More than three years ago, I wrote a post on Canadian Atheist about prayer in Peterborough municipal council meetings.  In the comments you suggested I contact CFI Canada. I did and CFI connected me with Dan Mayo and Secular Ontario. Thank you for that advice. My case against the City of Peterborough for saying the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of its council meetings has been successfully resolved in my favour.

The case was on hold while the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on whether opening meetings with a prayer was constitutional in a different city. That decision, in April, effectively banned city councils across Canada from opening their meetings with a sectarian prayer. Peterborough was one of the many cities to end the practice at the time and this week the council voted to make the change permanent. Instead, the council will open its meetings with the chair saying:

The Council for the City of Peterborough recognizes the principles contained in our Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that enshrine rights and freedoms for all. We also acknowledge that our Constitution provides that Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.

The phrasing is still a bit of a sop to the religious (but only because the Charter contains that same phrasing).

Overall it’s great news to Veronica, who has campaigned for over three years for this change. While the Canadian Atheist piece is missing, I first wrote about it on 31st May 2012.

Good work.

Reading the ruling, I think secularists should feel confident. Here’s my interpretation of my 10 favourite parts of the ruling (in the order they appear).

1. Canadian society supports a secular state, according to the Supreme Court.

The state’s duty of religious neutrality results from an evolving interpretation of freedom of conscience and religion. The evolution of Canadian society has given rise to a concept of this neutrality according to which the state must not interfere in religion and beliefs.

The Supreme Court interprets the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in light of wider society. The highest judges in Canada recognised that Canadians are a generally secular lot and do not want the government interfering with religion.

2. Government must be neutral with respect to religion

The state must instead remain neutral in this regard, which means that it must neither favour nor hinder any particular belief, and the same holds true for non-belief… The state’s duty to protect every person’s freedom of conscience and religion means that it may not use its powers in such a way as to promote the participation of certain believers or non-believers in public life to the detriment of others.

Canada does not have an official separation of church and state like the USA. This ruling makes it crystal clear though that Canada is a secular country. The government should neither support nor oppose any religion or belief.

3. Atheism is afforded equal protection as religion

Following from the same quotes, belief and non-belief, believers and non-believers, are mentioned in the same passages. This shows that the right not to believe is afforded equal protection under the Charter.

4. Secularism promotes a multicultural Canada

The pursuit of the ideal of a free and democratic society requires the state to encourage everyone to participate freely in public life regardless of their beliefs. A neutral public space free from coercion, pressure and judgment on the part of public authorities in matters of spirituality is intended to protect every person’s freedom and dignity, and it helps preserve and promote the multicultural nature of Canadian society.

5. History and tradition are invalid arguments for maintaining religious privilege

If the state adheres to a form of religious expression under the guise of cultural or historical reality or heritage, it breaches its duty of neutrality.

When I argued that the University of Alberta should remove god from its convocation charge, tradition was the most common argument that it should be maintained. Similarly the Parti Quebecois in introducing its Secular Charter argued that the cross in the National Assembly should be maintained due to cultural history. Nevertheless, the Court is again unambiguously clear: Tradition and heritage is no excuse to maintain religious privilege.

6. Religiously-motivated laws are invalid

A provision of a statute, of regulations or of a by-law will be inoperative if its purpose is religious and therefore cannot be reconciled with the state’s duty of neutrality.

7.Discrimination against atheists is non-trivial

The prayer recited by the municipal council in breach of the state’s duty of neutrality resulted in a distinction, exclusion and preference based on religion — that is, based on S’s sincere atheism — which, in combination with the circumstances in which the prayer was recited, turned the meetings into a preferential space for people with theistic beliefs. The latter could participate in municipal democracy in an environment favourable to the expression of their beliefs. Although non-believers could also participate, the price for doing so was isolation, exclusion and stigmatization.

The adoption of the phrase “isolation, exclusion and stigmatization” is powerful here. School prayer, which is still legal in Alberta public schools, similarly risk isolating, excluding and stigmatizing students who choose not to participate.

8. Ending religious privilege does not promote atheism

Barring the municipal council from reciting the prayer would not amount to giving atheism and agnosticism prevalence over religious beliefs. There is a distinction between unbelief and true neutrality. True neutrality presupposes abstention, but it does not amount to a stand favouring one view over another.

