NSS Bulletin 73: Autumn 2019
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Issue 73 Autumn 2019 challenging religious privilege Exploring Secularism We’re delighted to announce the launch of a engagement with some pressing debates new range of resources for secondary school involving religion’s role in society. students and teachers to explore key We’ll also be running a training day on questions related to secularism and religion’s Saturday 9 May next year at Conway Hall in role in society. London, aimed at teachers and anyone else Every secondary school in the UK has involved in education with an interest in received information about our Exploring secularism. The free event, Secularism project. Many have already ordered a ‘Exploring Secularism for Exploring free teacher’s guide and a resource pack on the Educators’, will cover: Secularism core principles of secularism. • What educators need to know SECULARISM & HISTORY FACTSHEET We’re developing more material and covering about secularism five more themes: • The relevance of Exploring Exploring • Freedom of expression Secularism to the Secularism • Equality and human rights curriculum SECULARISM, ART & LITERATURE FACTSHEET • Secularism, religion and society • Using Exploring • Secularism, art and literature Secularism resources Exploring • Secularism and history. • Who’s using Exploring Secularism Secularism has been recognised by the Secularism and SECULARISM, RELIGION & SOCIETY: KEY DEBATES FACTSHEET Commission on Religious Education as a key how they can help. concept in the study of religion and worldviews. We’ll have more Exploring And Exploring Secularism helps to enrich schools’ details in due course. Secularism EQUALITY & HUMAN RIGHTS FACTSHEET Exploring “ Really excellent and detailed materials for exploring Secularism the ideas and principles of secularism.” FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION FACTSHEET — The Online Centre for Religious Studies Exploring Secularism TEACHER RESOURCE PACK CORE PRINCIPLES Pages 4–5: Standing up for inclusive Pages 6–7: Successes on free speech education on relationships & sex & public health DATES FOR Saturday 30 November Monday 10 February 2020: Saturday 9 May 2020: 2019: The 1944 Education Act Exploring Secularism YOUR DIARY NSS AGM and its legacy CPD day MESSAGE FROM THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE: STEPHEN EVANS We must teach the young how they benefit from secularism Secularism is worth celebrating. Its separation of religion and state, – routinely equating it with principles underpin liberal societies and their impact on the lives state-enforced atheism and even and the political institutions which they lead. totalitarianism. have been built to protect individual Secularist principles are so Secularism needs a place on the human rights to freedom of thought, embedded in many modern curriculum so that students can have speech and expression. democracies that they tend to be taken a better understanding of it, and The liberation of human reason for granted. This is dangerous. Unless not just the false view of it that its from unquestioned subjugation to secularism’s role in the development opponents promote. religious dogma and authority has of human rights and freedoms is well If we’re looking for space on the facilitated the flourishing not only of curriculum then the obvious subject human rights but also material and “ Unless secularism’s role in the to make room would be religious health benefits. None of this would development of human rights education. Britain’s outdated have happened if the deadweight approach to RE should make way for of authoritarian dogmatic religious and freedoms is well understood, a new broader civic education that orthodoxy had not been challenged theocrats will be well placed to encompasses citizenship and human and overcome. erode them.” rights. Such a subject should explore a It is bizarre, therefore, that diverse range of worldviews, practices something so significant rarely understood, theocrats will be well and beliefs, and the role that religious features in the school curriculum. placed to erode them. and secular ideas play in people’s lives Our new Exploring Secularism Secularism is misunderstood, and in society. Secularism should be initiative is an ambitious attempt to sometimes wilfully, and much part of that exploration. put this right. maligned. Those eager to impose Please encourage your local As emerging citizens of 21st their religious faith on others have school to make use of our exciting century societies, pupils should have groundlessly portrayed secularism range of Exploring Secularism an awareness of the importance of as a threat to religious freedom, resources – available for free at secularist principles, such as the promulgating misconceptions exploringsecularism.org Holding religious groups NSS CEO challenges accountable over child abuse circumcision We’re continuing to play an inquiry and is also one of our important role at the Independent vice-presidents, lobbied for these Our chief executive Stephen Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse campaigners’ inclusion. Evans called for an end to the (IICSA) as it investigates child abuse Meanwhile our president Keith non-therapeutic cutting of baby in various religious settings. Porteous Wood spoke at a seminar boys’ genitals in an opinion piece Several campaigners who highlight on mandatory reporting at IICSA and published in The Independent. domestic abuse in minority religious addressed clerical abuse at the UN’s He argued that society should communities have been given formal committee on the rights of the child protect children’s right to grow up in roles in an upcoming hearing. Our (UNCRC) in Geneva. their own bodies and make their own council member Yasmin Rehman will He urged the UNCRC to decisions about religion, rather than be among them as a representative of recommend the adoption of having them imposed on them. JUNO Women’s Aid, which represents mandatory reporting of abuse in His article, which came out shortly women and girls subject to sexual every country where it isn’t in place. after the release of a BBC documentary violence. And IICSA has continued to on circumcision, was widely read and Richard Scorer, a lawyer who reveal damning evidence of the link shared on social media. represents abuse victims at the between deference to religion and This is the latest sign that our the carrying out and covering up of work challenging circumcision is Our vice-president abuse. increasingly driving this issue into the Richard Scorer represents A report on the Church of England’s survivors at IICSA in his mainstream of public debate. role as a lawyer handling of abuse by bishop Peter Ball in Chichester found “serious failings” in its response. And a hearing in July heard significant criticism of senior figures in the Church of England – including the archbishops of Canterbury and York. 2 Bulletin Autumn 2019 Remove religious reps from council education committees We’ve urged members of the Scottish voting privileges in the meantime, as parliament to remove religious appointees RELIGIOUS REPS: Perth & Kinross Council did in April. from councils’ education committees in a UNREPRESENTATIVE, Our report revealed that eight of major report. UNNECESSARY AND Scotland’s 32 councils were willing Our report, Religious Reps: unrepresentative, UNJUSTIFIED to consider revoking voting privileges unnecessary and unjustified, argues that from the representatives. reserving a special role in policy making for We’ve sent the report to all MSPs representatives of religious institutions runs and councillors across Scotland. It counter to democratic principles. was featured on the front page of The Scottish councils are legally required Times in Scotland, and our education to appoint three unelected religious campaigner Alastair Lichten made the representatives to their education argument for change on BBC Scotland. committees. At least one must be We’re also working with the appointed by the Catholic Church and one Edinburgh Secular Society and the by the Church of Scotland. Scottish Secular Society, who have both THE CASE FOR REMOVING The report calls on the Scottish RELIGIOUS APPOINTEES FROM led recent petitions on the subject to EDUCATION COMMITTEES government to change the law and urges IN SCOTLAND the Scottish Parliament, to make councils to revoke religious appointees’ the case. Working to end collective Resisting new faith schools worship in schools Our opposition has helped to end We’re urging the government to repeal the law requiring daily acts of worship plans for a major wave of religiously in schools in England after a high-profile case pushed the issue into the public selective new faith schools in domain. England. We wrote to education secretary Gavin Williamson to urge him to repeal the In March the government requirement to provide “an act of collective worship”. We’re urging supporters announced plans for 14 new voluntary to write to their MPs and help us to make the case. aided faith schools, as we highlighted Our CEO Stephen Evans also rebutted a Church of England defence of in the summer Bulletin. Lobbying from collective worship in a letter published in The Guardian. our No More Faith Schools campaign We took these steps after a couple launched a legal challenge against a has helped to reduce this to just one primary school over its assemblies where children take part in Christian Catholic school in Peterborough in prayers and watch re-enactments of biblical stories such as Jesus’s crucifixion. Cambridgeshire. We’ve provided advice and support to the couple, Lee and Lizanne Harris, That school could potentially be and we raised their case with ministers earlier this year. allowed to select up to 100% of its At that meeting we also raised broader concerns about coercive worship pupils on the basis of their families’ requirements and the lack religion, and we’re continuing to resist of protection for the ethos of plans to open it. community schools which We revealed that the plan had are taken over by faith based almost certainly scuppered an trusts. alternative proposal for an inclusive The Harrises’ children’s secular school to open on the same school is not a faith school but site.