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
Christians told: you don’t own the local crematorium
Posted: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 15:22
Christians are outraged that a window at a crematorium in Bath that is etched with a cross is to be removed and replaced with plain glass.
The window at Haycombe Crematorium, in Bath,Somerset, will be replaced as part of a £140,000 refit and a mobile cross will be made available for mourners if they want it.
Inevitably the decision has met with the usual cries of "Christianity is being sidelined".
The crematorium is constantly referred to in press reports as a "chapel", but, of course, it is not a consecrated space. It is not a church or a chapel, it is a public facility operated by the council for the benefit of the whole community.
A 100-signature petition from Christian campaigners will be presented to Bath and North East Somerset Council chief executive John Everitt, calling for a new cross to be installed in the window.
Council bosses stressed that the decision to remove the cross had been taken after consultation with funeral directors and local clergy. A spokesman maintained Haycombe should be a setting suitable for people of all faiths and religious beliefs.
He said: "Following consultation with local funeral directors, ministers and taking into account our own feedback from customers, the consensus was that the chapel should be a setting where all faiths, including those who are not religious at all, can adapt the surroundings to suit the wishes of their loved ones. In line with this consensus, the replacement window will be plain. The council's bereavement services team will discuss with all families and funeral directors ways to provide a suitable environment for any service. This could include providing removable crosses or any other symbol that a family feel is appropriate."
Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: "It amazes me that Christians have commandeered crematoria up and down the country and decorated them to give the impression that they are chapels (defined as 'a religious place of fellowship and worship') when, in fact, they are secular spaces. An increasing number of people want to have non-religious funerals and crematoria must be available to them, too, without creating the impression that they are in a church."
Mr Sanderson pointed out that for most their history the churches completely opposed cremation but when it was legalised they set about hijacking the buildings set up for the procedure.
Bishops lie about NSS chaplaincy campaign at the General Synod
Posted: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 20:10
The National Secular Society's campaign to get the church to pay the salary of their clergymen who are working in hospitals as chaplains was raised at this week's Church of England General Synod.
The Bishop of Bristol, Rt Rev Mike Hill, falsely claimed the NSS were trying to "exclude" chaplains from the NHS. He said the true value of chaplains "might only be appreciated if they were no longer present".
"Every effort ought to be made, and is being made, to resist secularist calls for chaplains to be excluded from the NHS. Our hospitals would be poorer places without them and patients would be denied comprehensive care if their services were removed," Mr Hill said.
In a report last year, based on Freedom of Information requests, the NSS found that £29 million is spent annually on hospital chaplains which provide no clinical benefit. The report argued that if the Church wants its chaplains in hospitals then they should fund it themselves.
Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: "Our research was carefully verified and our conclusion was that it was inappropriate for the National Health Service to pay the wages of religious chaplains who should rightly be funded by the churches. We repeatedly said at the time that we were not looking to exclude chaplains, only to have them paid for by a more appropriate paymaster.
"It seems the bishops simply can't make a case without distorting the facts and completely misrepresenting our purpose."
Mr Sanderson said that he would not have expected anything else from a body like the General Synod. "This is a body speaking very much for its own interests. The Church is surely aware what parlous state the National Health Service is in. That it continues to insist that scarce resources are spent on funding its representatives shows a lack of concern for those people – old and young – who are desperately in need of real medical attention."
