HumanistLife

MP claims Christians are ‘fearful’… but Church of England research shows the opposite is true

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Alexander von Koskull reports on how Christian fundamentalists face an inconvenient evidence gap when suggesting that Christians are scared to express their faith in modern Britain.

A street preacher on Buchanan Street, Glasgow. Photo: mot/Flickr

A street preacher on Buchanan Street, Glasgow. Photo: mot/Flickr

Last week, Conservative MP Fiona Bruce attracted a lot of media coverage after making the claim in the House of Commons that Christians ‘are worried, or even fearful, about mentioning their faith in public.’ Even the Prime Minister sympathised with her statement, intimating that religious liberty could indeed be under threat in Britain, much as Bruce alleges.

But the research to back up Fiona Bruce’s claims isn’t there. Or rather, there is research commissioned by the Church of England on the attitudes of practicing Christians, but it actually suggests the opposite: that Christians do in fact feel comfortable talking about their faith openly.

Bruce is a patron of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, and her comments during Prime Minister’s Questions were intended to echo a report from think tank ResPublica which called for legal amendments that would require employers to accommodate religious beliefs of employees, which it can only do by asserting that such a thing is not already the case, or that there is some kind of public outcry worth responding to. The Church of England’s survey clearly shows there isn’t, and that Bruce’s views do not represent the Christian community as a whole.

In the Study of Practising Christians in England, respondents were asked to record their level of agreement with statements on their practice of faith and relationship to god. The results found that:

  • 71% of respondents agreed with the statement – ‘I feel comfortable talking to non-Christians about Jesus Christ’.
  • 65% disagreed with the statement – ‘I am afraid of causing offence when I talk to non-Christians about Jesus-Christ’.
  • 73% disagreed with the statement – ‘I almost always feel unable to take up opportunities which present themselves to me to talk to non-Christians about Jesus Christ’.
  • 76% agreed with the statement – ‘Talking to non-Christians about Jesus Christ is an act of evangelism’.
  • Finally, 66% recalled that they had talked about ‘their relationship with Jesus Christ with someone who was not Christian’ in the last month, half of which did so in the last week.

The calls to review the human rights law in relation to religion and belief have also been called into question by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which argued that changing the law so that employers are explicitly required to ‘reasonably accommodate’ employees would be superfluous and would even require employers to privilege the rights of religious people to discriminate against others. The British Humanist Association embraced the EHRC’s findings and welcomes the surmounting evidence which refutes claims that Christians are fearful about expressing their faith in public under current legislation.

It is hard not to see such false claims of victimisation as a small thread in the fabric of Christian groups lobbying for greater autonomy to discriminate against others on religious grounds. They’ve been calling in recent months, both in the UK and other countries, for greater freedom to discriminate in the workplace, schools, and elsewhere.

What the Church of England’s data shows however is that no consensus even exists among Christians that their right to exercise a religion is under threat – and surely that’s because it isn’t, as the recent ECHR report found.

Changes to equality laws are not only unnecessary, but are likely to undermine the existing equal protection of people in the workplace by favouring people with certain religious beliefs over members of the LGBT community, women, and even people of other religions.

If anything, the law should be changed to limit discrimination, particularly in schools. But there is precious little sign of movement in that direction. The Government is currently planning to change the rules so that schools in England can discriminate by religion in 100% of places, with potentially very damaging results for community cohesion and fair access to local schools.

Did Dolezal do wrong? Lies and social identities

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Leila Gracie reflects on the high-profile case of Rachel Dolezal, an American civil rights advocate who lied about her life story in order to live as a black woman.

What makes an acceptable lie?

Rachel Dolezal in a recent TV appearance. Photo: Boston Herald.

Rachel Dolezal in a recent TV appearance. Photo: Boston Herald.

In the light of genuine racial discrimination and injustice, it’s obvious why some have felt offended by Rachael Dolezal. As a rule, we don’t choose our race and have to simply deal with its consequences. Yet we should examine the nature of her lie. For instance, compare it with someone who has an affair, or someone who commits crime; such people would lie because they seek self-gratification at the expense of other. This is, surely, immorality in its most basic form. Was Dolezal truly “getting off” on living life as a mixed-race person? Was she having fun at the expense of others; was there some selfish reward? The argument that she deliberately and strategically built a career on the lie also seems tenuous, especially as she ‘lived’ the black identity in many other aspects of her life.

