Services funded by public money should be open to all, without alienating anyone.
The recent drive to contract out public services to faith groups risks undermining equal access.
Help us keep public services free from discrimination and evangelism.
The government is increasingly pushing for more publicly-funded services to be provided by religious organisations.
Many faith-based groups have carried out social service without imposing their beliefs. But religious groups taking over public service provision raises concerns regarding proselytising and discrimination.
65% of people have no confidence in church groups running crucial social provisions such as healthcare with only 2% of people expressing a lot of confidence.
Any organisations involved in delivering public services should be bound by equality law and restrictions on proselytisation.
Those advocating for faith organisations to take over more public services risk undermining these restrictions, which exist to protect both the public and third sector.
"We have concerns that some religious groups that seek to take over public services, particularly at local level, could pursue policies and practices that result in increased discrimination against marginalised groups, particularly in service provision and the employment of staff. Non-religious people and those not seen to confirm to the dominant ethos of a religious body, such as being in an unmarried relationship or divorced and being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered, could find themselves subject to discrimination."
Unitarian Church (Submission to the Parliamentary Public Administration Select Committee about the Big Society agenda)
There are also concerns about faith-based mental health and pastoral care in public institutions, including chaplaincy programmes in the NHS and the armed forces. Where such services are funded by the state, they should not be organised around religion or belief.
Religious commentators are often keen to document the contribution of religious organisations to the third sector and social activism. But they fail to demonstrate why it should be the state's role to build this capacity or why local authorities shouldn't have legitimate concerns about religious groups running services.
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1. Write to your MP
Ask your MP to protect secular public services.
2. Share your story
Tell us why you support this campaign, and how you are personally affected by the issue. You can also let us know if you would like assistance with a particular issue.
3. Join the National Secular Society
Become a member of the National Secular Society today! Together, we can separate religion and state for greater freedom and fairness.
Latest updates
Residents’ anger over council’s £3m gift to ‘homophobic’ church
Posted: Fri, 10 Nov 2017 09:32
Local residents are opposing plans to close and partially demolish a public hall in south-west London and build a new Pentecostal church on the site.
Merton Council has rubber stamped plans to spend £3m renovating Merton Hall to create a new 250-seat worship hall, nursery, crèche and café. It currently owns the freehold on the hall and has leased it to a local community charity. It will gift the new building to Elim Pentecostal Church in a 'freehold swap'.
In return the church will gift a freehold to a warehouse where it is currently situated, in a business park. The council will use the site to build a new free school, which it says is needed in the area. Merton Hall's users will be accommodated elsewhere.
Some residents say they are getting a bad deal, arguing that the warehouse site is not valuable enough to justify the swap. The council has not disclosed the value of the freeholds, despite a freedom of information request to do so.
John Chambers, a resident who opposes the council's plan, said he believed the council would have got a better deal if it had issued a compulsory purchase order (CPO) and reimbursed the church for its land. He also questioned whether the school was needed in the area where it is expected to be built and said the council was "refusing to listen to the views of local residents".
"The council will demolish a community hall used by every creed, colour, race and religion under the sun. Now it will be for the exclusive use of 130 Pentecostalists. They will have a valuable new building that in time they can sell on."
Campaigners also say the council is breaching its equalities protocol by promoting a church which has encouraged homophobic attitudes. A statement on the website of the Elim Fellowship, which represents Elim churches worldwide, says: "We believe that sexual purity is a necessary expression for all of God's children and requires abstinence from adultery, fornication, incest, homosexuality, or other sexual relationships or practices forbidden by Scripture."
The council approved the plan last month, despite 350 objections being lodged. Over 3,500 people have signed a petition against the plans.
Some have objected on the grounds that an historic building will undergo unnecessary change. The council will demolish and replace Merton Hall's main hall. It will retain its front, but critics say this will be "blighted" by a glass and aluminium extension.
The hall was built in 1899 by local philanthropist John Innes and handed over to the community as a gift. It is a locally listed building. Residents are hoping Historic England will list it nationally.
Merton Historical Society said the changes to the hall would "diminish its heritage and aesthetic value" and leave it "vulnerable to unsuitable development and loss of character in the future". Sara Sharp, who launched a campaign to save the hall, called the changes "cultural vandalism".