There is a clear difference between secularism and atheism and it’s well described here. The state should be neutral, full stop.

9. Even “inclusive” prayers may exclude atheists

Even if [a council prayer] is said to be inclusive, it may nevertheless exclude non-believers.

Many proponents of public prayers opt for a non-denominational version in an effort to be more inclusive. But even these, which aren’t necessarily sectarian, can discriminate against atheists.

10. The Charter’s preamble does not mean that Canada is a theistic country

the reference to the supremacy of God in the preamble to the Canadian Charter cannot lead to an interpretation of freedom of conscience and religion that authorizes the state to consciously profess a theistic faith. The preamble articulates the political theory on which the Charter’s protections are based.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms begins with a phrase that “Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God”. The inclusion of this phrase was arguably a sop to the religious right and is used to argue Canada is a Christian country. This ruling destroys that argument and potentially nullifies the use of the preamble in Court.

There’s no ‘God’ in graduation

Originally published in The Gateway, 16th September 2008

Upon the gruelling end of a 4-5-6 or even 7 year journey, students embark across a stage for the chance to experience their high school graduation on steroids. This event is known as convocation, and despite the movement toward inclusiveness and tolerance, this is one stage that keeps the flame of intolerance burning bright.

When new graduates cross the stage at their convocation, they are presented with a charge by the University’s Chancellor. He issues an Admission where he states: “I charge you to use them [the powers, rights, and privileges of University degrees] for the glory of God.” It is commonly understood that big-G God here is some variant of the monotheistic Abrahamic God (or the one Jews, Christians and Muslims live in fear of).

A recent Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey suggests that around 36% of Canadians under 25 do not believe in a god. This means that when the Chancellor issues his charge, he is denying the existence of students who disagree with the idea of living in fear of a deity. He also offends the sense of the majority who believe that a public institution should have no stance on religious issues. This is the idea of separation of church and state, or secularism, that founded the United States, but is exemplified by Canada’s modern governments.

Upon hearing about this issue from several of its members, the University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics drafted a letter which was sent to the President’s Office on July 14. Hope for a quick move to inclusiveness was dashed when nearly a month later we received a brief response stating their office had heard of the issue earlier and decided against doing anything. We were disappointed to hear that this University wishes to remain in its dark-aged roots, however, seeing as we received no reason for their decision not to change the charge, we requested the minutes from the meeting where they decided this. Continuing to drag its feet, the President’s Office has decided this is an issue that requires a FOIPP request.

Now, almost two month’s after the UAAA made a request to make our convocation more tolerant of the diversity of all students, we still don’t have an official reason why the President’s Office won’t respect our wishes. We also have over a hundred signatures of students who are outraged by this break in secular values and the separation of church and state. Finally, we have a Facebook group for people to get more information about this issue. We have had tremendous support not just from atheists and humanists but from students, alumni, and faculty of diverse backgrounds, including people who deeply believe in God but who support the separation of Church and state and recognize that this is a public, not private, university.

This push is also not without precedence. The University of Calgary’s admission is to grant degrees to those who have "earned" them and give them the "rights and privileges, powers and responsibilities pertaining to those degrees."  The University of Toronto secularized its convocation several years ago as well. Cleary the U of A can look to be as progressive as the U of T and U of C.

Many will assume this is a frivolous attempt to push militant atheism. However, we are not requesting the charge to say "use your glory to disprove god and vilify religion", we just want to feel welcome in a ceremony we have all equally earned. Further, members of our group do not wish to define "god" in some way that it makes them happy as some would suggest. We do not arbitrarily interpret words differently to get through the day. Interpreting an F on your transcript as "Fantastic" doesn’t make it so. The University’s charge comes from the charge from Oxford University, which has a clearly Christian foundation.

It shouldn’t be unreasonable for a group of students who pay upwards of $25,000 to get a degree to ask to be included in a celebration of their achievements. The President’s disregard for our wishes is abhorrent and intolerant.  We stand united for a secular convocation at the University of Alberta.

By the end of the school year, we’d managed to win a concession from the university and the convocation charge was changed.

