http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/08/church-of-england-compromise-women-bishops

The synod voted against measures proposed by the Manchester diocesan synod that would have allowed parishes opposed to women bishops to be administered by male ones (Manchester was supported by the Archbishop of York), however, they synod also voted against a proposal by the Southwark diocesan synod calling for the CofE to press ahead with legislation to introduce women bishops.

The synod agreed that the legislation introducing women bishops can now be revised by the bishops, and will be put before the synod in July. If passed then, the first women bishops could be ordained in 2014.

The Times reports the defeat of the diocese of Manchester’s proposals as a defeat for the Archbishops http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article3313973.ece Christina Rees says 42 out of the 44 dioceses wish to see women bishops have equal status within the church.

The Daily Mail reports that nearly 100 clergy have joined a rebellion over a Church of England ban on civil partnership ceremonies.

The letter the clergy signed reads:

 We, the undersigned, believe that on the issue of holding civil partnership ceremonies in Church of England churches incumbents / priests in charge should be accorded the same rights as they enjoy at present in the matter of officiating at the marriage of divorced couples in church. Namely, that this should be a matter for the individual conscience of the incumbent / priest in charge.

We would respectfully request that our views in this regard are fully represented in Synod.

More detailed coverage from Ruth Gledhill http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article3306363.ece

A relatively mainstream theologian William Lane Craig tells us that we should stop being so “wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective” and realise that genocide and infanticide are okay if God undertakes them. Dead babies, he says, “are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy.”

* * *

Offering his humble input into Malta’s current debate over whether to legalise divorce (you read that right, that’s the big current debate in Malta) a Minister by the name Tonio Fenech said that the Virgin Mary is very upset about the country even considering allowing divorce. Fenech warned that anyone voting for reform on marriage law is acting against the will of God Almighty. It seems the Baby Jesus wants the people of Malta to stay in their loveless marriages.  Obviously, the Malta Humanists have other ideas.

* * *

And conservative Anglican blogger “Archbishop Cranmer” revs himself up to threat level barking Tolkien-esque nutsoid over the royal wedding, as he slathers over the coverage, types up his notes, and generally has an ecstatic, pant-wetting, metaphysical breakdown about Royalty and “the inner being of the Church of England”.

29-year-old Kate Middleton, who according to Hello! was “baptised at the age of five months but never took religion further”, has undergone a magic ritual which  instantly transforms her into a “committed Christian”. Lucky that such powerful rites are still available for princesses in the magic Kingdom.

* * *

A Catholic publication aimed at children  has been  slightly mistranslated, giving the impression that Catholics should use contraception. In a Q&A format on the subject of contraception the mistranslation accidentally rendered the text both laudable and reasonable (“a Christian couple can and must be responsible about their capacity of being able to give life”) forcing the publishers to withdraw it immediately.

* * *

Ricky Martin, a gay, is leading young people astray

Demonstrating astute moral sensitivities and a real sense of priority when it comes to the moral lives of young people, Cardinal Luis Aponte Martinez of San Juan, Puerto Rico, has told Ricky Martin that he should stop acting all gay, as his current persona will set a bad example for the yoof.

“Personally I admire Ricky for the great artistic gifts the Lord has given him,” the Cardinal opined, obviously a massive fan, perhaps obsessively so one might speculate, possibly attending his shows and putting up posters of ol’ Leather Pants on his bedroom wall, “but I implore him, for the love of his children …  to strive to be an example for our young people of the important values that we all share, including sexuality.” But not, apparently, including being true to yourself.

“In this way he will be thanking the Lord for the great gifts he has been given.” (God created Ricky Martin’s dancing abilities and singing talent, but had nothing to do with his sexuality.)

It’s okay though, because the Church “does not reject the homosexual person, but rather the actions and conduct that go against morality.” So being gay is okay in the abstract, it’s just acting gay or doing anything perceptibly gay that is wrong in the eyes of GOD Almighty.

