We must separate church and state
In England, our constitution is blighted by an ancient theocratic hangover. Time to sweep it away and bring England into the 21st century!
We’re not Iran, but our constitution does have a theocratic structure. I think this holds us back, impedes us, like an old invisible injury. Like a subtle poison in the blood, it quietly harms us. Most people seem unaware of it. Even Hazel Blears, who recently said that we are a secular democracy.
Yesterday a seminar was held at the UCL Constitution Unit to mark the launch of a book on the issue by Bob Morris. Church and State in 21st Century Britain is a meticulous analysis of the situation. No such study can be entirely neutral, but Morris seems to have no religious agenda; his aim is to point out that establishment is at odds with the principle of religious equality, making it “anomalous to the point of unsustainability”. He is wary of the term “disestablishment” but he does advocate the big reform – ending the monarch’s need to be Anglican.
In his presentation yesterday he said that reform would ideally come from the church itself. Otherwise it is likely to have reform thrust upon it, in a way it cannot control. So it is in its interest to lead the process. He acknowledged that here is little sign of this willingness as yet, but seemed hopeful that a fresh look at the issue might change that.
In the discussion that followed three Anglican representatives spoke. Each offered a slightly different flavour of the old conservative line: that it would be perilous to mess with our ancient constitution, that it might unleash an aggressive secularism. None admitted that there was a problem here that had to be faced.
These speakers confirmed my view that the Church of England looks very nice and liberal from a slight distance but at heart its philosophy is high Tory: tradition is sacred, those who want to tamper with it are dangerously shallow. I know of almost no Anglican who has said anything different, who admits Morris’ basic point that reform is necessary, so that we can have a constitution we can really affirm, and participate in, rather than an alienating relic from the imperial past. One exception is the Oxford theologian George Pattison, who has recently called for a more honest debate within the church (in an article in The Church Times). It is worth noting that Rowan Williams has failed to start the debate; he has allowed the reactionary position to become stronger – a piece of major political cowardice.
Might reform come from elsewhere? Of course the secularist lobbies advocate it, but in a sense this is unhelpful: it makes it seem an atheist cause, and so strenghtens the hand of the Anglicans, who scarify with the prospect of a Dawkinsish tyranny. Ideally it would come from a political movement that was also Christian, led by a new Cromwell figure.
Why is disestablishment not a mainstream liberal cause? It baffles me frankly. Why is it hardly ever mentioned by the columnists of this paper, except as a quick aside? To my mind it is the very essence of liberalism, that church and state should be separate. This is the English revolution that we have never quite had. It is the way to a new sort of political participation, a new sense that we are citizens of a modern state. Other aspects of constitutional change, and other liberal causes such as CCTV, DNA database and ID Cards are pathetically small-fry compared to this.
Now Christians start to burn books!
A Christian group in Wisconsin is actually suing for the right to engage in a public book burning to destroy copies of a book they consider to be “explicitly vulgar, racial [sic], and anti-Christian”:
The offending book is Francesca Lia Block’s Baby Be-Bop, a young adult novel in which a boy, struggling with his homosexuality, is beaten up by a homophobic gang. The complaint, which according to the American Library Association also demands $120,000 (£72,000) in compensatory damages for being exposed to the book in a display at West Bend Community Memorial Library, was lodged by four men from the Christian Civil Liberties Union.
There was also another group that just fought to move the book into the adult section of the library, which calls itself the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries. The Christian Civil Liberties Union, the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries–aren’t those exactly the kind of Orwellian names you’d expect pro-fascist, anti-free speech organizations to call themselves?
They’re charging that the book’s physical presence in their local library caused them mental and emotional distress and that its alleged derogatory language “put one’s life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike.” Wow! That must be some book to actually put lives in jeopardy. And since this book has been around for 15 years now, I would love to hear about all the lives who were destroyed by its mere existence.
The West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries claims they wish. . .
“. . .to protect children from accessing them without their parents’ knowledge and supervision.”
The old “protect them from themselves” gambit–a fascist classic. Fortunately, the library committee stuck to their guns by keeping the books in the young adult section. But the other group decided they wanted to burn the books.
“The word ‘faggot’ is very derogatory and slanderous to all males,” the suit continues. “Using the word ‘Nigger’ is dangerously offensive, disrespectful to all people. These words can permeate violence.” The suit also claims that the book “constitutes a hate crime, and that it degrades the community”, but surely their intended burning of this particular book is a greater offense.
“They’ve filed a claim against the city of West Bend and the city has to decide if it is valid,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, acting director of the ALA’s office for intellectual freedom. “Their insurance company is evaluating the claim, but I would be very surprised if they found any merit in it … Should they find any merit in this claim, we would certainly support the library in fighting it.”
The legal challenge follows a lengthy campaign by some West Bend residents to restrict access to teenage books they deemed sexually explicit from library shelves, which was eventually thrown out at the start of June.
“Obviously we were really pleased with the outcome to that – there was a unanimous vote to keep the books in the library and we thought the matter should be over,” said Larry Siems, director of the Freedom to Write programme at PEN America.
Siems said there was clearly “a bit of theatre” in the lawsuit which followed. “They’ve filed a lawsuit which has little possibility of going forward legally, and they’re asking for damages which include the right to burn a book. It does seem more to gain publicity than a real serious challenge.” But, he said, PEN remained very concerned about the impulse behind the claim. “This is a group of people trying aggressively to rid the library of these books and that’s very serious – it needs to be fought.”
The claimants, he said, “have a right to continue to express their views, and this in a way is a creative attempt to express those views”. But it’s “also a dangerous game when you’re talking about something like book burning, calling on the law to burn books. It’s certainly completely un-American, and if they paused, I think they would agree.”
Witches’ coven claims religious persecution after church hall ban
Sandra Davis, the “high priestess” of Crystal Cauldron group in Stockport, Greater Manchester, said she was shocked to be told that the pagan group was not considered to be compatible with the church’s “ethos”.
Mrs Davis, 61, booked Our Lady’s Social Club in Shaw Heath, Stockport, for the group’s annual “Witches Ball” due to be held in October.
She hoped to attract up to 150 people to the social evening offering a buffet dinner and music from an Abba tribute band and selected the hall because it had disabled access.
But when she went to pay for the booking she was told by the manager that the Diocese of Shrewsbury, which owns the centre, had refused permission for the group to use it.
“It makes you think that there is still a little bit of that attitude from the past of the Catholics wanting to burn witches,” she said.
“I thought we had made progress, tat we could accept other people’s religious paths.”
Mrs Davis, who has 11 grandchildren, gave up her former job in a forklift truck company to set up the Crystal Cauldron, where she is known as “Amethyst Selmeselene”.
Based in a former post office, the 30-strong group runs a new age bookshop and sells cloaks, jewellery and medieval costumes on the internet as well as organising a children’s group called “Little Crystals”.