The mainstream media has picked up that within the atheist community, there’s been a growing discussion about a perceived lack of diversity among the people viewed as leaders of this movement. I’m not going to rehash the entire discussion (Ashley Miller’s 2013 article "The Non-Religious Patriarchy: Why Losing Religion HAS NOT Meant Losing White Male Dominance" provides a good starting basis) but much of it has focussed on (the important) discussions of why and how the movement should build diversity, with not as much being said about whether things are actually changing.

In the spirit of Sense About Science’s Ask For Evidence campaign (though unaffiliated in any way), Chris Hassall asked me while I was living in Leeds if I could help him research trends in diversity among the leadership of the skeptic/atheist community. It’s a question he’s been thinking about for a couple years (at least) and one I was eager to help answer (particularly being unemployed at the time).

Using as much data as I could find from Google and getting in touch with organisers, we compiled a list of 630 people who have spoken at almost 50 different conferences over the past decade. We made our best estimates of age, sex, education, and ethnicity and were able to show that diversity has increased over the study period.

Once the work was done, we submitted to the journal Secularism & Nonreligion and after some edits from the reviewers, we’re published. It’s an open source journal and our data is available through figshare for those who have novel ideas on how to reuse our work.

What did we find?

Compared to the global gender-balance of the non-religious community, significantly more of the speakers are men and more of the slots available to speak at have gone to men.

Diversity among the speakers has increased

Why is this important?

There’s been a dearth of evidence in the discussions about diversity in the atheist community. Most focuses either on personal anecdotes or specific events/people and their actions or commentary. These discussions are clearly important – personal stories tell us that sexual harassment has happened at atheist and skeptic conferences and those making sexist comments should be challenged. But to make our efforts to change things – particularly at the systematic level – we need to mirror the successes of the evidence-based medicine movement (and by extension the more recent science-based medicine movement). This should seem obvious to a community that prides itself on using reason and evidence to guide its worldview, yet such a discussion has been slow to come.

Similar thinking motivated the BC Humanists to commission a poll into the state of the broader non-religious public in BC in 2013 and I suspect it also motivated American Secular Census and the Atheist Census projects.

We hope that this paper starts a discussion on how to better use evidence in our efforts to improve the community. While the trendline is positive, there is still work to be done.

I’m hoping to follow up this work with a talk I can give at Skeptics in the Pub (or elsewhere) and possibly future investigations. I’m also happy to answer any further questions about this work. Send me an email [email protected] or leave a comment below (or on the paper itself).

Sidebar: The sad ironies

I fully recognise the irony of a sociological paper being published by a PhD in Biology and a MSc in Physics. I also realise that this is a discussion about diversity coming from two white men. Nevertheless, I hope it still proves a valuable contribution to the broader discussion and I encourage everyone to listen to people from different backgrounds with different perspectives. Comments are welcome on the paper itself and both Chris and I are eager to discuss this work further.

Reference: Hassall, C and Bushfield, I 2014. Increasing Diversity in Emerging Non-religious Communities.Secularism and Nonreligion 3:7, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/snr.as

Case in point, a Victoria Times-Columnist blog asks “Has religion become a dirty word?“

It argues that Victoria, BC, with a non-religious population of 51% according to Statistics Canada’s 2011 National Household Survey and potentially as high as 64% from the 2013 BCHA poll, has become anti-religious. Such is the secular identity that the religious are made to feel “sheepish” and ashamed of their habit.

Yet without citing any specific evidence of wide-spread anti-religious hate crimes* or even anecdotes of real religious persecution, I have to call bullshit.

Religion has simply lost its place of privilege. One is not assumed to be good just because they are religious. It’s little more than a curious quirk of a shrinking portion of the population.

While some anti-theists cheer for the day when religion is a dirty word, this is the future I more hope for: where religion is a private matter and people don’t feel entitled to force their beliefs onto others.

Victoria isn’t hostile to religion, it has become indifferent to it.

*I did briefly look for whether I could find a break down of the number of religious hate crimes by city to compare whether secular Victoria and Vancouver showed a different rate than other, more religious cities, but the data isn’t nicely collected and the incident rate is fairly low. Only a few hundred hate crimes are reported each year across the entire country and only a fraction of those target religion (most are racial). It would be hard therefore, to detect a meaningful trend. Nevertheless, we should be glad those numbers are small. I may still look into this question for a future post.

Now regardless of the utility of a word, I think it’s important for organizations to choose language that will be widely understood. If a word has little cultural understanding, then it may be too difficult for any one organization to aim to reclaim it or to bring it to prominence.