* * *

Mental health is a personal attribute accruing to individual people. But is it possible for an organisation to be clinically insane? Bill Donohue’s “Catholic League” does it’s best to prove that it is. This week the League is very angry that the media-created sexual abuse scandal is still rolling on. The League complains that some of these so-called abuse claims go back years – shouldn’t these things just expire after a certain amount of time? – and has some excellent points to make on what’s really going on:

The refrain that child rape is a reality in the Church is twice wrong: let’s get it straight—they weren’t children and they weren’t raped. We know from the John Jay study that most of the victims have been adolescents…

Yeh, take that, all you critics of the Vatican cover-up. It’s adolescent rape, not child rape. Get it right.

In a move described by the Telegraph as raising “serious questions” for Anglicans, it seems a clergyman married to a divorcee is set to become a Bishop in the Church of England.

In other, closely related news, a clergyman married to a divorcee being made a Bishop in the Church of England has never happened before.

And it’s the twenty-first century.

The Rev John Richardson tells concerned Telegraph readers why he’s all worried and stuff. (Stand by for some fretting of epic proportions.)

The announcement from Downing Street [for patently anachronistic reasons] that the Revd Nicholas Holtam, currently vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, has been nominated as the next Bishop of Salisbury poses great challenges for traditionalist Anglicans [who are expected to jump up and down and puff and blow and go red in the face] here and abroad, but it also raises serious questions about the functioning of the Crown Nominations Commission [serious questions such as: "Really, that's still the job of the Crown?!"], responsible for choosing Anglican bishops.

There have been rumours about Mr Holtam’s appointment for some time, principally because [Anglicans love to take tea and have a good natter, plus] he is married to a divorcee. Oddly enough, although the Church of England imposes certain restrictions on clerical ordination for those in that situation [okay I'll say it out loud again: being married to a divorcee... ooh, the thought just makes me shudder], there was no clarity about the consecration of bishops. At the last General Synod, however, such clarification was urgently sought and the suspicions of many people as to why seem now to have been confirmed. [Nice one, Sherlock.]

What is perhaps not realized is that the Church’s historical opposition to divorce goes back to the remarkably hard line taken by Jesus himself. Asked whether divorce was possible for any reason, he answered, “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery” (Matthew 19:9, NIV).

[... blah blah Henry VIII blah the Pope blah pedantic point about the Apostle Paul blah blah ...]

For some people, therefore, the proposed consecration of Nicholas Holtam is a serious challenge to Church order. And indeed it may be — but the extent to which this is so clearly depends on the circumstances of his wife’s divorce.

This, however, took place in her teens, and it is obviously not for individuals to pry into why. [Despite which, I've obviously done a little bit of digging around myself, and I definitely am saying that her personal choices made as a married teenager some years ago essentially determine her moral worth in the eyes of me, the Church, Jesus and Almighty GOD Himself.]

The Rev John Richardson indeed presses on to rehearse the different categories of marital sin which may or may not apply to Mrs Holtam’s first marriage. It later transpires that the potential Bishop Holtam has previously expressed some sympathies (you guessed it) toward the idea that homosexuals might not be entirely devoid of the light of God; a radical thought which makes our author, Revd Richardson, feel he should like to have been more involved in the process of selection… of the gay-loving, radical, married-to-a-divorcee trendy vicar.

Some may feel it unfortunate or unworthy [and not very 'Christian'] that someone like myself [an important person] should be so critical of a man who has yet to take up his post on the very day his nomination is made public. My reply is simply [pish and posh, and] that if we’d been told earlier we could have had the proper discussions in a very different forum. [Instead of me speculatively dragging his wife's hypothetically tawdry past into the pages of the Telegraph, like I've just done.]

