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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3. Join the National Secular Society
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Latest updates
£400,000 Government scheme to “strengthen” faith organisations in Britain
Posted: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 11:21
The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) is giving away £400,000 to a religious organisation or consortium, with the purpose of "strengthening" faith groups in the UK.
The money will be paid out over two years, from 2015 to 2017, and is meant to help religious organisations "face challenges", including "engaging with women and young people" and "sharing best practice".
Other suggested uses for the funding include training for faith groups to use "social media effectively" and to have "strong links with the wider community." The programme also aims to support religious groups in engaging with local people so that faith-based groups are "respected by their wider communities."
The DCLG says that "faith institutions play a key role in communities" and that they "command the respect of sizeable congregations". However, this has been widely discredited, particularly after recent polling which showed that 42% of Britons hold no religious faith, and that one third of under-24s described themselves as atheists. 46% of 18 to 24 year olds said they did not believe in "any God".
NSS president Terry Sanderson said: "It is a lazy and misguided assumption that religious leaders still speak for large flocks of followers. In November 2014 it was reported that a half of Britons think religion 'does more harm than good'. That same poll said that 60% of the British public were 'not religious at all.' It is wrong for the Government to be throwing money at religious leaders who speak for dwindling congregations, when so many people are not religious, and when so many believe religion is doing serious harm to society."
The Government claims that religious institutions "provide moral leadership" and says "members of the wider community would benefit indirectly from stronger faith institutions".
The NSS is also concerned about how the "Strengthening Faith Institutions" programme will be evaluated. One suggested measurement for success put forward by the DCLG is the "number of people reached in the wider community" by the faith group. Despite this, the Department states that the funding cannot be spent on "promoting a religious faith or belief". Mr Sanderson said it was "laughable to think that money won't be spent on proselytising." He added, "the funding guidelines state that the programme is designed to 'strengthen' religious organisations, and to increase their reach in society. The distinction between that and proselytizing is a very fine one."
The programme will not provide funds to "organisations that do not support British values including democracy, human rights, equality before the law, and participation in society", although the NSS has doubts about how this can be assured. The DCLG says that faith-based groups "provide a bulwark against intolerance and extremism by providing a local source of identity".
Projects applying for the funding would have to "encourage a diverse group of participants" and be "open to all", however "secular groups" can only take part if they are partnered with a faith based organisation.
The DCLG also hopes that the funding will help religious groups to work towards charitable status. It states that the Charity Commission "would in principle be able to work with the winning bidder to provide training on governance and registering as a charity."
The NSS has previously raised the alarm about religious organisations benefitting inappropriately from the tax benefits afforded by charitable status, and has called for a tightening over what "public benefit" an organisation must provide before it can register with the Charity Commission, so that genuine charitable work is being carried out, rather than charity status being used to provide tax benefits for religious work. An NPC report in 2014 found that nearly 1 in 5 of all UK charities are faith-based, and that there were 32,735 religious charities in Britain.
The NSS has also reported a number of cases where religious charities were involved in fraud or accused of other serious accounting irregularities.
The full guidance and bidding documents for the "Strengthening Faith Institutions" programme can be read here.
Car park charges “threaten” Christians, according to church leaders
Posted: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 16:20
Christian groups have responded angrily to plans by Edinburgh Council to abolish free parking on Sunday mornings. Council leaders however, have insisted that Edinburgh is a "secular city" and that churches can't get "special treatment on parking."
Free parking was previously capped at two hours on Sundays, with fines only coming into force after 1pm, in part because churches were said to be "very unhappy" about their parishioners having to pay for tickets.
City planners now intend to abolish free parking on Sundays altogether, in order to increase the turnover of spaces and the number of customers for local businesses.
Churches have strongly criticised the planned move, with Paul Rees, the senior pastor at Charlotte Chapel, and Derek Lamont, Free Church minister of St Columba's Church, arguing that the abolition of free parking would decrease attendance at church services and would "threaten" Edinburgh Christians.
Pastor Rees, in a meeting with councillors responsible for the planned change in policy, said that the church's charity work in the community would be undermined if Christian worshippers had to pay to park their cars.
Rees said: "Having vital living congregations in the city centre is not only an important factor in maintaining the historic architecture of this city but it also nurtures and supports society.
"I think all this will be threatened by imposing Sunday parking charges."
According to Edinburgh Evening News, Pastor Rees said it would be "unreasonable" to expect families with children to use public transport to attend church, and that people attending from outside the city would "struggle" to pay for parking.
Rees added: "Parking costs for many of them for three or four hours would be prohibitive, and would have a damaging effect on our city centre churches.
"At the moment there is still a different character to Sunday that adds a different dimension to our life in this city, and I think it would be undermined by treating it as just another day of the week."
However, councillors are said to feel that maintaining free Sunday parking because of a single religious group may be contrary to the 2010 Equality Act.
Councillor Adam McVey, speaking to church leaders, said: "it's worth mentioning that we're a secular city."
Stephen Evans of the National Secular Society said: "There's no reasonable justification for exempting religious worshippers from paying car park fees that everyone else has to pay. It seems only right that there is one set of rules for all.
"If a local authority was to make allowances for those carrying out charitable work, then fine, but those exemptions should apply to those actually doing charitable work, not worshippers. Religious leaders can't expect special treatment for their congregations just because they deem their activities to be more worthy than everyone else's."
In 2013 Woking Borough Council in England revised its policy that granted car parking exemptions to religious groups after the National Secular Society argued that it amounted to discrimination on the grounds of religion and belief.
