oregon, where assisted dying legislation is close to the Joffe proposal, the numbers and kinds of people being helped to die have not changed over a decade. The Dutch experience was to me decisive. Rates of non-voluntary euthanasia (ie, doctors actively ending patients’ lives without having been asked by them to do so) decreased from 0.8 per cent of all deaths in 1991 (1,000 deaths) to 0.4 per cent in 2005 (550 deaths).

In the UK, a study published in Palliative Medicine this year found that more than 1 in 200 deaths were assisted, three fifths of which were cases of ending life without explicit request. This means that a few thousand people each year receive assistance to die. The present clinical, ethical and legal fudge — in which ploys such as continuous sedation, and starvation and dehydration, are used to get round the prohibition on assisted dying — is unacceptable.

As a geriatrician, I was also worried that assisted dying would be offered to, or imposed upon, those who are most disempowered. A very detailed analysis of the data in Oregon has shown that there is an under-representation of those groups and an over-representation of comparatively well-off, middle-class white people — feisty characters who are used to getting their own way.

These were the facts that prompted me to change my mind. Even those who accepted these facts still opposed legislation on the grounds that only a small minority of dying people would seek assistance and an even smaller number would use the prescription. Wouldn’t legislation prove a sledgehammer to crack a nut?

Well, I happen to believe that even small numbers of people going through unbearable hell are important. The availability of assisted dying would bring much comfort to many more sufferers than actually use it because it brings a sense of having some control.

Death from dehydration and starvation in patients who have no means of securing an end to their suffering other than by refusing food and fluids, or botched suicides, reflect the unspeakable cruelty of the present law. To accede to someone’s request for assisted dying under the circumstances envisaged in the Joffe Bill is not to devalue human life, or devalue the life of a particular human being, or to collude in their devaluing their own life. It is to accept their valuation of a few remaining days or weeks of life that they do not wish to endure.

As a result of the courageous action of Debbie Purdy, supported by Dignity in Dying, those who assist their loved ones on grim pilgrimages to Switzerland may be confident that they will not face prosecution. But we have a legal vacuum. Legalisation of physician-assisted dying is needed urgently.

Raymond Tallis is a physician, philosopher author and poet, and a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.  This piece was first published in The Times, 27 October 2009.

The government has roundly rejected a petition which called for the monarch to be relieved of one or the other of his or her duties as Head of the Church of England and Head of State, also making clear that disestablishment of the Church of England will only happen if the Church itself wants it.

The Government supports the Monarchy and the continuation of The Queen as Head of State as fundamental elements in our constitution, personifying both national and Commonwealth unity.  It is continuing to assess the scope for amending the laws on succession including the Act of Settlement 1701, but it has made clear that change cannot happen overnight and that it has no immediate plans to legislate.  No changes are contemplated to The Queen’s position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England nor to the Church of England’s established status; disestablishment would only be considered if the Church itself indisputably favoured it.

http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page21819

Humanist celebrant and comedienne, Sheela-na-Gig, aka Jeanne Rathbone, responds! “Britain is a theocracy. It is official”.

http://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/britain-is-a-theocracy-it-is-official/

It is fitting that the BHA’s follow-up to the Atheist Bus Campaign – billboards featuring children asking “Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself” – focuses on the autonomy of children in the year when we also celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of On Liberty by J S Mill. In the BHA’s briefing on On Liberty (PDF) Dr Alan Haworth calls Mill’s volume “the classic philosophical statement of a liberal position which continues to play a considerable role within political thought in the world at large, not just within academia.”

If the relevance of Mill, writing 150 years ago, seems remote to some, it’s worth thinking about his own description of those times, expressing a view far from unheard of today especially from skeptics of religion and critics of blasphemy laws.

In the present age–which has been described as ‘destitute of faith, but terrified at scepticism’–in which people feel sure, not so much that their opinions are true, as that they should not know what to do without them–the claims of an opinion to be protected from public attack are rested not so much on its truth, as on its importance to society. [On Liberty, p19]

What does the campaign say?