Ahh, isn’t the Church of England basically just all warm and fuzzy inside.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8446405/Bishops-married-to-divorcees-pose-serious-challenge-to-traditionalist-Anglicans.html

Clergy are to be urged to be more vocal in countering the arguments put forward by a more hard-line group of atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who have campaigned for a less tolerant attitude towards religion.

A report endorsed by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warns that the Church faces a battle to prevent faith being seen as “a social problem” and says the next five years are set to be a period of “exceptional challenge”.

It expresses concern that Christians are facing hostility at work and says the Church could lose its place at the centre of public life unless it challenges attempts to marginalise religious belief.

The rallying call comes amid fears that Christians are suffering from an increasing level of discrimination following a series of cases in which they have been punished for sharing their beliefs.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/8305803/Clergy-told-to-take-on-the-new-atheists.html

Of course there is no reflection here in the Telegraph that those “fears” are only that; that the desperate, media-friendly trickle of court cases is being brought by one pressure organisation; and that they keep losing on all substantive points because the far from these hand-picked Christians being discriminated against they are in fact the ones discriminating and that’s why they end up in court in the first place.

Ardent litigator targeting paedophile priests and the sex abuse cover-up heads for the UK.

A leading US litigator who has spent more than 20 years suing US-based paedophile priests and the church officials who moved them from parish to parish is joining a new legal practice dedicated to rooting out clerical sexual abuse in the UK.

Jeff Anderson has filed more than 1,500 lawsuits against the Catholic church in the US and thousands more against individuals and organisations, including those belonging to other Christian denominations.

His Minnesota firm says it is “aggressively committed” to child protection through civil litigation and he believes there is significant scope to expand this activity in the UK.

Anderson, whose firm recently represented all 23 plaintiffs in a suit that led to a US diocese filing for bankruptcy protection, will be working with Ann Olivarius, a solicitor who is already based in London, to expose offenders and seek justice for victims.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/10/lawyer-paedophile-priests-us-uk

New envoy to the Vatican is a “temp” because no one wants the job.

David Cameron has appointed George Edgar as Britain’s temporary envoy to the Vatican after Ann Widdecombe turned down the role.

Having been surprised by a string of rejections for the role of Britain’s ambassador to the Vatican from such candidates as Ann Widdecombe, Lord Patten of Barnes and the MP Edward Leigh, David Cameron has been forced to turn to a trusted trouble-shooter.

Mandrake can disclose that George Edgar will be the interim chargé d’affaires to the Holy See when Francis Campbell leaves his post at the end of this month.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/8246963/Criticism-as-David-Cameron-sends-trouble-shooter-to-the-Vatican.html

Oddly enough, the Church of England doesn’t want whole churches to be poached off by the Vatican.

Defecting priest feigns surprise. Tension between Catholics and Protestants…? It’s unheard of!

Anglicans defecting to Rome are being told they must leave their churches with clergy even been asked to move away from their parish.

They have worshipped together for decades on the pews of their parish church. Generations of their loved ones have been baptised, married and buried there.

But now a Church of England congregation is being torn apart by the Pope’s offer to welcome disaffected Anglican traditionalists into the Catholic Church.

… At St Barnabas the move towards Rome is being led by the vicar, Fr Ed Tomlinson. He believes that traditionalists who oppose the ordination of women have been badly let down by Church leaders.

But he has been told by the diocese of Rochester that if he and his followers leave the Church of England they will no longer be allowed to hold services, even on a shared basis, at St Barnabas…

Full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/8247915/Anglicans-heading-to-Rome-told-they-cant-stay-in-their-churches.html

And finally, the Pope tells you how to name your children.

The pope has declared war on parents’ growing insistence on shunning the saints and naming their children after fashion designers, Sanskrit titles and things that don’t mean much.

The Holy See fears that parents are choosing modish names such as Chanel, Swami and Pesche at the expense of Maria, Martina and Giuseppe, egged on by celebrity examples.