Ms Sharp said she believed the area's heritage was being "sacrificed for political reasons". Merton is due to hold elections in May, and the council promised to build a new school in 2014.
Residents are in the process of assessing their legal options on the issue.
The church has boasted about the imminent change. In a sermon on 27 August, Pastor Jon Featherstone said: "They can't stop us, we are getting a building worth £4m and haven't got to pay one penny. No-one can stop us. Let's go big, let's go all out, build something titanic."
The council had not responded to a request for comment at the time of going to press. On its website it says it needs to provide alternative premises for the church, and doing so through a CPO would require paying the market value or an equivalent reinstatement.
"Even without delivery of the school, when the land values for both sites are taken into consideration (based on community use at Merton Hall) the Elim Church/Merton Hall 'land swap' represents the best value for the council and tax payers," its statement says.
NSS criticises London council’s ‘religion-friendly’ housing
Posted: Tue, 7 Nov 2017 10:43
The National Secular Society has criticised a London council for building housing with special features designed to accommodate the beliefs of the ultra-orthodox Jewish community.
The development of Tower Court in Stamford Hill was put out to competitive tender by Hackney Council with a brief to pay special attention to the wishes of the Haredi Jewish community. According to Hackney Council's consultation document, orthodox Jewish communities make up a large proportion of those on the local housing waiting list.
Thirty-five per cent of the new homes will be available for social rent, with half sold on the open market and 15% sold under special schemes such as shared ownership.
The block, expected to be completed in 2021, will feature a higher number of large homes, with four or five bedrooms, than would normally be the case on such an estate. This is out of special consideration for Haredi families, which typically include seven or eight children.
The council is working with architects to ensure that some of these large social rented homes meet additional requirements of the local orthodox Jewish community. Most of the balconies at Tower Court will be open to the sky rather than stacked above each other as usual. This is for Jewish families to erect a Sukkah, a hut built for the feast of Sukkot that must sit beneath open sky in order to be 'religiously compliant'.
Additionally, Tower Court will include lifts that do not require manual operation on the Jewish Sabbath, as orthodox Jews say they are forbidden from activating electrical equipment on this day. Such lifts have been criticised for wasting considerable amounts of energy as they usually involve constantly running the elevator up and down every floor of a building, repeatedly servicing floors where it is not needed.
The kitchens will feature a large volume of storage space to accommodate separate meat and dairy kitchen equipment and ceremonial dishes required by kosher rules. There will also be special walls designed for shelves of religious books.
The development will additionally house the London headquarters of Hatzola, a Jewish volunteer medical emergency service.
Adam Khan Architects, which is responsible for the design of the new development, held consultation sessions with the Haredi community to establish its needs and priorities.
"We showed models and drawings, and we had people grabbing the pencils out of our hands to show us what they wanted," Khan told the Guardian. "They were very generous in sharing intimate details of family life to give us a better understanding."
Rabbi Abraham Pinter said, "The council is putting a lot of effort into recognising the community's needs, which is quite difficult in an area of inner London where there are a lot of competing needs.
"This is a major development the council has initiated. It is appreciated, and hopefully it will lead to other developments."
Stamford Hill is home to more than 30,000 Haredi Jews, one of the largest communities in Europe, which is growing at a rate of about 4% a year. The size of Haredi families, combined with the emphasis put on continued religious studies, has given rise to poverty in the community. A 2006 study of the Stamford Hill community published by the Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies in Jerusalem estimated that more than half the households below retirement age were receiving a means tested benefit of some sort, 62% of families in the study were receiving child benefits and 70% were receiving housing benefits.
Although some media sources have claimed that this is the first time a UK council has put together a residential development that specifically caters for the needs of a religious group, the Tower Court development echoes a similar project in 2005 to build council houses with Muslim sensibilities in mind. Sixteen flats in Bristol were built with toilets not facing the south east, specifically so the tenants of the flats do not face Mecca when they use them.
Megan Manson, campaigns officer at the NSS, said: "It is worrying that Hackney Council has gone to such lengths to appease the highly specific and complex demands of a religious community. Why should religious affiliation give anyone greater entitlement to demand larger homes with more rooms and more kitchen storage?
"For the sake of efficient public spending, and the sake of social cohesion, social housing should be built according to universal standards of safety, comfort and value for money. Religious considerations, which ultimately lead to increased segregation, should not be a factor."
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