It also supports a local cat sanctuary as its designated charity.
Mrs Davis has since secured a new venue for the ball which she hopes will become an annual fixture in the town.
“It is a full family thing and it is a posh do too,” she said. “It is evening dress or fancy dress, last year most of us went in medieval costumes.”
The Reverend John Joyce, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic diocese of Shrewsbury, said that it was out of the question for a pagan group to use its facilities.
“Parish centres under our auspices let their premises on the understanding users and their organisations are compatible with the ethos and teachings of the Catholic church,” he said.
“In this instance, we aren’t satisfied such requirements are met.”
Curriculum losing out to prayers
THE amount of time spent on prayers and religion means there is less time available for the rest of the curriculum at the North Dublin Muslim School, the school inspection report found.
Th
e report says that external personnel are employed by the school to teach religion. They work in all classrooms for 45 minutes each day, teaching the Koran and Arabic — in other national schools the normal period is 30 minutes a day.
Pupils in middle and senior classes also attend prayers for 20 minutes each day with additional time required for preparation, the report says.
However, the report says all of this eats into the delivery time for the national school curriculum.
The inspectors say it is imperative that the integrity of the school day be maintained and that the suggested minimum timeframe be adhered to for delivery of the six curricular areas as advocated in the Primary School Curriculum.
It notes that some of the teachers absent themselves from class during these times.
They say it is essential that the pupils are supervised at all times by qualified and recognised teaching staff and that class teachers continue to have teaching contact with pupils throughout the school day.
The board has been told it must ensure that pupils are adequately supervised at all times by qualified teachers.
Muslims angry at school’s sex education plans
British Muslims have reacted in anger at plans by a school in London to teach children about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history.
Muslim leaders are now calling on the council in Leytonstone, east London, not to prosecute parents for withdrawing their children from the lessons.
A spokesman said that up to 30 parents may face prosecution for withdrawing their children from school, disobeying the teachers in the school, “simply to secure a decent moral upbringing for their children.”
As part of the school’s plans for the lessons, they included a special adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet retitled Romeo and Julian as well as fairytales and stories changed to show men falling in love with men.
“Rather than filling the heads of impressionable boys and girls with fatuous drivel about gay penguins, schools should be ashamed of the fact that they are sending children out into the world barely able to read, write and add up properly,” said Iftikhar Ahmad of the London School of Islamics.
He accused teachers of promoting tolerance, but did not tolerate the parents’ views that their children were too young to be taught about gay relationships.
“This isn’t education, its cultural fascism,” said Mr Ahmad.
He added: “ If the local council does decide to go through with a prosecution, it would be in line with the government’s approach to the Muslim community. Muslims who believe homosexuality is a sin would be labelled as extremists.
“Liberal totalitarianism is a growing phenomenon in Britain and the west in general but many people will be shocked that the school can override a parent’s view of what’s appropriate or inappropriate to teach their children.”
He said that the only solution was state-funded Muslim schools with bi-lingual Muslim teachers as role models.
Christian Murdered for Drinking Tea from a Muslim Cup
When Ishtiaq went to pay for his tea, the owner noticed that he was wearing a necklace with a cross and grabbed him, calling for his employees to bring anything available to beat him for violating a sign posted on the stall warning non-Muslims to declare their religion before being served. Ishtiaq had not noticed the warning sign before ordering his tea, as he ordered with a group of his fellow passengers.
The owner and 14 of his employees beat Ishtiaq with stones, iron rods and clubs, and stabbed him multiple times with kitchen knives as Ishtiaq pleaded for mercy.
The other bus passengers and other passers-by finally intervened and took Ishtiaq to the Rural Health Center in the village. There Ishtiaq died as a result of spinal, head, and chest injuries. The doctor who took Ishtiaq’s case said that Ishtiaq had excessive internal and external bleeding, a fractured skull, and brain injuries.
Makah Tea Stall is located on the Sukheki-Lahore highway and is owned by Mubarak Ali, a 42-year-old Muslim. A correspondent visited the tea stall and observed that a large red warning sign with a death’s head symbol was posted which read, “All non-Muslims should introduce their faith prior to ordering tea. This tea stall serves Muslims only.” The warning also threatened anyone who violated the rule with “dire consequences.”
A neighboring shopkeeper said on condition of anonymity that Ali is a fundamentalist Muslim and all his employees are former students of radical Muslim madrassas (seminaries). Ali kept separate sets of cooking-ware for Muslims and non-Muslims at his stall.
Ishtiaq’s family said that they immediately reported the incident to the police and filed a case against Ali. Though the police registered their case, no action has been taken to apprehend Ali or his employees.
When asked the Pindi Bhatian Saddar police station about the murder, the police chief said that investigations were underway and they are treating it as a faith-based murder by biased Muslims. When asked about Ali’s warning sign, police chief Muhammad Iftikhar Bajwa claimed that he could not take it down.
However, the constitution of Pakistan explicitly prohibits such discrimination, and the police could take strong action against the warning sign. But because the police are also Muslim, Ishtiaq’s father claims that they are being derelict in their duties to prosecute the murderers who are still freely operating the tea stall.
Parents choose religion over their child’s life
OREGON CITY, Oregon (AP) – An Oregon judge has rejected defense claims of selective and vindictive prosecution in the manslaughter trial of a couple whose 15-month-old daughter died of pneumonia while they prayed for her recovery.
Clackamas County Judge Steven Maurer told lawyers for Carl and Raylene Worthington that the couple had a duty to seek medical care for their daughter, Ava, despite their religious beliefs. A state medical examiner has said the toddler, who died in March 2008, could have been treated with antibiotics.
The Worthingtons are members of the Followers of Christ – a small Oregon City church that advocates spiritual healing instead of medical care.
If convicted, the couple faces up to 10 years in prison.
Muslim faith school fails to meet standards
A TEAM of experts will be sent in to monitor the overhaul of a primary school which has been strongly criticised in the most damning inspection report ever issued by the Department of Education.
The unprecedented move follows a litany of shocking revelations contained in an inspection report into the North Dublin Muslim School in Cabra, which is housed in the former School for the Deaf.
Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe last night said the standards of management, teaching and learning at the school were “unacceptable” and that child protection policies were “inadequate”.
The findings — the most critical of nearly 3,000 inspection reports issued by the department — are set to cause alarm within Ireland’s 32,000-strong Muslim community.
The report — seen by the Irish Independent — will be officially published tomorrow. It reveals:
- Taxpayers’ money given to the school in the form of grants since it opened in 2001 is unaccounted for;
- The quality of teaching of English, Irish and maths is “poor” or “very poor“, with teacher morale “very poor“;
- Sanitary facilities are “inadequate;
- The school is in breach of several pieces of legislation;
- The school refuses to implement the music curriculum.