“Every baptism should ensure that the child is given a Christian name, an unmistakable sign that the Holy Spirit will allow the person to blossom in the bosom of the Church,” Benedict XVI said, while baptising 21 infants in the Sistine Chapel on Sunday. “Do not give your children names that are not in the Christian calendar.”

Continues: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/for-heavens-sake-pope-hopes-to-end-trend-for-exotic-names-2181133.html

The tone of this piece is fairly straight but the findings of the reported research – that highstreet shops don’t sell many Christian-themed Christmas cards – is hardly surprising, as it matches with the common experience of anyone going into a shop and looking at the cards on offer (which is essentially what the survey involved doing anyway). It’s still “news” to the Telegraph, though, which conducted the survey itself, because it can be made to sound a bit like shops should be under some kind of pressure to force everyone to buy religious cards and coheres with their Christmas-is-being-banned-and-we-Christians-are-all-persecuted narrative, even though the quotes from a number of stores at the end of the piece make it reasonably clear that they’re just responding to market forces, not forcing some kind of aggressive atheist Winterval agenda on Christians and Telegraph-readers.

Nativity scenes or references to the bible story feature on fewer than one in 25 cards, according to a survey by The Sunday Telegraph.

Christian groups said the findings were “disappointing” and blamed the situation on “political correctness”.

The survey of more than 2,100 card designs in four stores – WHSmith, Marks & Spencer, Clinton Cards and Paperchase – found only 82 featured any religious reference.

Most instead depicted Christmas trees, Father Christmas or non-religious messages such as ‘Season’s Greetings’. The baby Jesus was shown on only 13 cards – less than one per cent of the total.

… Marks & Spencer said it had “cards that cater for every taste this Christmas” while Clinton Cards said: “Our aim is to ensure that we carry a range to appeal to everyone, and we do offer a broad selection of cards including those with a religious theme.”

Full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/8211402/Christmas-cards-with-religious-images-disappear-from-High-Street-shops.html

People of faith do not have a monopoly on virtue as British society was now “more diverse and secular”, the Queen told the Church of England today in an address to its governing body.

Speaking at Church House, central London, she told members of General Synod that believers and atheists were equally able to contribute to the prosperity and wellbeing of the country.

The Queen, who is supreme governor of the Church of England, said: “In our more diverse and secular society, the place of religion has come to be a matter of lively discussion. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue and that the wellbeing and prosperity of the nation depend on the contribution of individuals and groups of all faiths and none.”

Don’t get too excited, though.

But, recalling the words of Pope Benedict XVI from his UK visit last September, she said churches “and the other great faith traditions” retained the potential to inspire “great enthusiasm, loyalty and a concern for the common good”.

Elizabeth Windsor went on to briefly refer to the debates within the Church on women bishops and homosexuality, without picking a side of course, and optimistically noting that trial and debate often coincide with “growth and spiritual vigour”.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/23/queen-synod-virtue

Last Monday, I delivered an atheist “sermon” from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey. It was surprising enough that the chaplain of Westminster School had invited me to give a “thought for the day” to the assembled students, even more so when he suggested I talked about why I was an atheist.

The fact that this sounds strange, shocking even, tells us something important about how atheism is now perceived, and its relationship to faith. The problem is that while the word atheist itself means nothing more than “not-theist”, it seems that for many, “a” stands for anti.

Of course, in one sense, anyone who believes anything can be described as being anti what they don’t believe. But, for instance, we would not usually call a Christian an anti-Jew, or a Muslim an anti-Hindu. Why not? Because being anti suggests more than just disagreement; it suggests hostility, active dislike, the desire to eliminate the thing one is against. That’s why anti-capitalists are rightly called, because they don’t just disagree with capitalism, they want to destroy it.