A few commentators argued that rather than encourage the free development of children, the “Please don’t label me” message is in fact illiberal toward the rights of parents to raise their own children as they see fit. In many cases this is down to an exaggeration of what the campaign is about, with critics variously asserting that the billboards: censure parents for conveying any “philosophical framework of their choosing”; suggest that “one does cultural violence to one’s child by [merely] exposing him or her to religion”; and imply that children should be raised “without the sharing of any moral or philosophical convictions”.

Let’s call this the “Please Don’t Influence Me At All” interpretation of the campaign.

The BHA rejected this straw man interpretation of the billboards. One should not – and cannot, anyway – raise a child without influencing them in the broad sense, and moral education is obviously hugely important.

If “Please Don’t Influence Me At All” is a bad interpretation anyway, then criticisms based on it pose no problem for the actual message of the “Please Don’t Label Me” campaign, of course. But the straw man is a good place to start thinking.

The “Please Don’t Influence Me At All” interpretation

On the “Please Don’t Influence Me At All” interpretation of the billboards, parents and teachers would be compelled either to provide no education whatsoever (Mill values education, of course, and the notion is preposterous anyway, so need scarcely be considered), or more likely to act in some kind of impossibly objective way, offering an indisputable universalist education. This is what, for example, the Bible Society thinktank Theos claimed to believe the campaign was about, their Director suggesting the campaign “assumes that there is a position of philosophical neutrality out there, a value-neutral cultural space in which children can grow up. The suggestion is dubious, to put it kindly.” Indeed it is, but we can still ask what Mill would make of this exaggerated form of the slogan.

The notion of a hypothetical, one-size-fits-all, objective education, would have run up against Mill’s considerable respect for diversity of opinion and specifically his strong preference for a plurality in educational approaches. Disagreement and a range of differing approaches are required in order for a society not to become set in its ways, Mill says (p63). He writes appreciatively of the multiple autonomous approaches humankind is capable of adopting in parallel:

the only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible independent centres of improvement as there are individuals. [emphasis added, p62]

This ‘multiple approaches’ approach is applied specifically to education:

All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity in education. [p95]

Government operations tend to be everywhere alike. With individuals and voluntary associations, on the contrary, there are varied experiments, and endless diversity of experience. What the State can usefully do is to make itself a central depository, and active circulator and diffuser, of the experience resulting from many trials. Its business is to enable each experimentalist to benefit by the experiments of others; instead of tolerating no experiments but its own. [p99]

Mill’s concerns about a homogeneous state education stem from a fear that it will “mould” people into an form designed by the state, priesthood, aristocracy, or a tyrannous majority of the population (p95). It would be interesting to know what he’d think of the National Curriculum and whether this left sufficient room for his multiple “experiments” in education. But that’s another question. The point is that Mill would fear a totally uniform education which falsely assumed that the whole truth was already in hand.

Thankfully, though, the billboards don’t say “Please Don’t Influence Me At All”, they say “Please Don’t Label Me”.

Labelling and “boxing”

If neither total abandonment of children’s education nor one-size-fits all conformity are implied by the campaign, the message is rather that “Some practices, some ways of speaking, some implied threats of severe parental disapproval, serve to prejudice a child’s free development in a way which goes beyond merely conveying one’s own deeply held opinion” (see BHA’s “Responses to our critics”). Examples given include:

Parents who do not educate their children about the range of positions that people hold (“protecting” them from the big wide world) while over-educating them about their own position

Parents whose faces and attitudes grow ominous in response to critical questions about their personal beliefs, especially if their child moves toward “abandoning” the parents’ religion

Teachers who bend over backwards to teach about one religion to the exclusion of all others (we hear a lot about this happening)

Any adults who naturally think of the children of religious parents as “belonging” to the same religion – and refer to the children as ‘Muslim’, ‘Christian’ and so on

So what, when it comes to his more narrowly defined sense in which adults can “box children in” to a particular worldview, would J S Mill have made of the billboards? For a start, would the grand daddy of liberalism want to interfere in family life at all?

Is it liberal to interfere in a family?

