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British Humanist Association: Reports

My Lords, with a general election in which reform of this House will undoubtedly feature only a few weeks away, discussion of the two British Humanist Association reports published in 2007 is pertinent. The first, entitled Quality and Equality: Human Rights, Public Services and Religious Organisations, provides us with a marker to calibrate the deterioration over the past three years in establishing greater equality in the world of employment. The second, entitled The Case for Secularism: A Neutral State in an Open Society, can guide us in that future reform of the House of Lords and the role of the church within it. It is undeniable that in its present form, with 26 seats reserved for the Church of England Bishops, the House of Lords presents an odd face to the outside world. It is interesting to note that even within the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion, only England still insists on an established church. This is a problem. As the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, warned some eight years ago in your Lordships’ House, when this subject was last debated, ""it is as bad for a Church to be seen as enmeshed in the state as for the state to be seen giving privileged eminence to a Church".—[Official Report, 22/5/02; col. 770.]" Regrettably, in the intervening years the Church of England has continued unwarrantedly to enjoy and increase its privileges within the state—in education, in employment practices, law and public broadcasting—as statutory public services continue to be contracted out to religious organisations. The consequences have been to imperil the take-up of public services and to encourage discrimination against users of such services and against employees who owe allegiance to another religion or to none at all. Most egregious has been the discrimination offered to the gay community. Career prospects have stalled for some attached to the wrong religion or to no religion at all. Religious harassment has had an open goal to shoot at, while the status of religious organisations has been undeservedly advanced under the cover of the public purse. Uneconomic duplication in the provision of services is a constant danger, as is the division fostered within local communities by the separatist approach of the religious organisations using public money. In the current Equality Bill, for instance, the Government still ponder giving religious organisations the power to discriminate against gays, non-believers and believers of other faiths who apply for lay positions. The hesitancy over the sensible amendment from my noble friend Lord Alli, which would allow religious groups to conduct civil partnerships in their own places of worship if they so wish, is a further example of bowing to church pressure. In the Children, Schools and Families Bill, religious groups have seemingly wrested back the control to teach children their versions of sex education. The Government’s feeble sticking plaster of a "balanced approach" will hardly dilute the ingrained homophobia and antipathy to sex redolent in the teaching practices of too many of our religious schools. Seventh-Day Adventists, for example, can still freely teach that abortion is a sin to be tolerated only in exceptional circumstances, like a pregnancy arising from rape. It is the lack of clarity and consistency in the teaching of sex education that continues to maintain our unwelcome reputation as being at the bottom of the class in Europe for unwanted teenage pregnancies. It now appears that believing in a religion privileges those who have broken the law. A custodial sentence was recently set aside because the prisoner was deemed to have a greater sense of right and wrong, born of his religious belief. The fact that three out of four prison inmates declare themselves to be religious undermines that partialist philosophy. Astonishingly, the BBC found itself taken to task by a member of the most recent Church of England Synod for failing to support religious broadcasting. This inventive thought was suborned by the evidence of the rampant but wholly unjustified doubling of religious output by the BBC. The new fad for identifying the religious allegiances of the contributors to "Any Questions"—three Roman Catholics and one Church of England on last Friday’s edition—as well as the scheduling of two "thoughts for the day" each morning also scotch that myth. Indeed, the shame of the continued ban on humanists contributing to "Thought for the Day" is only intensified by that privilege being afforded to the Pope, an offer masterminded by the unabashed Catholic Mark Thompson, D-G of the BBC. I turn to the second BHA report, outlining support for a secular state in an open society. Some years ago Prince Charles suggested that when he came to inherit, he would like to be known as the defender of faiths. While overlooking humanists, he at least was recognising the very changed nature of contemporary Britain. We now live in a multicultural and multireligious Britain, where other religions challenge the established Church of England. The noble Lord, Lord Morgan, reminded us in our 2002 debate that the Church of England is a mere fraction within a fraction, even within the declining Christian communion. It still has a position in our nation and society, however, that is wholly incommensurate with its numbers, and nowhere more so than in your Lordships’ House, where 26 privileged places are preserved. Other religions are gradually being represented here, including by our colleagues from the Muslim community and, more lately, the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, representing part of the Jewish community. The House of Lords is becoming secularised accidentally. I believe that in the future reform of the Lords, all privileged places should go. If religious groups are to be present, they should be chosen in line with their current strengths, and humanists and atheists should also be acknowledged, given the growing numbers of our tradition—Professor Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough spring to mind—indeed their wider interests would make a valuable contribution to this House. I believe that the time has come for a secular state within an open society—an idea which has the support of many humanists and many among the Anglican Communion. Many Anglicans share the view that their history and tradition cannot alone justify their traditional privileges. These people yearn to proselytise Anglicanism with modern and contemporary arguments, competing against other religions and none. The BHA case for secularism argues that we can no longer base society on a shared religion, but rather on shared values. A secular state, which is most avowedly not an atheist state, seeks to protect the rights of all citizens to hold their own beliefs, religious or otherwise. A secular state is assuredly an open and an even-handed state in which people’s participation in public institutions does not depend on their religious or non-religious convictions. Can a society function without shared values? I suggest that one possible answer is to distinguish between the public and the private space. In the public space lie the shared values of tolerance—a willingness to accept differences and to allow others to pursue their own ideas and ideals—the political values of equal citizenship, freedom of speech and assembly, the right to vote and stand for public office, social justice, equal opportunity and the right to a fair share of the common resources of society. All these make up a wide consensus. Still, some may demure from this apple pie and motherhood, but I believe that even those opposed to the summary of liberal values might nevertheless welcome some formulation of the secular state, where they can reserve the right to proselytise in the public square that which they celebrate in the private circle. This formulation provides autonomy, letting people make their own choices about the most important things in their own lives. Secondly, it provides fairness to those who might otherwise—