If being an atheist meant being anti-theist, then I would not be one. I am an anti-dogmatist, an anti-fundamentalist, yes. But I have no hostility to theism as such, and have no desire to strip all theists of their faith. Of course I think theists are mistaken, but no one should be automatically hostile to everyone they disagree with. Hostility should be reserved for the pernicious, the wicked and the harmful.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/17/atheist-sermon-westminster-abbey

At least three serving Church of England bishops are to lead an exodus to the Roman Catholic Church in protest at women bishops.

The Bishop of Fulham, the Right Rev John Broadhurst, 68, announced at the weekend that he is to join the Ordinariate, an organisation set up by the Pope to allow Anglican laity, clergy and bishops to convert while retaining aspects of their Anglican heritage.

…

Dozens of Anglican laity, including an entire congregation in Kent, are preparing to go with the bishops.

The defections and the Ordinariate itself are leading to private anger among senior Anglicans over what they regard as poaching.

The usual ecumenical channels have been bypassed in setting up the Ordinariate. Instead of being led by the Council for Christian Unity, all talks have been held in secret under the auspices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly headed by the present Pope Benedict XVI.

Full article: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article2771004.ece (paywall)

Religion is largely irrelevant to most young people, who rely instead on a “secular trinity” of themselves, their family and their friends to give meaning to their lives, a new book claims.

The study published by the Church of England concludes that people born after 1982 – known as “Generation Y” – have only a “faded cultural memory” of Christianity.

For many young people, religious observance extends no further than praying in their bedrooms during moments of crisis, on a “need to believe basis”.

The findings are contained a new book, The Faith of Generation Y, whose authors include the Bishop of Coventry, the Rt Rev Christopher Cocksworth.

Sylvia Collins-Mayo, principal lecturer in sociology at Kingston University, said most of the 300 young people questioned for the study were not looking for answers to “ultimate questions”.

…

But most young people today define themselves by a “secular trinity of family, friends and the reflexive self”, giving them an “immanent faith” based on relationships in this world, the study found.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/8042110/Young-people-have-faded-memory-of-Christianity-says-Church-book.html

So are his flock defecting in droves [to Roman Catholicism]? “No, they’re not. One or two, and there’ll be more, I think.” Do they write and tell you why? Some do. But I don’t think it’s going to be a landslide and I never thought it would be.” One of the problems with Roman Catholicism is having to sign up to the idea that the Pope is infallible when, surely, to be human is to err? “Better ask my Roman Catholic friends about that.” But one of the reasons you chose to be an Anglo-Catholic was because of that stumbling block? “I couldn’t accept the infallibility of the Pope, no. But back to that situation last year… I think some people in the Vatican had been listening to some groups within the Anglican Communion who were looking for some sort of corporate solution – ‘Let’s all come together and be recognised in a group’ – and they’d worked out a scheme for that… I think, perhaps, slightly overestimating how popular it’s going to be.

“A lot of people in the Anglican Communion don’t think much of me and don’t think much of the way the Communion is going – but that doesn’t mean they want to be Roman Catholics.”

One of your most torturous times in the eight years as Archbishop must have been over the Dr Jeffrey John issue? “Yes,” he says in a very quiet voice. In 2003, Dr John – who is a celibate homosexual – was appointed as Bishop of Reading. … Much was made of Dr Williams speaking out against [lesbian bishop] Mary Glasspool’s election but remaining silent on Uganda’s proposed anti-homosexual bill that would have led to the imprisonment and even death of many homosexuals.

… Dr Williams’s position on this once seemed clear when he wrote, on the subject of homosexuality: “If we are looking for a sexual ethic that can be seriously informed by our Bible, there is a good deal to steer us away from assuming that reproductive sex is a norm.”

When I read this out, he replies: “That’s what I wrote as a theologian, you know, putting forward a suggestion. That’s not the job I have now.”

So your job doesn’t necessarily allow you to be true to yourself? “I think if I were to say my job was not to be true to myself that might suggest that my job required me to be dishonest and if that were the case, then I’d be really worried.