Separate correspondence, also seen by the Irish Independent, reveals that the school failed to pay around €37,000 it owed to the department.
To recover some of the money, the department withheld payment of the capitation grant in June 2008 and threatened to do so again recently.
Critical
The patron of the school, Imam Yahya Al-Hussein, said the report was too critical and a bit “over the top”.
He said the current board of management, appointed last November, inherited the problems and was trying to solve them. The former board chairperson Shahzad Ahmed was unavailable for comment last night.
The draft inspection report says that no financial accounts are available since the school opened and there is little physical evidence of where state grants have been spent.
The current acting principal (the fourth since it opened) has still not completed the probationary process. All the mainstream teaching staff resigned last June and the board made 12 new appointments. No member of the teaching staff had completed the probationary period at the time of the inspection on November 28 — only four of them are fully qualified within the Irish system.
The report says that the school is unable to provide support for newly qualified teachers or those experiencing professional difficulties.
Several policies that relate to the care, welfare and protection of children have not been drawn up. The school is in breach of the Education Welfare Act (2000) and of the Rules for National Schools.
The report says there are no policies on attendance; child protection; social personal and health education and on the duties of special needs assistants. The Relationships and Sexuality Education programme has not been implemented. There are no plans for assessment; for English as an additional language; for visual arts, physical education; drama and music.
The North Dublin school is one of two schools catering for the Muslim community. Pupil numbers there have fallen significantly since 2006, the report says. However, the report found inconsistencies between class roll books, the attendance book and the register of pupils.
Since 2006 almost 3,000 inspection reports have been published by the department on its website. There are two kinds of reports: single subjects; and Whole School Evaluation (WSE) such as that prepared for the North Dublin Muslim National School.
The inspectors review the quality of school management, school planning and the quality of learning and teaching. There have been a few very critical reports, mainly at post-primary level, but none come anywhere near this one in terms of the directness of the language and the criticism.
It represents a significant step change in the approach taken by the department whose lawyers checked and double checked the report before agreeing to its publication.
Watch out – that engineer could be a terrorist!
WHO becomes a terrorist? An MI5 report leaked to London newspaper The Guardian in August 2008 concluded that there is no easy way to identify those who become involved in terrorism in the UK because there is “no single pathway to violent extremism” and that “it is not possible to draw up a typical profile of the ‘British terrorist‘ as most are ‘demographically unremarkable’”.
The extraordinary lengths the German authorities went to after 9/11 to track down potential terrorists are a stark example of how useless profiling can be. They collected and analysed data on over 8 million individuals living in Germany. These people were categorised by demographic characteristics: male, aged 18 to 40; current or former student; Muslim; legally resident in Germany; and originating from one of 26 Islamic countries. Then they were sorted into three further categories: potential to carry out a terrorist attack (such as a pilot’s licence); familiarity with locations that could be targets (such as working in airports, nuclear power plants, chemical plants, the rail service, labs and other research institutes); and studying the German language at the Goethe Institute.
With the help of these categories authorities whittled the 8 million down to just 1689 individuals, who were then investigated, one by one. Giovanni Capoccia, an Oxford-based political scientist who analysed this case, reported that not one of them turned out to be a threat. All the real Islamic terrorists arrested in Germany through other investigations were not on the official “shortlist” and did not fit the profile.
Does it follow, as some scholars now think, that anyone, given the right conditions and the wrong friendships, can end up joining a terrorist group? Not entirely. We found that engineers are three to four times as likely as other graduates to be present among the members of violent Islamic groups in the Muslim world since the 1970s. Using a sample of 404 Islamic militants worldwide (with a median birth date in 1966), we tracked down the education of 284. Of these, 26 had less than secondary education, 62 completed secondary education (including madrasas), and 196 had higher education, whether completed or not. Even if none of the cases where we lack data had higher education, the share of those with higher education would be a hefty 48.5 per cent.
The next move was to find out what they had studied – and we tracked down 178 of our 196 cases. The largest single group were engineers, with 78 out of 178, followed by 34 taking Islamic studies, 14 studying medicine, 12 economics and business studies, and 7 natural sciences. The over-representation of engineers applies to all 13 militant groups in the sample and to all 17 nationalities, with the exception of Saudi Arabia.
Our finding holds up quite well in another sample of 259 Islamic extremists who are citizens or residents of 14 western, mostly European, countries, and who have recently come to the attention of the authorities for carrying out or plotting a terrorist attack in the west. Although this sample contains far fewer people with higher education than the older members of the first group, nearly 6 out of 10 of those with higher education are engineers.
We also collected data on non-Muslim extremists. We found that engineers are almost completely absent from violent left-wing groups, while they are present among violent right-wing groups in different countries. Out of seven right-wing leaders in the US whose degrees we were able to establish, four were engineers: for example, Richard Butler, the founder of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, was an aeronautical engineer, and Wilhelm Schmitt, leader of the right-wing, extreme anti-government, pro-localism group known as the Sheriff’s Posse Comitatus, was an engineer with Lockheed Martin. Among the total membership of the Islamic groups, however, the over-representation is still much higher.
This could be a coincidence: if the group founders are engineers they would also be more likely to recruit other engineers via their educational or professional networks. This explanation only works up to a point. It does not explain why engineers are over-represented in groups in which the founders were not engineers, or why the founders of groups that were not in contact with each other were often engineers.
Why engineers? Everybody’s first reaction is that they are recruited for their technical proficiency in bomb-making and communications technology, but there is no evidence for this. A tiny elite tends to do the technical work in these groups, and jihadist recruitment manuals focus on a personality profile rather than technical skills.
So we are left with two hypotheses: either certain social conditions impinge more on engineers than on other graduates, or engineers are more likely to have certain personality traits that make radical Islamism more attractive to them. Our best guess is that the phenomenon derives from a combination of these two factors.
With engineers in the Middle East we have very intelligent, ambitious students who have found it difficult to find professional satisfaction, both individually and collectively in their desire to help their countries develop. Graduates of very selective degree programmes, they may have endured relatively greater frustration in a stagnant and authoritarian environment.
The fact that engineers are not over-represented in Saudi Arabia offers some support for this, for, alone among the countries of origin of terrorists, Saudi Arabia has had a shortage of engineers and has thus offered better employment opportunities. However, even in western countries and south-east Asia, where labour market opportunities are better for all graduates, engineers appear relatively more attracted to violent Islamist groups than other graduates. Why is this?
We reckon that something else is going on, something at the individual level, that is, relating to cognitive traits. According to polling data, engineering professors in the US are seven times as likely to be right-wing and religious as other academics, and similar biases apply to students. In 16 other countries we investigated, engineers seem to be no more right-wing or religious than the rest of the population, but the number of engineers combining both traits is unusually high. A lot of piecemeal evidence suggests that characteristics such as greater intolerance of ambiguity, a belief that society can be made to work like clockwork, and dislike of democratic politics which involves compromise, are more common among engineers.
