If you want to hear a BBC discussion going hopelessly wrong, listen to the ‘debate’ between the Bishop of Lichfield, Jonathan Gledhill and Alan Beith on the Today programme this morning. Radio 4 meant it to be about the established church, and set the Anglican bishop against the Methodist Beith. But a freemasonry of the faithful took over, and ‘balance’ went out of the window. Conformist and non-conformist united against their common enemy, ‘militant secularism’. Not just Anglicans and Methodists, Beith assured us, but Sikhs, Jews, Muslims and Hindus were at one in their fear of the secularist menace. ‘It is bad enough having to put up with the platitudinous propaganda of Thought for the Day,’ I thought, ‘but this is too much.’
I won’t labour the obvious point that an established church that uses the force of law to insist on a privileged position, seems slightly more authoritarian, and indeed presumptuous, than those of us who want a level playing field, but look instead at the corruption of language.
Militant secularism or atheism certainly existed in the 20th century. Communists persecuted Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Soviet Union and China. The Chinese Communist Party still persecutes the religious, and everyone, atheists included, must defend the rights of its victims to worship freely. British atheists are not killing believers, however, nor are we closing churches or preventing the faithful from practising their faith. We are merely arguing, as full citizens of a democratic society are entitled to do, about the laws that should govern our country. For bishops, chairwomen of the Tory Party, Eric Pickles and Methodist Lib Dems to describe this as ‘militancy,’ reveals nothing except their paranoia, self-pity, ignorance of history and insecurity.
Atheists are not the source of ‘militancy’ in Britain. If you doubt me, consider the following scenarios:
- This afternoon, as every afternoon, cartoonists will be presenting their work to editors, who give them free rein to be as “edgy” and “iconoclastic” as they wish. If they present a caricature of Richard Dawkins, however grotesque, no editor will object. If they present a cartoon of Prophet Mohammed, however reverential, not an editor in Britain will publish it. If you have to ask why, you haven’t been paying attention.
- If a mob attacks the Catholic enclaves in Protestant districts of Belfast tonight, as they have done on so many nights, I can assure you that “militant” Belfast atheists, roused to a fury by secularist critiques of Catholic doctrine, will not be leading it.
- If a bomb explodes on the London Underground, while you are travelling home from the West End, trust me, militant atheists won’t have planted it.
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