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
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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
Christian psychiatrist given official warning after forcing her religious beliefs onto vulnerable patients
Posted: Thu, 6 Nov 2014 13:10
A Christian psychiatrist has admitted distributing "unsolicited religious material" to her patients, including leaflets and links to religious websites. Dr Antonia Johnson received a formal warning, which will stay on her record for five years, following a Medical Practitioners Tribunal hearing.
The Cambridge News reports that one patient described Dr Johnson's behaviour as "a highly inappropriate way of forcing her opinion on me."
In another case, a patient who had been sexually abused by her step-father was directed by Dr Johnson to a Christian website named "fathersloveletter.com".
The website states, "God Loves You. And He is the Father you have been looking for all your life. This is His love letter to you."
Joy Hamilton, chair of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service panel, added that "there appeared to have been little or no regard to the patients' circumstances in seeking to provide religious messages."
Hamilton added that Dr Johnson's "patients were extremely vulnerable and Dr Johnson had insufficient or scant regard to that fact."
After distributing religious literature to patients in the North London hospital where she worked in 2012, Dr Johnson had said that she was "not willing to change her approach", though at the hearing she did apologise.
Dr Antony Lempert, Chair of the Secular Medical Forum, said; "Patients consult doctors for their professional expertise and not for their personal religious or political views. General Medical Council (GMC) guidance is clear that doctors should remain professional and should not seek to impose their own views on patients. By pro-actively distributing religious material to vulnerable patients Dr Johnson has chosen to disregard GMC guidance."
Dr Lempert also argued that Johnson's "cavalier approach has already caused significant distress to at least three vulnerable patients and probably to many more who have not come forward."
Lempert also drew parallels with the case of Dr Richard Scott, a GP who received a similar caution from the GMC" after telling a suicidal patient that "the Devil haunts people who do not turn to Jesus."
Lempert said, "it seems that some doctors smitten by the importance of their own religious beliefs, wilfully disregard the distress they cause to vulnerable patients when they seek to impose their religious views in the consulting room."
The panel concluded that "whilst Dr Johnson holds well-meaning and strong beliefs in the Christian faith, she misapplied them in her role as a doctor. The manner in which she sought to discuss and deliver her own beliefs in the circumstances in which she did, amounted to an imposition."
The panel found that all the complaints against Dr Johnson were substantiated, though they did not feel this left her unable to practise. The panel said that Johnson's conduct "does not meet with the standards required of a doctor. It risks bringing the profession into disrepute and it must not be repeated."
Secularists call for an inclusive national ceremony of remembrance
Posted: Thu, 6 Nov 2014 09:55
The commemoration of Remembrance Day should be rethought and re-designed to make it a truly inclusive national event, and not one that is dominated by a single Christian denomination, say secularists.
The National Secular Society (NSS) has written to the Government asking it to review the dominant role of the Church of England at the national ceremony of remembrance, which it argues should be equally inclusive of all citizens, regardless of religion and belief.
In a letter to Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Sajid Javid, the NSS says it is important that we commemorate important dates such as Remembrance "as a nation" and points out that many people feel alienated by religious services.
The letter urges the Government to bring forward proposals for a more secular and inclusive Ceremony of Remembrance, pointing out that ceremonies in other countries, such as France, are led by civic and national dignitaries without any religious element.
The calls have been backed by historian and broadcaster Dan Snow, who said it was vital that the ceremony at the Cenotaph reflects the society it serves and feels as relevant and profound today as when it was first conceived.
In an opinion piece published by the Guardian, he said:
"There is therefore a real danger that by allowing the Church and its representatives to continue to dominate, and by refusing to admit a secular presence at the ceremony, the ceremony will be diminished or even ignored by modern Britons. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
"This would be a high price to pay for the sake of tradition", said the broadcaster.
The nation's religious composition has changed significantly since the Remembrance ceremony was first conceived. Britain is now one of the most religiously diverse and least religious countries in the world. Large sections of the population – around a half – do not hold or practise religious beliefs.
Despite this, the ceremony has changed little since it was first introduced in 1921. It is dominated by the Church of England and a significant proportion of the ceremony still resembles a religious service. Exclusively Christian rituals are prominent, and hymns are sung. A religious procession is led by a cross with a bishop invoking the 'Lord Jesus Christ' in a prayer.
The Cenotaph monument in Whitehall was designed at the direction of the Cabinet by Edwin Lutyens as a national secular memorial bearing no religious symbols, in recognition of the religious diversity of the fallen.
The Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, also insisted on a secular monument, in recognition of the many non-Christians who had fallen. He explicitly rejected an alternative proposal for a large cross at Admiralty Arch, and – also in tune with popular sentiment – rejected the Church's proposal for the annual ceremony to be at the tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster.
Stephen Evans, NSS campaigns manager, said: "The Cenotaph was intentionally designed as a state memorial, rather than a religious one, and the rationale of it being so is even more resonant today. We're simply arguing that the ceremony itself, for the same reasons, should also be secular – inclusive of all religions and beliefs – but dominated by none.
"As citizens we have many shared aspirations and values – and hopefully a shared sense of mutual commitments and obligations – such as remembrance. One thing we do not share is religion, so it's no longer appropriate for one religion to dominate the ceremony. A truly inclusive ceremony is the best way to ensure the occasion remains relevant and meaningful for both today's citizens, and all those future generations who will need to remember."
Read Dan Snow's call for a secular remembrance here:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/06/remembrance-sunday-lack-of-secular-presence
Read a paper by Prof. Norman Bonney on the secular origins of the Cenotaph here:
https://www.secularism.org.uk/uploads/cenotaph-a-consensual-and-contested-monument-of-remembrance.pdf (PDF)
A summary of the paper, The Cenotaph: A consensual and contested monument of remembrance, can be found here:
https://www.secularism.org.uk/uploads/cenotaph-summary-a-consensual-and-contested-monument-of-remembrance.pdf (PDF)
Read the Order of the Ceremonial at the Cenotaph
https://www.secularism.org.uk/uploads/order-of-the-ceremonial-at-the-cenotaph.pdf (PDF)