So the bottom line is that while the probability of a Muslim engineer becoming a violent Islamist is minuscule, it is still be between three and four times that for other graduates.
Can religion really save the world?
Tony Blair is not the first person to think that religion will decide the fate of the modern world.
“The 21st century”, said André Malraux, at the height of the Cold War, “will be religious or it will not be at all.” But can they be right? When we look round the world today, the presence of religion in any conflict seems to make it more intractable, and bitter. Our instinct is to take the principle out of conflicts and turn them into pragmatic disputes, susceptible to reasonable resolution.
That is certainly the approach the Tony Blair’s “peace process” took in Northern Ireland. Many people will feel that the answer to religious wars is less religion, not more of the “right” sort. But there are two problems with this approach. The first is that secularism is losing prestige in the places where wars are actually under way. There’s not enough of it about to quench the fires. The second is a very simple question: if secular common sense doesn’t start disputes, what makes us think it can end them? Perhaps the kinds of dispute for which people will kill, and die, will always have a religious dimension.
Vicar’s ban for sending sex texts
A Church in Wales vicar has been banned from office for sending text messages of a “sexual and intimate nature” to a teenage girl.
The Reverend David Waters, vicar of Gelligaer, near Caerphilly, went before a disciplinary tribunal last year.
The tribunal recognised the 61-year-old was “suffering from a mental illness” when he sent the texts.
The ban is to remain in force until he provides medical opinion he is no longer at risk of repeat behaviour.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Church in Wales confirmed: “The Reverend David Waters was referred to the disciplinary tribunal of the Church in Wales, in respect of an allegation of conduct giving just cause for scandal or offence committed during his time as an incumbent in the parish of Gelligaer.
“Having admitted the offence, Mr Waters has been inhibited (prevented) from holding a licence or obtaining permission to officiate in any diocese in the Church in Wales.”
‘Scandalous and offensive’
The Church in Wales said that at the Cardiff tribunal last October Mr Waters admitted, through his solicitors, that he had sent texts to the girl on various days before 31 May 2007.
A Church in Wales statement read: “The matter was heard in Cardiff on 31 October 2008 when, through his solicitors, the respondent admitted the offence that on various days before the 31 May 2007 he sent to a teenage female person under 18 years of age, inappropriate text messages, in that they contained words or phrases that were unseemly and of a sexual and intimate nature. He further accepted that such conduct was scandalous and offensive.”
The ban will stay in place until he can provide the written medical evidence to a bishop that he is no longer at risk of repeat behaviour.
At that stage, the church said, it would be up to the individual bishop to decide whether the ban should be lifted.
The church said it felt the ban was sufficient punishment, as no criminal offence was deemed to have taken place, and the incidents did not prompt a police investigation.
“However, it is clear that the Church in Wales took this matter very seriously, which is why he was suspended from his post in 2007, and the matter was referred to the tribunal,” added a spokesperson.
Technically, Mr Waters still holds the title of priest, as he has not been “defrocked”.
However, the tribunal’s decision means he is unable to officiate in any churches that come under a Church of Wales diocese until the ban is lifted.
Rabbi claims Jews are as bad as Catholics for Child Abuse
REFORM rabbi Brian Fox has made allegations of child abuse in Orthodox Jewish institutions.
After having qualified remarks he made in a recent sermon that Jewish society was “worse” in this respect than others, he said at Menorah Synagogue’s Ethics Seminar on Tuesday: “What we do know is the more we look, the more we find.
“It seems that institutions run by the Catholic Brothers in Ireland are by no means alone.”
He claimed that the head of a North Manchester yeshiva used to use a strap to beat his pupils and said that even his own grandfather used his sewing machine strap during the Pesach seder.
Rabbi Fox, formerly of Australia, said that the chairman of the Melbourne Jewish community had been proud of the fact that he had “beaten to a pulp” his child for breaking Shabbat. The child had had to be hospitalised.
Rabbi Fox added: “There is a cabinet in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem which displays instruments used for discipline in East European yeshivot.”
But he maintained that this “spare the rod, spoil the child” attitude was at odds with real Jewish values.
He said: “Triage is fundamentally incompatible with Jewish values and Jewish law. All life is sacred. It is in the values of Jewish education that we see Judaism’s attitude to caring for the child.”
Nevertheless Rabbi Fox claimed that more than 300,000 Israeli children were believed to be abused or were “potential victims of abuse”.
He said: “If we admit the problem, we are more open to addressing it.”
But emeritus professor of child health Sir Robert Boyd, who felt that media reaction had created a “numerically unbalanced” attitude to abuse incidents, queried the Israeli statistics.
He said: “Some of the incidents could be of slightly inappropriate behaviour. There is far too hysterical a reaction. A generation has been damaged by phobia of neighbours.”
Professor of child psychiatry Jonathan Green referred to “classical scapegoating within Jewish biblical tradition” with its current finger-pointing at professionals.
This, he said, pushed away “painful realities by loading them on someone and expelling them”.
While he admitted that evidence suggested that “partaking in communal religious practice” improved “social, family and thus child health,” he said he was concerned about religious conservatism and fundamentalism, which frowned on single and same sex parents.
Social worker Terry Tallis complained about the current scapegoating of her profession because of recent scandals.
She said: “Doctors are not expected to cure all their patients. Teachers are not expected to have all pupils pass all their exams. It is impossible to protect all children at risk when they are in the care of their parents.”
Adoptee Ruth Cohen who herself adopted two children, said: “Adoption has become almost a dirty word.
“Many more children should be taken away from drunken and drugged parents and given to people who can give them love. Love is more important than hereditary.”
Mrs Tallis agreed and complained about the ban of placing children for adoption with families of a different race.
Brown adjusts FOI to allow greater secrecy for royals
In a classic piece of doublespeak that would have made George Orwell proud our government has stated that secrecy is required to ensure the impartiality of the head of state.
Gordon Brown has won a few muted accolades for his modest new reform agenda announced in the Commons yesterday. What has attracted less attention was his remark that “there will be protection of Royal Family and Cabinet papers as part of strictly limited exemptions” while informing the Commons of his plans to reduce the 30 year rule to a 20 year rule.
The new restrictions will remove all FOI access to documents relating to the royal family, whereas at the present time they are subject to a public interest test. This is a serious challenge to those, like Republic, who want to hold the monarchy to account and challenge their position in our constitution.
There is absolutely no defence for this reversal of FOI laws. The government clearly agrees, as it has resorted to an extraordinary bit of doublespeak to explain the change. In a statement sent to BBC blogger Martin Rosenbaum, the Ministry of Justice said:
To ensure the constitutional position and political impartiality of the Monarchy is not undermined, the relevant exemption in the Freedom of Information Act will be made absolute for information relating to communications with the Royal Household that is less than 20 years’ old. After that point – if the relevant Member of the Royal Family is still alive – then the exemption will continue to apply until five years after their death – on an absolute basis for the Sovereign and the Heir to the Throne, and on a qualified basis for other members of the Royal Family.