“Put it this way, it means that I’m not elected on a manifesto to further this agenda or that; I have to be someone who holds the reins for the whole debate. Tries to keep people at the table and to do that not just because it’s nicer to have people together than otherwise, but because there’s a real religious, spiritual dimension, saying, ‘Unity matters to all of us; we actually need each other, however much we dislike each other.’?”

Full article: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article2734417.ece (paywall)

The Equality Act 2010 amends the Civil Partnership Act 2004 so as to remove provisions in the Civil Partnership Act 2004 that prevent all ‘religious premises’ being approved for the registration of civil partnerships.

See here for the wording of the amendment, and also see this earlier article for some explanations of the wording.

At the time these amendments were passed, the Church of England which had earlier issued this statement, then also said, as I reported in the Church Times :

A spokesman for the Archbishops’ Council confirmed on Wednesday that the amendment took account of discussions held with the Govern ment. The Church of England’s con cern, he said, was to ensure that the regulations provided for an opt-in or opt-out at denominational level. The C of E (and other denominations) wanted to be able to nominate a national body to declare a position on this issue, before individual ap plications could be made. This was what the Quakers themselves had done (Comment, 12 March).

The government is now holding consultations with “interested parties” in preparation for implementing such provisions. As a recent Government document [PDF] said:

An amendment made to the Equality Act 2010 makes it possible to remove the express prohibition on civil partnerships taking place in religious premises. We want to talk to those with a key interest in this issue about what the next stage should be for civil partnerships, including how some religious organisations can allow same-sex couples the opportunity to register their relationship in a religious setting if they wish to do so.

http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/004569.html

The BHA campaigns for full equality in marriage law for same-sex couples. Currently same-sex couples cannot choose to have a civil partnership service in a religious building, and without full equality when humanist weddings are legalised in England and Wales same-sex couples would not be able to form a civil partnership in a service conducted by a humanist celebrant.

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.

One Father Ed Tomlinson received widespread attention for lambasting humanist funerals on his blog back in October (the BHA responded with a defence of the personalised, celebratory nature of humanist funerals).

Now, Bishop of Chester, Reverend Peter Forster, has similarly criticised modern funeral services for skimping on “proper solemnity” by hand picking music and poetry to the family’s liking, rather than using the Church stuff that he likes. Bishop Forster (who has previously been investigated over homophobic comments and made the highest level of expenses claims of bishops in the House of Lords for 2008-09) seems primarily criticising Christians who don’t realise that his Church believes in bodily resurrection (rather than the detachment of a disembodied soul upon death) but he does also pick out the “celebratory” and personal aspects of modern services for criticism.

He wrote: “My mind has been concentrated by another experience, which is becoming more common: to go to a funeral, only to find that the cremation or burial has taken place earlier in the day, and the funeral has become a celebration of the deceased’s life.

“Why does this jar with me so much? There have always been occasions when of necessity a funeral has been held without a body, but that seems different from a deliberate decision to hold a small private ‘funeral’ before a larger ‘celebration’ or ‘commemoration’. I think there are several reasons why I regret this new trend in our society, and especially when it invades the Church.

“Firstly, it easily gives the impression that our bodies don’t matter much, that the essential ‘me’ is a disembodied soul or spirit. It was precisely such a view, common in the ancient world, that (like Judaism) Christianity rejected. I believe in the resurrection of the body: that statement is not in the Creed for nothing. It emphasises that we are created, taken from the dust of the earth, and that it is this world which God has chosen to redeem and re-create.

“We are not spiritual chips off some cosmic block longing to return home: we are sacred individuals, made in God’s image, body, soul and spirit.

“Secondly, these new funeral practices can seem to put death to one side, to ignore or even deny its reality. Some poems read at funerals give the same impression: ‘I have only slipped into the next room’, etc. Some music chosen at funerals likewise seems out of place, missing the proper solemnity which should mark the death of a child of God.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7804570/Bishop-of-Chester-criticises-celebratory-modern-funerals.html

The British Humanist Association’s Humanist Ceremonies network provides humanist wedding and partnership celebrations and funeral and memorial services for the non-religious. The BHA also campaigns for reform of marriage laws and for full equality under the law between same sex civil partnerships and marriage.