Consider the following graph from Google’s Ngram viewer.

Thanks to Google’s book digitization project, we can search the frequency of certain words and phrases over the decades.

From this we can look at long-term historical trends and consider whether a word is hip or not.

Comparing “atheism” and “humanism” we can see that both have wobbled through the years. Atheism was surprisingly relevant in the 19th century (perhaps partially as a pejorative), while humanism reached a peak in the 1960s – likely when it was widely adopted in various academic literatures – and had a resurgence in the early 1990s (which roughly corresponds to the peak of “secular humanism”, coined by Paul Kurtz). We can even see the emergence of “New Atheism” after 2000, while humanism has been in free fall for the past twenty years.

For more contemporary usage, we can use Google Trends to track news mentions of both terms – though here I used “atheist” and “humanist” which were slightly more frequent – and again, we see a rise in atheism and a small decline in humanism.

Perhaps to illustrate my underlying concern, let’s look at two related other examples.

The Ethical Culture movement was founded at the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th. It had a quick rise with successful groups established in New York and the Eastern United States. A few decades earlier, freethinkers like Robert Ingersoll were lecturing across the USA and rallying for secular values. Both of these initial trends can be seen in the Ngram.

It’s interesting to note that the Ethical Culture movement gained the most attention right as Freethought reached its peak. Both fell just before 1900 but Ethical Culture found a renewed strength, despite the declining usage of “freethought.”

All good things come to an end though, and by the start of the cold war, both terms started to fall into disuse (note the scale and that neither of these achieved the success of atheism or humanism). We do see a slight growth in freethought in the 21st Century, following the New Atheist prominence, while ethical culture has flat-lined.

Language isn’t static and it’s useful, I think, to keep long-term trends in mine as we position our movements. There’s a reason that the Sunday Assembly does not market itself with terms like “humanism” or “ethical culture” – neither is particularly relevant anymore. Atheist, however, has renewed strength and was a useful choice (though not officially branded an “atheist church”, it was a useful term to get some initial press).

I’ll leave you with one more graph that might hint at perhaps the next wave of secular identities.

A pretty slick ad that’s pretty hard to find fault with.

I’ll skip over the fact the title needed a copy-editor* and who’s listed as the media contact** and instead focus on the fact that the latest post on their website is calling for donations for a billboard campaign that has been approved in Vancouver:

CBS Outdoor has accepted our ads, and they will be up in the Vancouver area in the next few days.

Within a week of Pattison rejecting an ad, CBS approves it and plans to hang it. This sounds to me like both companies were approached at the same time. This would imply that Pattison may simply have a policy to only run exclusive ads (something I could believe).

Let’s assume with CFI for a second, though, that the rejection was solely motivated by the content of the ad. The argument that CFI is making seems to be that since Pattison maintained an effective monopoly over advertising in Metro Vancouver, their rejection amounted to censorship. This is would invoke the 2009 Supreme Court of Canada case involving the BCTF.

But apparently another advertising agency is willing to host the ads, which seems to take some of the steam out of that argument. I mean, if you are still able to get your message out, you can’t really say you’re being censored. The right to freedom of expression does not necessarily guarantee one the right to a stage to promote that speech.

Nevertheless, I still agree that Pattison shouldn’t be rejecting the ad, especially without providing cause (benign or otherwise). So it will be interesting to see if CFI does pursue the human rights complaint and the results of that.

Finally, I also take exception with the last line of the press release, where CFI President Kevin Smith argues against “the use of human rights apparatuses as tools of censorship.” This line plays into the hands of the right-wing bigots and fear-mongers who promote the idea that the Human Rights Tribunals are kangaroo courts designed to persecute Christians and Libertarians. When, in reality, they are legitimate tools to achieve justice for marginalized communities that can’t afford to access the traditional justice system. Mostly they deal with issues of employment and housing but even their far less frequent use in defending victims of hate speech is laudable. But that’s an entire post on its own (see Joyce Arthur’s arguments in favour of hate speech laws for a start).

To summarize: Good luck to CFI with the complaint and the billboards. They look sharp and it’s good to see both genders (and hopefully some racial diversity in the next round). Just try to be a bit clearer on your messaging next time.

—

*Apparently you can say “New Round” twice in the same sentence if it’s the title.