So the government believes that impartiality and accountability require secrecy. Of course the opposite is true, impartiality needs openness, transparency and scrutiny – it needs to be demonstrated, to be seen to be done, not just promised.
This move clearly has nothing to do with impartiality, it’s to do with protecting the interests of the Windsors. No doubt a lot of royal lobbying has gone on over the past several months to secure this change.
The big question mark is how far will this exemption extend? Will we not be told how Andrew spends his time and our money in his role with UKTI? Will we not be told how many times Charles writes to ministers in an attempt to influence policy? Will there be a block on knowing if Harry and William are abusing their positions to gain favour in the military? Their finances are already opaque as it is, what chances will there be for full disclosure under the new rules?
It all leaves us with one question in mind: what do they have to hide?
Census question on religion as “flawed” and discriminatory
During a debate in the House of Lords, speeches criticising the Census question on religion as flawed and contributing to discrimination against non-religious people. Lord Harrison and Lord Macdonald of Tradeston both contributed to the debate on public confidence in government statistics, raising a number of concerns about the question from a humanist perspective.
Lord Harrison, a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association (BHA), said he was ‘Appalled to learn that the ONS will keep the flawed 2001 question – “What is your religion?” – in the forthcoming 2011 census’. He argued that ‘This is a leading question…it not only overrepresents the religious in our country, but underrepresents the non-religious. It also fails because it confuses and conflates the concepts of belief and ethnicity…It is, indeed, arguably discriminatory under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2006.’
Lord Harrison suggested some improvements that could be made to improve the question but, failing significant changes, that the ‘question should be eliminated, especially in this flawed form.’
Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group, stated that ‘It undermines our confidence in the Office for National Statistics when [the Census] contradicts other authoritative surveys to declare that only 15 per cent of British people are non-religious’, and provided examples including the ‘ONS’s own Social Trends survey, which reported about the same proportion of people saying that they belonged to no religion as saying that they belonged to a Christian denomination’ and the British Social Attitudes Survey, which ‘reported that 69 per cent of people either did not claim membership of a religion or said that they never attended a religious service.’
Lord Macdonald highlighted that the question is really aimed to measure ethnicity and not religion: ‘The ONS wants to identify by stealth as many members as it can of two ethnic groups protected under race legislation, by asking its leading question on religion, which, it claims, “provides a reasonable proxy for Sikh and Jewish ethnic groups”.’
However, Lord Macdonald made clear that this was highly problematic, saying, ‘It matters because inaccurate data can lead to the misallocation of resources and public funds. It matters because misleading statistics can be used to argue the religious case for the expansion of faith schools, when some of the more divisive institutions discriminate against non-religious people in their staffing and admissions policy. It matters because more accurate statistics would offer reassurance to those who fear that their sceptical, tolerant, vaguely agnostic Britain is being defined and divided increasingly by religion. It matters because accurate statistics might have particular importance for the Equality Bill currently before Parliament, which would mandate public authorities to treat non-religious citizens equally and with the same respect as religious people.’
The Minister stated that he would respond to all questions asked in the debate.
The BHA has been campaigning to raise awareness of the wholly inaccurate measurement of the religiosity of the population by the Census question on religion and its very damaging effects, and for a change in the question.
Notes
For further comment or information, contact Naomi Phillips at on 
020 7079 3585
Read more about our campaign on the Census 2011 question on religion
Read the full debate on public confidence in government statistics
The British Humanist Association represents and supports the non-religious. It is the largest organisation in the UK campaigning for an end to religious privilege and to discrimination based on religion or belief, and for a secular state.
Humanists disappointed with Faith Foundation’s new education programme
The British Humanist Association (BHA) has today commented on the launch of a new global education programme from the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, ‘Face to Faith’.
Andrew Copson, BHA Director of Education and Public Affairs commented, ‘Given our own commitment to improving understanding and working with people with different beliefs, we support programmes that purport to encourage such dialogue and learning. However, it does seem that this programme may be exclusively for religious people, which would be a missed opportunity for real education about people from all different backgrounds, including non-religious young people throughout the world.’
‘In any case, it does seem ironic that the aims of this education programme to counter prejudice and tension and to increase awareness of people with different beliefs contradict the realities of British education policy during Mr Blair’s premiership. At that time, the government began to expand significantly the number of “faith schools”, while at the same time permitting them to discriminate widely in their admissions and employment on religious grounds, creating religious segregation of children and young people which we know contributes to social inequalities and damages community cohesion.’
Dutch Christian schools can refuse gay teachers
Christian schools are within their rights to refuse to employ gay teachers if homosexuality breaks school principles, the Nederlands Dagblad reports on Tuesday, quoting the government’s Council of State advisory body.
The paper says that confidential recommendations from council state that while anti-discrimination measures remain paramount, religious and other belief-based institutions ‘can impose specific demands under strict conditions’.
These conditions have to be ‘desirable, legitimate and just’ and show ‘good faith and loyalty’ to the religious principles, the council says.
The Netherlands has dozens of fundamentalist Christian schools which oppose homosexuality on Biblical principles. While funded by the government, they are run independently. Such schools may not discriminate but are free under European rules to determine their own ‘professional demands’ for teachers, the paper says.
Last month a strict Protestant primary school in Gelderland suspended a teacher because he was gay and lived with another man. That case is being taken to the equal opportunities commission.
Militant Atheist cleaners could sue Christian care homes over crucifixes
Church care homes could be forced to remove crucifixes from their walls in case they offend “atheist cleaners” under the new Equality Bill, Catholic bishops have warned.
The way the bill is written means non-Christians could sue for harassment if church authorities do not remove religious imagery, according to Monsignor Andrew Summersgill, general secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.
He said the bill, currently being examined by Parliament’s Equality Bill Committee, could have a “chilling effect” on religious expression.
Under the terms of the bill, harassment is defined as “unwanted conduct with the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity, or of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading or offensive environment”.
Bishops are concerned that religious authorities could be left in an impossible legal position, because under the bill it would be up to the employer to prove that displaying such an image did not amount to harassment or an employee.
In a written statement to the committee, Mgr Summersgill said: “A cleaner may be an atheist or of very different religious beliefs. Nonetheless if a cleaner found the crucifixes offensive there would be no defence in law against a charge of harassment.”
He added: “If this bill is serious about equality, everything possible must be done to avoid it having a chilling effect on religious expression and practice.”
The bishops are also worried that they Equality Bill will establish what they believe would amount to a “hierarchy of rights”, with the rights of homosexuals overruling those of religious expression.