In the aftermath of an unusual and dramatic general election, Andrew Copson considers the origin and the importance of our political values.

Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association

Not believing in any post-mortem existence where all wrongs will be righted, humanists think of politics as incredibly important. The obligation to provide a better future falls on human beings in the here and now and politics is the mechanism we have at our disposal to attempt this.

Human politics, just like human ethics, is also a simple necessity – we are social animals, we cooperate, and so we need frameworks in which to make the decisions this requires. But political thinkers in the humanist tradition, from Perikles to John Stuart Mill, see the endeavour of politics as more than a necessity. It is an opportunity to promote the availability of a good life for all, enabling individuals to make rational decisions, take personal responsibility and develop as people. Engagement in these politics is based, as the humanist philosopher Karl Popper said, on ‘reason and humanitarianism’ and assumes the equal dignity of each human being.

Against what sort of ethical standards do we need to judge our politicians (and ourselves as participating citizens) as we engage in these politics? Utopia is never attainable and a rational approach to our common life must accept that, but a progressive amelioration of the condition of all people is an essential aim of politics. So, we can judge our politicians as to how far they advance us towards an open society that will prize equality, justice and freedom. Our criterion for judging politicians can be how far they work to promote and sustain the conditions required for individual human beings to be free and to flourish. They can be judged by the extent to which they contribute to promoting and defending a society in which everyone’s individual rights and freedoms are guaranteed and our mutual responsibilities accepted. What sorts of arguments are our politicians making in Parliament in favour of or against legislation; as ministers what sort of policy decisions are they making, why and with what consequences? How are they voting on particular pieces of legislation and why? Do their actions and their reasons for them demonstrate to us as their fellow citizens and electors that they are truly committed to the outcomes of greater equality, justice and freedom which we aspire to? Is the content of their arguments informed by ‘reason and humanitarianism’? Are they doing what they’re doing because they genuinely wish to promote the availability of a good life for all and defend human freedom and dignity? Are they working to maximise this and oppose those forces which would diminish it?

These are very different sorts of ethical test from the recent judging of politicians according to whether they have claimed expenses for a duck island or a flagpole, but the ephemeral expenses scandal at Westminster should not obscure these higher ethical standards to which we need to hold our politicians and ourselves as active citizens. Similarly, public anger at an economic crisis caused by a profession granted too much freedom to act selfishly, should not make us turn away from freedom in general. The humanist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre said ‘When we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men,’ and the defence of human responsibility as much as of human freedom is an important part of any responsible political ethic. The ethical objection to under-regulation of bankers was that it gave them too much freedom with scant regard for the negative effects on the freedom of those whom their irresponsibility would harm.

Secularism is also an important part of a humanist political ethic. The only viable common framework of civic values in a society that is diverse in terms of thoughts and opinions is one entailing tolerance of all views and lifestyles, where no one is privileged or discriminated against solely because of their religion or non-religious worldview; in short, a secular framework. This is not a framework that imposes specifically non-religious, atheist or humanist values and behaviours on everybody, but a state which maintains a disinterested impartiality between people of different religious or non-religious beliefs so long as they are not harming others or the exercise by others of their own rights and freedoms.

