Always Hope

This blog has a long standing interest in the antics of the National Secular Society, or National Sausage Society, as we now prefer to call it. (for reasons that are explained here ). I'm not the first to comment on this (David Keen did already ) but their latest attention seeking stunt is a classic of its kind. As the BBC website tells us, "atheist children are being excluded from the scouts, the NSS has warned in a letter to Chief Scout Bear Grylls." Readers may remember from their own distant childhoods, that the new scout makes a promise to "to my duty to God and to the Queen".  I remember saying it myself, and it meant what you might expect it to mean to the average 11 year-old, the "region of ill-defined piety", as Patrick O'Brian describes it in one of his books (though I don't think he was talking about scouts). I do not recall the march of atheism being a burning issue among my contemporaries in the 9th Ampthill & Woburn, but per...

It's been a successful week for those busy folk at the National Secular Society. Not one, but two of their miserable little campaigns have twitched the radar of the national news.  First, they expended public resources by pushing through a freedom of information request to find out how much public resources are expended on military chaplains.  When they got their answer, they predictably squealed with rage. It's far too easy for their spokesman Stephen Evans to take figures like this and make them look silly. But how much does he expect it would cost to send fully trained support professionals to the front line with UK service personnel? When we leave Afghanistan, the cost of chaplaincy will reduce, along with the overall military budget. Then yesterday it emerged that, in Woking, the NSS has bullied the local council into re-thinking their policy of giving free parking to Sunday worshippers at three town centre churches.  "Discrimination" whines the preposterous ...

During a lull in posting (caused by the intrusion of real life, not entirely in a good way) it was nice to continue to get comments on Always Hope. This post in particular drew some interest: NSS gets in a tizzy again I was being a bit rude about the National Secular Society and their penchant for whingeing with no particular aim in mind other than to complain about how awful it all is. So it was quite gratifying to get a comment from one very open-minded secularist saying how I was absolutely right. Not presumably, about secularism having nothing useful to contribute to the greater good, but I think he was agreeing that the NSS conducts itself very poorly in the public realm. Even more intriguing, though, was to get a comment suggesting that secularism is actually the better way for people of faith. This of course is a serious point of view. A "religious secularist" argues, as my commenter did, that the Christian church is closer to its true calling when it is stripped of...

The National Secular Society has published its latest outpouring of righteous indignation. The object of wrath this time is the BBC, who have altered their editorial policy , extending a list of controversial subjects that need to be handled with care, to include religion. In practice this seems to mean that editors will not broadcast items that are likely to cause offence to religious groups. Whether religion needs this sort of protection is an interesting question. But the NSS contributes nothing to this debate by putting out a press statement that can be accurately summarised as follows: "it's not FAAAIIIRRRRRR......" In fact this would accurately summarise most of their communiqués. When I first became aware of the NSS and similar organisations, I found them quite threatening, imagining them to be a real danger to the freedom of faith and conscience that we enjoy in this country. But the more I hear of them, the less I can take them seriously. There's a real prob...

Respect to the Church of England's premier blogger, The Church Mouse , who has managed to get some column inches on the Guardian's Comment is Free site today.    Read the article to see why Mouse has a beef with Richmond Borough Council, and see the predictable heaps of vitriol poured on the little furry head (in the comments section). I take my hat off to Mouse for his courage (although Always Hope understands this is not his real name) but hope that he was not expecting a reasoned and measured response to his piece.  Half the comments seem to have been moderated out already, a blood-curdling thought, given the level of animosity displayed by the ones that got past the moderator.  The comments section of online newspapers always seem to be populated by the kind of people who you wouldn't want to give free access to the knife drawer.  I just hope the Pope is grateful for Mouse's willingness to take up the cudgels on his behalf.