The Monarchy – Constitutionally flawed
A hereditary head of state and a system based on sexism and religious discrimination have no place in 21st-century Britain
The government’s plans to update the monarchy are welcome so far as they go, but they do not go very far. Removing the sex and religious discrimination embedded in the British constitution – the 1701 Act of Settlement – is long overdue. But the anomaly remains: why should an important public office, that of head of state, be filled, not on merit or by public election, but exclusively by the descendants of a 17th-century German princess?
Under the British constitution, it is the Act of Settlement which determines upon whom the crown shall descend. It reads today as a blood curdling anti-catholic diatribe, providing that any monarch who holds communion with the Church of Rome or marries a papist shall be unthroned immediately. It creates for the UK a white Anglo-German protestant head of state – descending from the body of the Princess Sophia of Hanover according to the feudal principle of primogeniture, which requires inheritance down the male line. This is in blatant contravention of the Sex Discrimination Act whilst the requirement that the monarch be an Anglican amounts to discrimination on grounds of religion and is contrary to the Human Rights Act. Why would Charles be unfit to be king if he became a Methodist, or a Hindu or Muslim or Rastarfarian? It is wholly unacceptable to have this primitive bigotry embodied in the rules for choosing a head of state. The laws which define and protect the royal family breach at least four articles of the European convention on human rights. They are obsolete and obnoxious.
There are many other laws relating to the royal family, most of which are merely silly (although the monarch’s immunity from any legal action may not be amusing if you are run over by a royal motorcade): I do not really object to the law which vests property in every wild white swan in the realm in the Queen, nor to the fact that every whale, sturgeon or grampus landed in the kingdom belongs to her. Actually, the law states that the heads of what it terms “the royal fish” should belong to the King and their tails to the Queen. On vital matters like these, our constitution is very explicit.
It is much less clear about trifling details such as which party gets to form the government in a hung parliament. But there you go. If you don’t write down your rules, they will be invented or manipulated by those in power at the time. We have an Alice-in-Wonderland constitution which means what the prime minister wants it to mean.
Instead of a written constitution, we have a patchwork quilt of ancient and outdated laws, supplemented by the conventions and traditions made up as we merrily and royally roll along. As a result we have no independent head of state. The monarch now accepts the advice – that’s a euphemism for obeying the directions – of the government of the day. We lack an elected and respected figurehead, whose wisdom and integrity can provide moral leadership and independent political judgment in times of crisis. One inevitable result of choosing a head of state by inheritance rather than election is that in a crisis they may lack the confidence, popularity and independence needed to make any worthwhile contribution to the governance of Britain.
That is a pity, if only because the concept of an independent elected head of state is useful in a modern constitution, as one check on the power of a government which has no other checks and balances, other than a judiciary to keep it straight at the edges and a press to yap at its more obvious blunders. It has no supreme court to pull it up short for violating the guarantees made to its citizens by a bill of rights.
The head of state should be someone who embodies the outlook that most people want to see projected onto the world stage as representative of their nation: a figure available to serve as leader in cases of government crisis or collapse. Good luck apart, the British monarchy will not provide – by sexist, racist or religiously discriminatory descent – the calibre of leadership that can be provided by elections every seven years for head of state.
The head of state is an important public office. Its occupant must be consulted by the prime minister and is required to advise and to warn the government of the day. In an emergency, the head of state’s political savvy and street wisdom might prove crucial: in Trinidad in 1990, for example, the president had to run the country for a week and deal with a crisis when the prime minister and cabinet were held as hostages in parliament by Islamic terrorists. Australians will never forget the historic misjudgement of their governor-general (and de facto head of state) in 1975, when in the name of the Queen he sacked the Whitlam government. What would the Queen do in such circumstances in Britain, or if an election resulted in a deadlock? It is demeaning to democracy to have this office filled by descent from one massively wealthy upper class family, and not by merit (eg a head of state elected by parliament) or preferably, elected by the people. It is also dangerous: no one could seriously expect the Queen herself to handle the sort of emergency that occurred in Trinidad.
Tom Paine pointed out that a hereditary head of state was as ridiculous as a hereditary poet or a hereditary mathematician. He overlooked the entertainment potential in a hereditary royal family – one reason why every tabloid will fight to preserve ours. No government could envisage their abolition, at least in the Queen’s lifetime, although the constitution could be rewritten to give the monarchy only a very small part of it. They could run castles, hold royal garden parties at Buckingham Palace, take overseas trips to maintain Commonwealth ties, and boost the trade in whisky, jam and boot polish that comes “by royal appointment.” The monarchy could, in other words, be stripped of its political status whilst retaining its symbolic position. The head of state would be a president, elected every seven years to advise the government, inspire the people and open (and if necessarily close) the parliament.
If the monarchy is to have a fighting chance of playing a useful part in the governments of 21st century Britain, it will permit itself to be stripped of the Act of Settlement’s sex and religious discrimination, and accept a secular and minimal role as custodians of its own history, a role which should be clearly defined in a written constitution.
Priest flees ‘evil’ Portishead
A former Portishead priest says there is evil in the town akin to that which Sam and Frodo battled in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
The Reverend Clive Laws, who resigned from his job as assistant parish priest in April and left the town in 
July, is urging members of his former flock to pray in an attempt to oust “spiritual forces of wickedness”.
He sent the message to his ex-parishioners in the August edition of the Portishead parish magazine.
The magazine, produced by members of St Nicholas and St Peter’s churches, has a subscription of around 700 and is read by thousands of people across the town.
In his message he refers to the Tolkien classic, Return of the King – part of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy – where characters Sam and Frodo are on their way to Mount Doom to destroy the ring and break the power of Mordor, a place of evil next to the Mountain of Shadows.
He likens the story to activities in Portishead and urges members of the church to continue doing their good work to push away evil forces.
In his message he says: “There is an immense battle going on in Tolkien’s world and it is taking place at different levels.
“I believe that there is an immense battle going on here in Portishead, indeed all through the Gordano Valley.
“I believe that there are spiritual forces of wickedness that are fighting against the coming of Christ’s Kingdom in this place.
“They are intent on breaking and destroying all that is good and lovely and true.”
Rev Laws, a 58-year-old father of three, also urges his parishioners to pray for the ‘overthrowing of darkness.’
In his message he adds: “Keep on praying – please keep on praying.
“Pray for the overthrowing of darkness and for the breaking in of Christ’s just and gentle rule.”
When contacted by the Bristol Evening Post, Rev Laws said the wickedness prevailing in the town was one of the reasons he had chosen to leave Portishead.
Rev Laws cited examples of evilness including the case of Clevedon vicar Revd David Smith who was jailed for five years after being found guilty of sexually abusing young boys over a 30-year period.
He also said drugs and violence, like many towns across the UK, were problems being faced in Portishead.
Rev Law said “We’ve left Portishead earlier than we would have done and the wickedness is one of the factors which made me leave the town.
