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Ethical Record the Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 117 No. 7 £1.50 July 2012 APES ARE LIKE US photos: Jutta Hof Chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans – see article by Volker Sommer page 13 ‘THE UNHOLY MRS KNIGHT’ AT THE BBC: SECULAR HUMANISM AND THE THREAT TO THE ‘CHRISTIAN NATION’, c.1945-1960 Callum Brown 3 APES LIKE US. TOWARDS AN EVOLUTIONARY HUMANISM Volker Sommer 13 VIEWPOINTS Donald Langdown, Barbara Smoker, Fiona Weir, Beatrice Feder, Charles Rudd, Ray Ward, Chris Purnell 11 ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 20 MARTIN LINCÉ. We regret to report the death of long-time stalwart of our Sunday Concerts, Martin Lincé. An obituary will appear in the August ER. The funeral will take place at 2pm, Wednesday 18 July 2012 at Putney Vale Crematorium. Martin was over 97 years old. CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON. Historian, lecturer to the Ethical Society, died in April 2012. A Tribute to his life will take place from 3.30 pm Saturday 21 July 2012 in Conway Hall. SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Main phone for all options: 020 7405 1818 Fax (lettings): 020 7061 6746 www.ethicalsoc.org.uk or www.conwayhall.org.uk Chairman: Chris Purnell Vice-chairman: Jim Herrick Treasurer: Chris Bratcher Editor: Norman Bacrac Please email texts and viewpoints for the Editor to: [email protected] Staff Chief Executive Officer: Jim Walsh Tel: 020 7061 6745 [email protected] Administrator: Martha Lee Tel: 020 7061 6741 [email protected] Finance Officer: Linda Alia Tel: 020 7061 6740 [email protected] Librarian: Catherine Broad Tel: 020 7061 6747 [email protected] Hon. Archivist Carl Harrison [email protected] Programme Co-ordinator: Sid Rodrigues Tel: 020 7061 6749 [email protected] Lettings Officer: Carina Dvorak Tel: 020 7061 6750 [email protected] Caretakers: Eva Aubrechtova (i/c) Tel: 020 7061 6743 [email protected] together with: Brian Biagioni, Sean Foley, Alfredo Olivo, Rogerio Retuerma Maintenance: Zia Hameed Tel: 020 7061 6742 [email protected] BEN PARTRIDGE, PROGRAMME COORDINATOR On the 14 June 2012, Ben Partridge tendered his resignation. He has been offered a place on a prestigious teacher training course. Ben has performed the role of Programme Officer since November 2009 and has always demonstrated passion, enthusiasm and skill in performing his tasks. He will be most definitely missed and we wish him every success in his new vocation. In the meantime, Sid Rodrigues will be our interim (3 months) Programme Co-ordinator. Jim Walsh, CEO. DEBATE REPORT: THAT SOCIALISM AND SECULARISM ARE NATURAL ALLIES This event took place on Sunday afternoon, the 17th June in the Brockway Room. It arose because of a controversy which began last November with a talk on the subject to the Ethical Society by Terry Liddle (See ER Dec 2011) . The motion was proposed by Terry Liddle and opposed by Mazin Zeki, who argued that secularists could have any political opinion. Norman Bacrac was the Chairman. A poll taken before the speeches gave the result: 11 for the motion, 6 against and 7 abstentions. After the debate, the vote for the motion was 10, against 8, abstentions 6. SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Reg. Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are: the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism and freethought the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in relevant fields. We invite to membership those who reject supernatural creeds and are in sympathy with our aims. At Conway Hall the programme includes Sunday lectures, discussions, evening courses and the Conway Hall Sunday Concerts of chamber music. The Society maintains a Humanist Library and Archives. The Society’s journal, Ethical Record, is issued monthly. Memorial meetings may be arranged. The annual subscription is now £35 (£25 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65) 2 Ethical Record, July 2012 ‘THE UNHOLY MRS KNIGHT’ AT THE BBC: SECULAR HUMANISM AND THE THREAT TO THE ‘CHRISTIAN NATION’, c.1945-1960 Callum Brown Lecture to the Ethical Society, 22 April 2012 In January 1955, Margaret Knight, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Aberdeen, broadcast two talks (and a third discussion programme) entitled ‘Morality without Religion’ on the BBC Home Service. In these she argued that scientific humanism, founded on atheism, would be better for children than Christian teaching. Though Bertrand Russell had 1made the first full broadcast by an atheist on the same station eight years earlier, Knight’s programmes were a landmark. Not being a philosopher, she aimed to be populist and, dealing with policy towards children, she caused a huge controversy. The BBC was accused of permitting attacks on Christian faith, on Christian values and on the Christian monopoly of religious education for children. To get to air, her