Furthermore, the lie was just plain odd. Though immoral, other lies, such as infidelity or stealing, still have a place within the spectrum of ‘normality’. Imitating another race does not. It is distinctly abnormal. She had to deal with the fact that no one would ever truly understand the truth. It was surely a source of shame for Dolezal and something that had to remain strictly private.

It appears that Dolezal wished so deeply that she could be someone else that she sought to make it real. Perhaps she hated her white self. Perhaps the thought of being a black person seemed like the only way to truly find happiness. There may have been moments when she was confronted with the ‘whiteness’ of her body and felt frustrated by its inadequacy. So she constructed a story for herself; the unique circumstances that made her, essentially, a black person in a white person’s body.

It would be interesting to discover exactly what Dolezal thinks being white, or being black means. What is it that she wants to escape and what is it she wants to become? She may carry guilt as a member of a racial group that has perpetrated racism. Indeed, we should all appreciate what we have; we should look to help those less well-off; we should be on the lookout for all forms of injustice and immorality and we should heed history’s lessons. But this can all be achieved without also feeling guilty. The cause could also be something more generic; simply the sense of disparity that arises whenever differing cultures meet.

Biologically derived social identifiers

There are certain aspects of our biology, such as race/gender/age, which carry social currency; they inform our social identity. Of course, they tell us something tangible as well. They tell us about our bloodline and its history, and about our place in the process of human procreation. However, the human race seems to universally attach meaning to these biological features.

While I would not agree that these meanings are pure social construction, there is certainly malleability and historical context in the meanings attributed. As individuals, we get no choice about what social identity we are ‘handed’ and must navigate our way through; make the best of our little lot. This means managing external interpretations of social identifiers as well as arriving at our own understandings of them.

Can we change/choose our social identifiers?

Ostensibly, it is possible to change a (biologically derived) social identifier. An obvious example of this is that one can undergo hormonal and surgical procedures to change one’s sex to match one’s gender identity. Of course, those who have changed their biological sex in order to reflect their gender identity should be accepted into society and be free to live with dignity and respect from others. However, empirically and semantically speaking, society does not seem able to cut ties completely with what it originally thought of as a biological certainty. A person who has transitioned to a different gender nevertheless retains the identity of a ‘transgender‘ person even after their sex and gender have been harmonised.

This word does a special job, not just for the trans individual (who may or may not celebrate a distinctively trans identity) but for wider society. It tells a story; it accounts for a history of gender. The fact that this is even necessary could tell us something about society’s views. Do people stumble when it comes to ‘accepting’ that transgender individuals have truly changed gender? If so, why might this be? One might venture that some members of society find this very concept threatening. After all, most people experience their gender identity and biological sex as one and the same. Unpicking this concept, or challenging its certainty, is often not just uncomfortable, but unfathomable.

On this basis, if, one day, it is acceptable to change one’s race, I would suggest that language will adapt, in its usual but imperfect way, so as to articulate that the new identity is real but also tell that another preceded it. The only way round this is secrecy and hoping to ‘pass’ as Dolezal seemingly did.

Who we are to ourselves: the spirit of common humanity

For better or worse, our social identity will always impact our social intercourse but it is down to us how we incorporate it into our personal sense of identity. In fact, I would suggest that to ourselves we can never truly be any of our social identifiers. Without society, to ourselves (i.e. when we have our own space and our own thoughts), it is difficult to ever fully attain the feeling of being a particular race/gender/age. Perhaps it’s terrifying to admit, but surely, ultimately, to ourselves, we are just a complex mix of ‘me’ and trying to make a success of things is the primary focus. The effects of dementia or brain damage reveal the fragility of the processes through which we know who we are.

I am not suggesting we face some kind of existential oblivion. We need something to anchor us in society and need to feel that such things are, to some degree, real. However, I would suggest that we remember our spirit of common humanity and let that be the predominant guide to understanding ourselves. Had we entered this world in different circumstances, we would be managing an entirely different set of connotations of our identity.