“We’d been in the town for 12 years and felt that our work here had come to an end.
“This was a message of farewell to the church family and not aimed at anyone individual.
“I want people to be aware that in this world there is a battle and not to lose heart whatever the struggles are and that good will overcome evil.
“This is a message of concern and love for the people that we loved in Portishead to urge them to stand up for what is good, lovely and true.
“Evil only prevails if good people do nothing. (or move away?)
“I want to encourage God’s people in Portishead to stand for and do what is good and lovely and true and to push back evil.”
Rev Laws, who worked at both St Nicholas and St Peter’s Church in Portishead, is now working for the Diocese of Chelmsford as priest in charge of Matching and the Lavers in Chelmsford, Essex.
A spokesman for the Diocese of Bath and Wells, said: “There is always a struggle between good and evil and the Christian church shines as a bright beacon in this world which is often dark.
“Portishead is no different from any other town in this regard. There are a lot of good people in Portishead working to service the community and their neighbours.
“Portishead is a fine town with many fine people and is served faithfully by an active and attractive church.”
Girls raped by Catholic priest told to stop ‘dwelling on old wounds’
A father who wants to confront the Pope about the rape of his daughters by a Catholic priest has reacted angrily to claims by a senior Australian bishop that he was dwelling crankily on old wounds.
Anthony Foster, who is flying from Britain to Sydney, is demanding that Benedict XVI and Australia’s senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, beg for forgiveness over the repeated rape of his daughters by the priest at a Melbourne primary school between 1988 and 1993.
Mr Foster said that his daughters had been devastated by the attacks. The elder, Emma, committed suicide this year, aged 26. Her younger sister, Katie, who became a heavy drinker, was hit by a car, aged 15, and now needs 24-hour care.
The Pope, who begins his official duties today at World Youth Day celebrations attended by an estimated 225,000 people, has promised to issue an apology this week to young people sexually abused by priests.
But when asked yesterday about an Australian Broadcasting Commission report on the Fosters’ complaints, the Church’s World Youth Day spokesman, Bishop Anthony Fisher, sounded dismissive. He said that he had not seen the report because he had been at the celebrations. “Happily, I think most of Australia was enjoying, delighting in the beauty and goodness of these young people,” he said, “rather than dwelling crankily, as a few people are doing, on old wounds.”
In an interview with an Australian website at Tokyo airport, Mr Foster rejected the comments and said that they showed “a complete lack of understanding of the victims, that there are so many people out there that really do have open wounds”. His wife, Christine, said that she was also deeply hurt: “There are no old wounds for victims. It is always current.”
The bishop’s comments forced Cardinal Pell — who was Archbishop of Melbourne at the time of the attacks — to try to repair the damage by making a public statement in which he said that he had been “very saddened” by Emma’s story.
She had endured “one of the worst things that can happen to a young woman”, he said. Cardinal Pell repeated his earlier apology to the family.
He did not say that he would meet Mr Foster, who insists that he will only accept the pontiff’s planned apology “if the Pope will embrace the notion of begging forgiveness from victims, and supporting them in every way possible and putting the resources of the Church behind that support”.
In his case Mr Foster said that it had taken eight years to win a financial settlement. He said that Cardinal Pell had introduced a system that imposed a A$50,000 (£24,000) cap on compensation. “It wasn’t just,” he said. Others had been offered as little as A$2,000. Emma and Katie’s attacker, Father Kevin O’Donnell, was convicted in 1996 of the abuse of 11 boys and a girl, aged 8 to 14, between 1946 and 1977.
Faith Schools in Wales get a FREE RIDE
A cross-party body voted to close a loophole denying those attending faith schools access to free transport, but refused to back similar proposals to strengthen the right to free travel to Welsh-medium schools.
The faith school vote in a cross-party committee was won with the backing of Labour AM Ann Jones, who said it put her in the “dreadful” position of having to choose between her conscience and party policy.
Her decision was applauded by Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan.
A final vote on the Assembly Government’s plans for school travel is expected in the autumn. It could put the Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition in the uncomfortable position of opposing amendments in support of Welsh-language rights put forward by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.
The amendment securing transport to faith schools was championed by Lib-Dem AM Kirsty Williams and Conservative AM Alun Cairns. They argued free travel should not be left to the discretion of local authorities.
Mr Cairns warned that at a time of tightening local government budgets councils may seek to make cutbacks.
Shortly before the vote, Labour’s Ms Jones said: “I’ve thought long and hard about this one and I think this is a matter of conscience. I’m quite upset that the Government can’t accept this amendment…
“You are right. It is a matter of social justice; it is a matter of equality. And this amendment, and the Government’s stance on this amendment has placed me in a dreadful situation.”
The Archbishop of Wales said: “I am delighted with the decision. It will enshrine in legislation the same privilege to learners in the faith sector without fear of discrimination. It will reassure parents that the Assembly values the contribution of faith communities in Wales to maintain education. I am pleased that Ann Jones recognises it for what it is: a matter of conscience and social justice and not a budgetary option.”
Deputy First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones had opposed the amendment, saying: “There is actually nothing in the Measure that reduces the powers of local authorities to support transport to schools on the basis of religious preference.”
He added: “If we were to legislate on the basis of an entitlement to have transport provided to a school that provides religious education which accords with the parental wish, we would also have to provide the same entitlement to those who did not want a faith-related education. And the problem is, once you have provided a duty, then the duty must be available to everybody.”
After the vote, Ms Williams said: “He was unable to adequately defend his reasoning and so the vote went against him – it’s as simple as that.” She added: “I am greatly disappointed that the amendment seeking to strengthen the travel provisions to Welsh-medium schools was voted down by the Government.”She said the obligation on local authorities to “promote access” to Welsh-medium education was too vague and did not guarantee safe, free transport.
Mr Cairns added: “We are not playing any more. We are writing laws and if we can’t offer absolute equal access to Welsh-medium parents as we are to English-medium pupils then I think we would have abdicated our responsibilities. The Assembly Government now faces two clear choices. Either they support our demand for those in Welsh- medium education to be given the same rights as those at English medium or faith schools, or they vote to reverse today’s decision on faith schools.”
A Welsh Assembly Government spokesman said: “We will now reflect on this matter before it returns to a debate during a full plenary session. To a greater or lesser extent, councils across Wales do provide such transport and we recently issued guidance encouraging them to continue using their discretion to provide transport to denominational schools.”
Church not ready for sexual abuse apology
The archbishop of Quebec City made the statement Thursday at the International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City after a small group of people protested outside the gathering, demanding the church acknowledge past abuses toward aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples.
The week-long congress is not the proper venue for such discussions, Ouellet said at a news conference. “We are in spiritual reflection and renewal. I think that from what we are living, there will be concrete actions afterwards with other people, with other initiatives,” he said.