two half-hour talks had to overcome considerable resistance by some Christian managers at the BBC who felt that the Corporation had a lead role in evangelising Britain. The broadcasts prompted outrage in the press, with nearly three thousand letters sent to the BBC and to Knight personally, and thousands more to national papers. For three weeks she was hounded and pilloried by the press. The Margaret Knight affair of 1955 marked an important turning point for Christian culture in Britain, one of at least equal significance to the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial of 1960 and the furore over John Robinson’s book Honest to God in 1963. It exposed the apparent vigour of Christian culture in Britain, including within the BBC, and a deep attachment to traditional gender roles which Mrs Knight was accused of breaching. But on the other hand, the public reaction was actually deeply divided, revealing an emerging open contest between liberal and conservative within Britain’s culture. The Knight affair allowed ordinary people, nearly all of them Christians, to articulate liberal sentiments and tolerance towards atheist views, challenging in the media the narrowness of sentiment of the mid 1950s, and presaging sixties’ broader secular challenge. As the broadcaster and writer Ludovic Kennedy commented in his history of Britain’s journey from God: ‘Before Mrs Knight, Britain had been a2 more or less Christian country; after her it became a more or less secular one.’ Religious Broadcasting Under Reith Under its first Director General, John Reith, the BBC in the 1920s and 1930s had developed radio to keep Christianity central to national culture. This was done to the point of alienating listeners by keeping a silence between 10.45a.m. and 12.30p.m. during its ‘Sunday Programme’. But during the Second World War and the decade following, Christian 3culture became more reliant on the Corporation and more invigorated by it. Between 1923 and 1951, the intensity of religious broadcasting increased. Data from the BBC’s own written archives centre show the numbers of hours of religious broadcasting increased, especially on weekdays, and notably during and after the Second World War: from 4 programmes covering just over two Ethical Record, July 2012 3 hours in 1923-8, to 32 programmes and over five hours in 1951. After the War, the BBC operated a policy laid down in 1948 by Sir William Haley, the Director General of the BBC, addressing the British Council of Churches: There are many demands of impartiality laid upon the Corporation but this is not one of them. We are citizens of a Christian country, and the BBC (an institution set up by the State) bases its policy upon a positive attitude towards the Christian values. It seeks to safeguard those values and to foster acceptance of them. The 4 whole preponderant weight of its programmes is directed to this end. This was interpreted by the churches as allowing debate about Christian faith, but not about Christian values, which were sacrosanct as part of British identity. This led the head of religious broadcasting to inform BBC governors in 1956: 5‘It is the duty of religious broadcasting to make people join the Christian faith.’ In this way, faith could be debated, but it was BBC policy to promote it. This led in the early 1950s to the BBC developing ‘radio missions’, first in Scotland then in English regions. This led onto the Billy Graham crusades of 1954 and especially 1955, with extensive coverage on BBC radio and television. This angered humanist and atheist organisations that the BBC was failing to engage with modern philosophy, science and humanism. The BBC Religious Broadcasting department and the Christian-dominated Board of Governors were content that Britain was a Christian nation. In a confidential survey one month before the Knight programmes, it was shown that 25 per cent of adults were frequent churchgoers (defined as ‘most Sundays’), and 36 per cent occasional (from once a month to once per year), and 39 per cent non-churchgoers;6 only 3 per cent of people ‘don’t believe in Christianity any more’. Against this background, the survey revealed that 37 per cent of the population were ‘frequent listeners’ to religious broadcasts on radio, and a further 31 per cent were ‘occasional’ listeners; only 32 per cent were non-listeners. In all 68 per cent of adults claimed to hear one or other of its religious programmes every Sunday. If true, more British people were listening to Christian hymns, preaching and debate than at any time in history. The Tortuous Process of Getting to Air Into this state of affairs stepped Margaret Knight (nee Horsey, 1903-1983). Educated at Roedean, she developed religious doubt at Cambridge University, and later married a fellow atheist, Rex Knight, the professor of psychology at Aberdeen University, where in 1938 she became assistant lecturer.
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