Dolezal’s desire to change race reveals our common tendency to try to live and be our social identifiers – to ourselves. It is immaterial that Dolezal interpreted ‘whiteness’ negatively and ‘blackness’ positively. What matters is that she felt utterly defined by her race. I would suggest that if we can, we should concede to the person that we know exists beneath this skin.

Leila Gracie works in the field of behaviour change in London. She also enjoys writing as a means to ponder life’s mysteries, exploring themes such as gender relations, body image or mental health.

Righteous anger and the death of Leelah Alcorn

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In death, Leelah (pictured above) plead for better treatment of transgender people

In death, Leelah (pictured above) plead for better treatment of transgender people

The recent suicide of a transgender teenager in Ohio is a painful reminder of the worst that can happen when empathy fails us.

In a distressing suicide note, scheduled to appear on her blog within hours of her death, Leelah Alcorn outlined a litany of failings by her parents, most of which appear to have been driven by religious dogma, ignorance and prejudice. In an interview with CNN, the teenager’s mother asserted that she and her husband loved ‘unconditionally’ the dead child that she still insists was her confused and troubled son. As for the gender dysphoria, described so harrowingly in her child’s own suicide note? ‘We don’t support that, religiously,’ she said.

The angry responses to Leelah’s death have been powerful and unsurprising. LGBT activist Dan Savage called for Leelah’s parents to be prosecuted: ‘[they] threw her in front of that truck. They should be ashamed—but first they need to be shamed. Charges should be brought.’ Leelah’s family postponed her funeral and wake due to threats, and hundreds of people have sent enraged messages to the teenager’s mother, accusing her of driving her child to suicide. Online rallying calls urge others to send messages too, providing links to the mother’s Facebook profile and advice on how to contact her and her husband. ‘Let’s all message that woman on Facebook,’ one tweeter exhorts; another has even published what he claims to be the family’s home address. In an ever-growing barrage of furious tweets, Leelah’s parents have been called everything from ‘murderers’ and ‘monsters’ through to ‘demons.’ It makes for horrifying reading, and while I understand the anger, I am disquieted by the lack of humanity shown.

Most people seem to take it for granted that Leelah’s parents feel neither grief nor guilt as a result of their child’s suicide, and some state this supposition as a fact. Others appear to assume that the family’s sorrow and remorse will have been triggered by the actions of online crusaders, and gloat that Leelah’s mother has now blocked all outside messages: ‘Carla Alcorn locked her FB profile. Good. Fuck you. I hope the fear and guilt plagues you and your husband for the rest of your lives.’  The messages are abundant, and increasingly violent: ‘I hope the entire world gives Carla Alcorn hell;’ ‘I hope you wake up every morning and vomit over the guilt you must feel from torturing your beautiful daughter;’ ‘you’ve got blood on your hands, … bitch.’ Most striking of all are the catalogue of self-satisfied statements, in which the authors crow about the lengthy and vitriolic messages they claim to have sent to Leelah’s family: one example reads, ‘sent carla wood alcorn a really long message i basically told her she was going to hell but said it eloquently (kinda).’ One can only imagine its hideous content.

So here’s a thought experiment for those online accusers, safely ensconced behind their keyboards and so confident in the apparent rectitude of their vitriol. Shunned by her community, guilt-ridden, grieving for the child that she clearly failed and confused by the clash between her inherited religious beliefs, the closeted nature of a conservative state and the caustic self-righteousness of her accusers, Carla Wood Alcorn also commits suicide. What would her accusers think then? While some of them, I am prepared to admit, might think ‘good riddance,’ others I am sure would feel responsible. Would they be responsible? Well, partly. This is the power and the danger of social media – we can say anything to anyone, at any time – no time for reflection, no time for regret. It is out there – for better or for worse – just as Leelah’s anguished suicide note is out there, despite her family’s attempts to remove it. Leelah’s own rage at her parents is palpable – ‘Mom and Dad: fuck you.’ She had a right to feel angry, and her parents will have to live with that painful legacy; it is not for the rest of us to hijack those emotions and claim them as our own.