At a superficial glance it might seem that the message of the billboard campaign (even on the proper “Please Don’t Label Me” reading) is illiberal because it would interfere in the more or less sacrosanct  relationship between parent and child. For some modern liberals (and, Mill tells us on page 98 of On Liberty, many of those called ‘liberals’ in his own time) any intervention in a family or even a ‘culture’ other than one’s own is regarded as illiberal and paternalistic. Even if such a liberal found the “boxing in” of children repugnant, they might favour standing back rather than “intrude” into the dynamics of that parent-child relationship.

But for Mill things were not so black and white. Or perhaps, in a way, they were more black and white, because his position is that questions of liberty and intervention rest at the level of the individual. Higher level collections like families and nations do not have collective rights of non-interference, precisely because one individual within a ‘collective’ of this kind might be intruding on the liberty of another. Even for groups of people which some will regard as quite natural sets, like nuclear families, there is a kind of arbitrariness to defining multiple people as one unit qualifying for liberty in its own right. (If the whole state were defined as a collective in which no one from outside should interfere, then the government could abuse the liberties of individuals at whim!)

If we run this position against examples like abusive parent-child relationships then it becomes clear why it is individuals, not the corporate family or other collections, that are the atomic units in Mill’s liberal framework, and why intervention between individuals need not be illiberal and can in fact be a moral obligation.

Richard Reeves, speaking at the Bentham Lecture 2009, regards this kind of moral intervention, even into a family, as characteristic Mill and an essential ingredient of liberalism. As an example of this moral intervention Reeves cites Mill’s views on the capacity of families to raise children:

The laws which, in many countries on the Continent, forbid marriage unless the parties can show that they have the means of supporting a family, do not exceed the legitimate powers of the State: and whether such laws be expedient or not (a question mainly dependent on local circumstances and feelings), they are not objectionable as violations of liberty. [p97]

Our own contemporary “circumstances and feelings” would probably lead most of us to reject any means-testing of the bride and groom before their big day! In Mill’s time contraception was considerably less accessible and less effective and the purpose of marriage more singular; but today we do not see marriage as solely, often not even primarily, as a framework for raising children.  But Mill’s point in and of itself is not unreasonable and is made by many today (usually in the context of child benefits), namely that if we do not have the means to support them then we should not wantonly churn out offspring (Mill warns of “a life or lives of wretchedness and depravity to the offspring, with manifold evils to those sufficiently within reach to be in any way affected by their actions.” p98).

In principle, then, Mill will allow us to interject into a family relationship. When impinging on the actions of others Mill makes a distinction between on the one hand “reprobation, and social stigma” and on the other hand “legal punishment” (p98). The “Please Don’t Label Me” billboards are about raising consciousness on the issue of presuming religion of children (as Richard Dawkins said it’s about trying to get people to cringe at the sound of children being labelled); the campaign does not call for any legal reprimand. So we needn’t decide whether Mill would outlaw the “boxing in” of children. But would he regard religious presumption of minors as itself illiberal and worthy of becoming a “social stigma” as the billboards intend?

Limiting their options

A particularly insidious manner of “boxing in” someone’s beliefs is the removal of other options, the Orwellian redaction of language such that words are only available in support of your own view, the silencing of questions by editing out the question mark. Living with a label and being told “You are a Christian” or “You belong to this religion” can serve to have this effect, and in some cases discussion of alternative beliefs within a family are taboo, even explicitly forbidden.

Mill gives his reasons for calling freedom of opinion and expression a “necessity”:

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. [p46]

There is something prideful then, arrogantly sure of yourself, in limiting the options on the table. Mill goes on to say that even if a silenced opinion happens to be false, it may still contain some “portion” of truth that we might have learned from, so even when open debate opens up false beliefs it still has utility. The “collision of adverse opinions” is essential for coming to the truth, says Mill: even if the pedagogue happens to be in possession of the truth, being entirely correct in their religion, a contest with other opinions is still essential if that position is to be anything more than a prejudice.