The group of protestors demanded Ouellet apologize to all aboriginal people abused at residential schools, and other people who suffered abuse from priests.
France Bédard, who was among the protesters, said she feels a moral obligation to speak up for others.
She said she was assaulted by a priest as a young woman and became pregnant, but never saw justice because he died before his trial.
“I have to do something for these poor people who don’t have the capacity” to fight back, because they are lost in a world of alcoholism, drug abuse or self-destructive behaviour, she said in French. The protesters would like to see the church set up a commission to recognize people who have been abused.
Ouellet said the church will be present at the federal Aboriginal Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but any other discussions are inappropriate.
Christianity ‘could die out within a century’
The Telegraph says that Christianity could die out in the UK within a century
More than half of Britons think Christianity is likely to have disappeared from the country within a century, according to a survey.
Research by the Orthodox Jewish organisation Aish found that just over a third of people thought religions like Christianity and Judaism would still be practiced in Britain in 100 years’ time.
Although four in 10 people said they would choose to be a member of the Christian religion, almost the same number said they would rather practice no religion at all.
Buddhism however, proved more attractive than both Islam and Judaism, and was chosen by nine per cent of those questioned.
Aish UK’s executive director Rabbi Naftali Schiff said the results of the YouGov poll of 2,000 people were alarming.
“It clearly demonstrates that religion, including Judaism, is becoming unattractive to the British public.
“At Aish we know that Judaism provides real meaning and enrichment to one’s life. Whilst we have attracted many disinterested Jews back to Jewish identity it is clear there is much work to be done.”
Research published earlier this year suggested that church attendance is declining so fast that the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation.
According to Religious Trends, an analysis of religious practice in Britain, the huge drop off in attendance means that the Church of England, Catholicism and other denominations will become financially non-viable.
In contrast, the number of actively religious Muslims is predicted to increase from about one million today to 1.96 million in 2035.
Religion (for entertainment purposes only)
NEW consumer protection laws that came into force last week covering stuff like clairvoyancy and fortune-telling has set the internet buzzing with speculation as to whether religions ought to be covered by the new regulations.
According to a Times report:
Fortune-tellers and astrologists will be bracketed with double-glazing salesman under the new Consumer Protection Regulations. Fortune-tellers will have to tell customers that what they offer is ‘for entertainment only’ and not ‘experimentally proven’. This means that a fortune-teller who sets up a tent at a funfair will have to put up a disclaimer on a board outside.
Similar disclaimers will need to be posted on the websites of faith healers, spiritualists or mediums where appropriate, as well as on invoices and at the top of any printed terms and conditions.
Andy Millmore, a partner at the law firm Harbottle & Lewis in London, is quoted as saying:
What is significant is the sweeping nature of the regulations. They will effectively criminalise actions that might in the past have escaped legal censure, even if they may perhaps have been covered by industry voluntary codes. Personalised services may also come under scrutiny. A tarot pack reader, for instance, cannot just pick one of several templates – it would have to be a proper reading designed for that person.
Claims to secure good fortune, contact the dead or heal through the laying-on of hands are all services that will also have to carry disclaimers, other lawyers say.
Said one:
You could argue that this is no different from promises given by the Church of Eternal Life, which people pay for, in the sense that they feel obliged to give to the collection. It’s no more proven.
The Spiritualist Workers’ Association attacked the changes, saying on its website:
We do not believe we are conducting a scientific experiment. To have to stand up and say so is a denial of our beliefs. It is also sending out a message that we do not believe what we are saying and doing.
Lyn Guest de Swarte, a clairvoyant, said:
Commenting on the new regulations, Times columnist and atheist Matthew Parris said:
Another example of careless jurisprudence this week: on Monday a new law came into force requiring fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers and mediums to stipulate explicitly that their services are for ‘entertainment only’.
Well, trades descriptions legislation is anciently established; but in the realms of the spirit, prophecy, invisible worlds, ghosts and human souls, it has generally been felt that the whole thing is too cloudy for law … By deeming in law – for that is what this measure does – that claims about worlds undreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio, are false, Parliament has taken a serious step in principle, even if the measure itself is trivial and most clairvoyants are only jokers anyway.
What, for instance, about the “faith” community? Perhaps it’s there in the legislative small print already. There will have to be an exception in law for ‘religions’. Whereupon clairvoyants will presumably rename themselves spiritualists. And spiritualists will presumably claim the status of a religion. Whereupon lawmakers will stipulate that a ‘religion’ has to centre around a deity. Whereupon Buddhism will cease to be a ‘religion’; and …
Here is a selection of amusing readers’ comments that followed the original Times report:
• Does this mean that placards should be placed at the entrance to all places of worship saying, ‘all who enter here don’t believe all you see and hear.
• I trust that every Bible and other such book will carry an appropriate disclaimer regarding the reliability of its content and promises. And that preachers will similarly preface every sermon with ‘for entertainment only’.
• Coming soon to a church near you….. A huge great ‘not experimentally proven’sign. If you’re going to discriminate against one form of spiritual activity (be it questionable or not) at least discriminate against them all.
• Will this stop religions obtaining money from the Government, particularly in education, on the basis of their predictions of life after death, the claimed existence of God and the validity of their doctrine which they may believe, but cannot prove?
• Does this mean that people who promise salvation or 42 virgins if you do what they tell you can be done under the new regulations ? This looks like a good way to get rid of religions
• We should also get Trading Standards to target religious establishments. After all they too invoke the supernatural and superstition, in order to give their customers some sort of reassurance about the future. Despite holding huge financial assets they also continually ask the public for money.
• The difference is that religion doesn’t charge you for the service they provide, any money they receive is purely voluntary. Astrologers, psychic healers, mediums etc charge you for a service that is claimed to do a lot of things that are scientifically unproven. I agree with the change.
• Religion not charging? Islam makes a big deal about the faithful paying the “religious tax” and even imposes punitive taxes on non-muslims to permit them to follow their own faith. Look up zakat and jizyah. These are not voluntary, though perhaps they cannot be enforced in the courts here.
• Hmm, religion doesn’t charge … money from the government, collections at the church/mosque/synagogue/temple, purchase of the Qu’ran, Bible, Torah, Vedas, etc, ‘donations’ to the church to obtain that date for your special day. We all pay for religion even if it’s just through taxes. It’s a farce.
Spanish village holds religious baby jump
Grown men have been leaping over rows of babies in the north Spanish village of Castrillo de Murcia in an annual rite meant to ward off the Devil.
Jumpers dressed as the Colacho, a character representing the Devil, bounded over clusters of bemused infants laid out on mattresses.
Nobody appeared to get hurt in this year’s festive event.
Castrillo, near Burgos, has been holding the event since 1620 to mark the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi.
The feast is widely celebrated in Spain, often with processions and mystery plays.
Pageants can feature dancers depicting demons and angels or other characters.