Now I am the first to understand anger. Believe me, I get it. I am someone who rants – I rant and I rave. My favourite topics are all the ones that you’re supposed to avoid at dinnertime. I have risked embarrassment for my husband by calling other men out on sexist remarks, rather than just laugh along like you’re supposed to when a chap engages in ‘jovial banter’ over drinks. I have fought with colleagues over numerous issues, most recently equal marriage, and provoked mortified silences and awkward relations as a result. I will do it again. I have a reputation for speaking out – or shouting out – whatever the social situation and trust me, I am not always popular for it. Thanks to all this, I have lost a few friends into the bargain.

Aristotle believed that there is such a thing as righteous anger: there are times, he said, when not only is it right to be angry, it would be wrong not to be so; the trick, however, is knowing what to be angry about, when to express it, how to express it, and to whom – that’s what is difficult. Blind rage is wrong, he argued, and it is particularly dangerous when it arises from pure emotion, as opposed to reason. Now I reserve the right to embarrass someone at the dinner table, most especially when the table is my own; and with all due respect to Aristotle, I believe that everyone has the right to feel however they wish to, and to express those feelings, within certain parameters. It is entirely natural and understandable that some people have felt unbridled rage towards Leelah’s parents, especially those members of the trans community who have experienced the kind of ignorance and gross misunderstanding that she found herself exposed to. But is it someone’s right to express that anger towards Leelah’s family, so directly and so viciously? Tragic and preventable as her death clearly was, I think it is not.

So where should we direct our righteous anger? Tragically, Leelah’s suicide is anything but unusual. A recent survey indicated that almost half of young transgender people attempt suicide here in the UK, and this shocking statistic is borne out by other recent studies in the USA. Wouldn’t we be better to focus our energies on making things better, to ‘fix society’ as Leelah herself exhorts us to do? In her note, Leelah lays blame very clearly on her parents, but also on the church they belonged to and the Christian counsellors she was forced to see. Shouldn’t our anger be directed at the ignorant self-appointed moralists, those who try to dictate to others how they should live, the pastors keen to say that Leelah did not exist and that Josh was a confused boy who was somehow abused and corrupted by the LGBT community, despite limited access to their support? Instead of sending hateful messages to Leelah’s own family, people should sign the petition to ban transgender conversion therapy, a change in the law that could have a direct impact on improving the lives and prospects of young people like Leelah, and lead a change of hearts and minds in the process.

By all means, be angry at Leelah’s death. But when someone directs their anger at the parents of a child who has just committed suicide? That’s a very bold stance to take. It’s the stance of someone so confident that they have never erred as to be spectacularly foolish in my eyes. A young person is dead. Blame religion. Blame suburban small-mindedness and ignorance. Blame us all for not fighting hard enough and acting swiftly enough to bring the changes that Leelah herself could have benefitted from. And let’s stand together to make those changes: in our schools, in our communities and in our families. Let’s make things better.

The last words belong to Leelah, and her instructions are clear: ‘the only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say ‘that’s fucked up’ and fix it. Fix society. Please.’

Peter Tatchell: My journey to Humanism – how I made the transition from dogma and superstition to rationalism

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Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell writes about the story of his journey to Humanism. This article was originally published in Humanism Ireland under the title ‘My Journey from superstition to rationalism.’

Peter Tatchell: Why I'm...

Peter Tatchell: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is proof that humans don’t need a god to tell right from wrong, and something we as humans can be proud of.

Organised religion is the world’s greatest fount of obscurantism, prejudice, superstition and oppression. It has caused misery to billions of people for millennia, and continues to do so in many countries. So how come I was once in thrall to it?

Nowadays, I am a human rights activist motivated by love and compassion for other people. I do evidence-based campaigning, based on humanitarian and rational values.

But I once had a very different perspective. Indeed, I grew up in a devout evangelical Christian family in Melbourne, Australia, in the 1950s and ’60s. My mother and stepfather (with whom I spent most of my childhood) were prim and proper working class parents, with very conservative views on everything. The Bible, every word of it, was deemed to be the actual and definitive word of God. Their Christianity was largely devoid of social conscience, more Old Testament than New. It was all about personal salvation.