Furthermore, in an argument which should move even someone intent on labelling a child as faithful for faith’s sake, Mill suggests that if an alleged truth is forced on others then:

the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character of conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience. [p46-47]

Mill is very wary of the closing down of options, then. And closing down options is just one way of attempting to perpetuate your own beliefs by coercing others toward conforming to your point of view, something else Mill warns against.

Conformity to “Custom”

Writing in 1859 in terms we would now stand back from, Mill asserts (p63) that “Custom” holds sway over much of the world including “the whole East”; for these other cultures “justice and right mean conformity to custom”. The contemporary philosopher is unlikely to ascribe a universal conformist traditionalism to almost all foreigners! But Mill’s point is that any society which has become stagnant and uncritical was not always so.  The countries he alludes to once possessed “originality” and “were then the greatest and most powerful nations of the world. What are they now?” he asks.

His answer is that these aged and decrepit cultures have lost out in the game of civilizations, even succumbing to the title of being ‘colonies’ of European states.

A people, it appears may be progressive for a certain length of time, and then stop; when does it stop? When it ceases to possess individuality. [p63]

The capacity not to conform, not to blindly inherent Custom from society, the public recognition of individuality as a virtue: these are crucial to the vitality of a civilization.

We can extrapolate and apply the same argument to families: a child’s education, like a country’s culture, needs to allow for individuality and non-conformity, so that unexpected ideas can enter into the space of ideas and provide vital new energy.

But we don’t have to extrapolate from Mill’s argument. He is concerned about enforcing conformity both from the State and a the social level. At the social level the dogged perpetuation of Custom is local and most often familial. There is a reason that the pressure to conform in most coming-of-age stories comes from parents and elders! It is through the cosy inheritance of ideas from generation to generation that “Custom” will stagnate a whole society. Mill abhors the widespread “atmosphere of mental slavery” (p29) brought about by any stagnant conformity. Talking about social inability to challenge fundamentals he says the price paid “is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.” (p28)

Religious authoritarianism

Mill speaks often against religious dogmatists and explicitly considers the specific case in which religion is the “Custom” being illiberally enforced on society. In the context of discussing blasphemy laws and Sabbatarian legislation, which Mill puts firmly on the wrong side of liberty, he claims that:

The notion that it is one man’s duty that another should be religious, was the foundation of all the religious persecutions ever perpetrated, and, if admitted, would fully justify them. [p81]

Of course, the mindset of an inquisitor attempting to force a heretic or unbeliever into conformity, even murdering them before accepting their differing beliefs, is usually far more demonic than is a parent’s desire to raise ‘a Christian child’! Nevertheless, Mill brings the point back down to a more day-to-day level:

Though the feeling which breaks out in the repeated attempts to stop railway travelling on Sunday, in the resistance to the opening of Museums, and the like, has not the cruelty of the old persecutors, the state of mind indicated by it is fundamentally the same. It is a determination not to tolerate others in doing what is permitted by their religion, because it is not permitted by the persecutor’s religion. It is a belief that God not only abominates the act of the misbeliever, but will not hold us guiltless if we leave him unmolested. [p81]

Now, Mill is here using Sabbatarian attempts to legislate against working on Sundays as his example, and the case is very much a matter of the state and its laws, not of domestic norms and parental demagoguery. But the logic of the argument is not far removed. A child in a family home (where the rules and the taboos and the ‘established religion’ and the terms of engagement are all decided by their elders) is not so much unlike a citizen in a state under the same conditions decided upon by their government. The attitude of a religiously pushy parent – who feels it a duty not to leave the child “unmolested” and instead to inculcate the child into her religion – carries the same weight of implication: that God in some way demands belief even if it must be obtained through coercion.