So, religious practices such as the wearing of certain religious dress or ornamentation in public don’t engage the state’s interests, whereas the state can, on grounds of the damage it does to children’s education, the wearing of a burqa by a nursery school teacher. Individual ethical choices such as the decision to have an abortion or be assisted in ending one’s own life when unable to do it for oneself, should not be regulated on the basis of the unshared metaphysical beliefs – whether held by a majority or a minority – of a certain grouping in society (because God doesn’t like it, for example), but because of dangers to individual freedom and dignity. In the specific examples, because a foetus is meaningfully to be described as a person and hence to be protected from harm, for example, or because the legalisation of assisted suicide would mean that granny will be bumped off for her mansion. In many ways, we in Britain are far from having a genuinely secular state, still maintaining the medieval rubble of an established church with its concomitant legal discrimination ways that significantly disadvantage non-Christians – for example in employment and admissions state-funded religious schools. And the unjustified privilege still held by the Church of England in our diverse society is clearly demonstrated by the presence in our parliament of 26 men (always men, of course) who are there because they are appointed to the job of Bishop in one denomination of one religion – a religion whose active adherents are a minority in the population. A good ethical test for the conduct of politicians for humanists would be how far they pursue a secular model of the state when such questions as reform of these areas arise.

Because a secular state allows people with different ways of living and different beliefs to coexist and cooperate in the same society, it is not just a goal for humanists but can be an aspiration for religious people who accept that they must live cooperatively on a basis of mutual regard with people whose other beliefs they do not share and who do not share theirs. At the heart of a specifically humanist commitment to the secular state, however, is a strong regard for human dignity as bound up with individual human freedom, and an expectation that individual freedom leads inevitably to diversity. Closed or totalitarian societies, where conformity and uniformity are what is striven for, are the sort of societies that humanists reject and fight against. So it was with humanists in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and so it is today with humanists in Iran or exiled from it. This is how it is also in the West – humanists are inclined towards promoting that political principle of Mill 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’ and recognising that the diversity of ways of living which flourish in consequence are a symptom of the open society’s greatest benefit.

That it is the sort of society in which we can feel free. The ethical standards by which we judge our politicians – at least in part – must be to what extent they bring us closer to that ideal way of living.

Andrew Copson is the Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association.

This is the full version of an article which was published as part of the Guardian newspaper’s Citizen Ethics booklet on  (the booklet is available as a PDF).

The Church of England is expected to pave the way for the consecration of women bishops when it publishes final proposals this week. The legislation, to be debated by the General Synod in July, will trigger a departure of some traditionalists to the Roman Catholic Church.

Sources told The Times that the legislation for women bishops would include no statutory provision for opponents. Instead, arrangements to allow traditionalist parishes to opt out of the oversight of a woman bishop are expected to be included in a voluntary code of practice. This will not be enough to placate a small number of leading Anglo-Catholics who fear that female bishops will “taint” the historic catholicity of the Church of England.The proposed legislation is to be sent to members of the synod on Friday.

Three Anglo-Catholic bishops in the Church of England, including the Bishop of Fulham, the Right Rev John Broadhurst, met advisers of the Pope in Rome last week to discuss setting up an “Ordinariate” in England under the scheme announced by Benedict XVI for disaffected Anglicans.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7114628.ece

The blog Thinking Anglicans has a round-up of coverage and responses to Lord Carey’s call over the weekend for religious discrimination cases to be presided over by special panels, because obviously the judges (often Christian!) who keep deciding against them are biased and prejudiced etc etc.

There are some interesting comments, presumably from a largely Christian readership, below the coverage:

Why does it always boil down to GLBT people? Even if you concede – which I vehemently don’t – arguments about the biblical inappropriateness of same-sex intimate relationships, no Lord Spiritual ever gets his miter a-kilter over usurers, over those who covet and steal that which is not theirs, over other violators of various biblical injunctions.

A sex therapist fired for not willing to counsel gay couples. A civil servant fired or moved for not wanting to fulfill her registrar duties when it comes to civil partnerships. And, for this, Lord Carey thinks the barbarians are at the gates, and the End of Civilization cometh? If the therapist had refused to counsel an Asian couple and been fired, no one would take notice. If the civil servant had been fired for refusing to marry inter-racial couples, Lord Carey would be unmoved.

http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/004320.html