According to our church, some of the worst sins were swearing, drinking alcohol, smoking, dancing, sex outside of marriage, communism, belief in evolution, not praying and failing to go to church every Sunday. All my extended family was of the same persuasion. Naturally, I also embraced God.

But in secondary school, aged 13, I began to think for myself. I remember a rather smug religious education teacher who one day gave us a lesson in faith. He argued that when we switch on a light we don’t think about it; we have faith that the room will light up. He suggested that faith in the power of God was the same as faith in the power of electricity to turn on a light.

Bad analogy, I thought. What causes a light to go on when one flicks the switch is not faith; it is man-made electricity and wiring – and this can be demonstrated by empirical evidence. The existence of God cannot. This set my mind thinking sceptical thoughts.

This nascent doubt was not, however, strong enough to stop me, at the age of 16,from becoming a Sunday school teacher to six year olds. Being of an artistic persuasion, I made colourful cardboard tableaux of Biblical stories. The children loved it. My classes were popular and well attended.

The first serious cracks in my faith had begun to appear the previous year, 1967, when an escaped convict, Ronald Ryan, was hanged for a murder he almost certainly did not commit. At age 15, I worked out that the trajectory of the bullet through the dead man’s body meant that it would be virtually impossible for Ryan to have fired the fatal shot. Despite this contrary evidence, he was executed anyway. This not only shattered my confidence in the police, courts and government, it also got me thinking about my faith.

According to St Paul (The Bible, Romans 13:1-2), all governments and authorities are ordained by God. To oppose them is to oppose God. But why would God, I asked myself, ordain a government that allowed an apparent injustice, such as Ryan’s execution? If he did ordain it, did God deserve respect? And what about other excesses by tyrannical governments? Did God really ordain the Nazi regime? Stalin’s Soviet Union? Apartheid? And closer to home, the 19th century British colonial administration which decimated, by intent or neglect, the Aboriginal peoples of Australia?

I began to develop my own version of liberation theology, long before I had ever heard the phrase. During the 1960s, the nightly TV news was dominated by footage of the black civil rights struggle, led by the Baptist pastor, Martin Luther King Jr. His faith was not mere pious words; he put Christian values into action.

This is what Christianity should be about, I concluded. Accordingly, at 14, I left my parents’ Pentecostal church and started going to the local Baptist church instead. Alas, it was not what I expected – not even a quarter as radical as Martin Luther King’s Baptist social conscience. A huge disappointment.

Undeterred, I began to articulate my own revolutionary Christian gospel of ‘Jesus Christ the Liberator’, based on ideas in the Sermon on the Mount and the parable of the Good Samaritan.

This soon led me into Christian-inspired activism for Aboriginal rights, as well as against the death penalty, apartheid, the draft and the Vietnam War. I linked up with members of the radical Student Christian Movement. In 1970, aged 18, I initiated Christians for Peace, an inter-denominational anti-war organisation which organised a spectacular candlelit march through Melbourne, calling for the withdrawal of Australian and US troops from Vietnam.

At the age of 17, I had realised I was gay. From the first time I had sex with a man I felt emotionally and sexually fulfilled, without any shame at all. This positive experience overwhelmed all the years of anti-gay religious dogma that had been pummelled into me.

Amazingly, I never experienced a moment’s doubt or guilt. I reasoned: how could something so wonderful and mutually fulfilling be wrong? Instantly, I accepted my sexuality and was determined to do my bit to help end the persecution of lesbian and gay people.

By the time I turned 20, rationality finally triumphed over superstition and dogma. I didn’t need God anymore. I was intelligent, confident and mature enough to live without the security blanket of religion and its theological account of human life and the universe.

Accordingly, I renounced religion and embraced reason, science and an ethics based on love and compassion. I concluded: we don’t need God to tell us what is right and wrong. We humans are quite capable of figuring it out for ourselves. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is proof of this. It’s not God-given dogma and intolerance, but a fine example of high moral values, without religion. Bravo!