Varieties of influence

Mill speaks ironically of over-bearing moralism: “we are eager for improvement in politics, in education, even in morals, though in this last our idea of improvement chiefly consists in persuading or forcing other people to be good as ourselves.” (p63) But he’s not trying to prevent all moral discourse, or all kinds of influence on others (after all, On Liberty is itself a moral essay aiming to convince others to behave according to its principles). It’s how you go about moral persuasion that is important. Listing types of influence that would not violate the ‘harm principle’ (i.e. measures that are allowed when trying to stop someone from causing harm to themselves), Mill gives:

Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other people if thought necessary by them for their own good, are the only measures by which society can justifiably express it dislike of disapprobation of his conduct. [p84]

So for the sake of someone else’s “own good” certain kinds of persuasion are acceptable, but you still cannot force someone down a particular route. This has implications for both the way in which some kinds of influence “cross the line” and become something closer to coercion than to free expression. Would religious presumption of infants and children constitute ‘force’? Would predetermining their religious identity be a kind of permissible “instruction” or a kind of illiberal intrusion?

Kinds of compulsion

Mill’s essay, On Liberty, turns pivotally on his ‘harm principle’.

That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. [p8]

Whatever else it is, labelling children is not remonstrating, reasoning, persuading or entreating. It’s more like presuming. But is it therefore a form of compulsion? The word ‘compulsion’ is often used of an active force in the here and now, but as discussed above (“Limiting their options”) making presumptions and taking certain questions off the table is something more like prejudicing the child’s development, a kind of compulsion by stealth. This compulsion by stealth is in some ways more sinister than overt compulsion, especially when applied to children, because it can remain invisible until the child is old enough to think outside the box. Let’s call it a ‘pre-compulsion’. Children who are labelled and boxed in have suffered an act of pre-compulsion. They have been pre-compelled. To label a child as “belonging” to your own creed it to pre-compel them to adopt your own views.

“… to grow and develop itself on all sides …”

Mill was hugely, abundantly keen on autonomous development, not just of individuals as adults, but in terms that speak of the whole person developing from birth without being compelled or (as we’ve shown above discussing the heredity of “Custom”) without being pre-compelled or forced to conform to a particular identity. He talks of “framing the plan of our life to suit our own character” as an essential domain of liberty (p11). “One whose desires and impulses are not his own,” he says, “has no character” (p53). And speculating on historical development he says, “society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.” (p54) The rhapsody continues:

It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it, and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation [p55]

In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others. There is a greater fulness of life about his own existence [p56]

One crucial passage, often quoted, gets to the core of the humanism within Mill’s position.

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing. [p52]

“Please Don’t Label Me” is about when a parent’s free expression crosses the line to be a pre-compulsion of the child. It’s about a failure to respect something like ‘fair play’ as young minds are developing. Mill writes:

To give fair play to the nature of each, it is essential that different persons should be allowed to lead different lives. In proportion as this latitude has been exercised in any age, has that age been noteworthy to posterity. Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men. [p56]

Conclusion, and blame

In an essay only 104 pages long Mill has a whole chapter on individuality. He is terribly concerned about the illiberalism in anything which unfairly detracts from individuals’ free development, compelling them toward conformity and “Custom”. And despite the dangers in doing so, he talks at length about the particular offences of religion in this area. It is no stretch of the imagination at all to think that Mill would see the “Please Don’t Label Me” message, properly understood, as correctly identifying an extremity of influence which goes beyond the parent’s right to express their religion to impinge on the liberties of their children and infringe on the autonomous development of their individuality.

Writing on the the manner in which arguments are conducted, Mill says that:

Undoubtedly the manner of asserting an opinion, even though it be a true one, may be very objectionable, and may justly incur severe censure. But the principal offences of the kind are such as it is mostly impossible, unless by accidental self-betrayal, to bring home to conviction. The gravest of them is, to argue sophistically, to suppress facts or arguments, to misstate the elements of the case, or misrepresent the opposite opinion. [p47]

Labelling children from infancy is prior to sophism; so distorting is it that it forestalls any need for discussion let alone any need for sophistry. In addition, if a parent suppresses the facts about other religions or the arguments raging within their own, or misstates what it means to “belong” to their religion, or sullies the name of conflicting worldviews, then Mill it would seem is committed to turning that portion of their parenting into a “social stigma”.

Would he blame them, though? The billboard campaign is light in tone, framed in colourful letters as a plea from children rather than as a castigation of parents. Even Dawkins’ claim that “Please Don’t Label Me” is about “raising consciousness” assumes that people who label children are not yet aware of the illiberalism it embodies. Well, Mill also gives us a lot of room to be ‘consciousness raising’ rather than castigating. Immediately following from the above, he continues:

But all this, even to the most aggravated degree, is so continually done in perfect good faith, by persons who are not considered, and in many other respects may not deserve to be considered, ignorant or incompetent, that it is rarely possible, on adequate grounds, conscientiously to stamp the misrepresentation as morally culpable; and still less could law presume to interfere with this kind of controversial misconduct. … Yet whatever mischief arises from their [rhetorical "weapons"] use  is greatest when they are employed against the comparatively defenceless; and whatever unfair advantage can be derived by any opinion from this mode of asserting, accrues almost exclusively to received opinions.” [p47-48]

Page references are to On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government, Basil Blackwell Oxford edition (1946).

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

Many humanists feel a particular moral anger about the foisting of an adult’s personal religious mythology on children as if it were fact. Humanists may appreciate that a given religious parent or teacher is doing what they think is best, that they genuinely believe spoonfeeding religion to children is morally edifying, perhaps even essential for fostering a view of human dignity in their wards. But such views imply that humanists and others without religion are less morally edified or less capable of understanding human dignity, so try as we might to understand and empathise with these motivations, we’re hardly likely to agree with them.

Ariane Sherine and the British Humanist Association launched a new campaign on Wednesday 18 November 2009, calling for an end to the “labelling” of children as religious. Religious labels routinely used of children (‘Christian child’, ‘Muslim child’ etc) are displayed mixed up with labels that most people would bawk at (‘Communist child’, ‘Conservative child’ and so on), the point being that there should be something equally disturbing about the former as the latter.

Humanists often rankle at the warping of a child’s free development. Genuine moral education is one thing, and a very good thing, but coercion toward binding faith in a particular mythological-metaphysical framework is another thing altogether. The Homo sapiens leaf on the great tree of life is capable of an intellectual autonomy and prowess that is unparalleled in the rest of nature. No other species rivals the human in being able to form such complex linguistic concepts, and humanists treasure this Darwinian endowment, want to nurture it, and (see The Billboard campaign – What would J S Mill think?) feel painfully any attempt to undermine and subvert it.

Please Don't Label Me billboard

This is not to say that children can, let alone should, be raised in a vacuum. There are multitudinous cultural and intellectual influences on any child in any society, without which human civilization would quickly collapse. (Without the ‘programming’ we receive by near complete immersion in society, we quickly lose the benefits of our big brains and become ‘feral’, the brain even losing many of the neurological trimmings associated with a healthy human mind.) To say that children should not be coerced toward highly debatable ideological positions is not at all to say that they should be isolated from all possible influence.

It’s necessary to set all this down because the scope of the Please Don’t Label Me campaign was exaggerated by the few critics who took umbrage. Speaking generally, their tactic was to attack a strawman, as if the billboards had been calling for the banning of all reference to religion in the vicinity of children, or even the complete cessation of all education regarding “meaning and values”. The BHA called on these critics to calm down and “take the time to read the adverts and think”.

But the scope of the campaign is a little wider than the singular example of explicitly labelling children. Responding individually to the critical commentators the BHA made this explicit:

Perhaps by extension the wider message is about the general case of “boxing in” or actively coercing children toward a religious or ideological position, for example by:

• telling them they are “born into” a particular religion
• undertaking infant baptism and telling the child they thereby “belong” to a particular religion
• segregating them from children who “belong” to other religions in schools which teach largely about their “own” religion and reinforce the idea that they are innately stamped with a specific creed
• implying a threat if they “abandon” the religion, such as familial disassociation, disfellowship from a community, or indeed more unearthly punishments delivered from on high!

With this in mind, the BHA is also raising money to fund its work on education, children’s rights and against faith schools. You can donate at www.justgiving.com/nofaithschools.

Useful links:

• Information from the BHA on the billboard campaign
• How to help promote the campaign and join in on Facebook and Twitter
• Donate!