**I thought he was leaving CFI Canada months to years ago now.

I encourage you to download and read the entire 244 page report online and support your local IHEU Affiliate.

I thought though, given my current country of residence, that I’d focus on the United Kingdom’s status, which coincidentally to Canada is Systemic Discrimination.

While it’s quite easy to live your life as an atheist in Britain – up to two-thirds the country may be non-religious – the report focuses on laws and state institutions, which the UK does quite poorly on. Specifically, they list the following issues that are a bit more extensive than those in Canada.

• There is an established church or state religion
• Systematic religious privilege
• Discriminatory prominence given to religious bodies, traditions or leaders
• State-funding of religious schools
• Religious schools have powers to discriminate in admissions or employment
• Religious groups control some public or social services
• Official symbolic deference to religion
• State-funded schools offer religious instruction without secular alternatives but it is optional

Bold points are the “Systemic Discrimination” tests while the other two are merely “Mostly Satisfactory”

It’s very similar to the issues facing Canada – religiously privileged school systems – plus the existence of the Church of England/Scotland as state churches and the seats reserved for Bishops in the House of Lords.

What’s particularly troubling is that after years of meddling by the government of England and Wales, the education system is in such a mess that further “reforms” are being pushed by the Coalition government to bring in more Free Schools – most of which are run by religious organizations. Whereas a few years ago most schools were either state of Church of England run, an increasing number are being run by different religious groups, including Muslims, Evangelical Christians, and Orthodox Jews.

Scotland is the brighter point, where the fewest state-funded schools are religious (still 14%) and they are not permitted to discriminate on the basis of religion. Perhaps Scottish independence wouldn’t be such a bad direction?

The report also notes that schools in England and Wales are required to hold daily prayers. I’m not certain that this law is followed closely but, as in Canada, it likely means that rural and more conservative areas are able to enact greater pressure on those who don’t conform with the dominant religion.

Additionally, a concern is raised about government funding for the Church Conservation Trust charity. This organization works to preserve historical churches across the country. Most of those churches are still property of the Church of England but at the very least are made accessible to the broader public and as a secular charity, the CCT allows any group (even the Sunday Assembly!) to rent their spaces.

A note about libel reform – which was championed after the British Chiropractic Association’s vindictive lawsuit against science writer Simon Singh – concludes the report. While the situation has improved with the new laws, Northern Ireland still lags the rest of the UK and maintains onerous requirements for defenders of free speech.

Two cases are highlighted to conclude the report. The first notes that a Christian charity receiving public funding was discriminating against non-Christian employees and that similar organizations are likely permitted within the law to do the same. The second discusses an atheist who was threaten with arrest for an anti-religious sign in his window.

Overall most countries don’t fare very well on the report. Of the roughly 200 nations in the UN, only 15 receive a grade of “Free and Equal”: Belgium, Kosovo, the Netherlands, Fiji (tentatively based on its new constitution), Kiribati, Nauru, São Tomé and Príncipe, Benin (with broader concerns about human rights), Niger, Sierra Leone, Jamaica, Uruguay, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Many of the “atheistic” Northern European nations fail for perpetuating state religions or for keeping blasphemy laws on the books.

It’s also worth noting that a survey that covers the entire world is bound to have limits. Many local conditions are impossible to document by a lone, underfunded NGO. In some cases this will mean missed discrimination (the Canadian section is missing a few examples) and in others, they may have overestimated the effect of unused laws that remain on the books.

Nevertheless, it’s a valuable report and hopefully it inspires other secular groups to produce similar documents and to act in favour of secular human rights.

I watched from Leeds and saw people on Twitter watching it bright and early in America and late in the evening in Australia. Conway Hall looked near capacity and many groups held get-togethers so it’s hard to know how many people saw the service, which featured two speakers and several pop anthems (ending with Meatloaf’s I would do anything for love).

You can re-watch the event online if you want to get an idea of what The Sunday Assembly looks like (note: you’ll need to register for the site or link with Facebook).

During the service, they introduced their crowdfunding campaign with their snazzy video:

Basically, the goal is to raise £500,000 to build an interactive website platform that helps establish future Sunday Assemblies. It also provides a barebones salary for Sanderson and Pippa, who up until now have been working full-time for free on this project (and actually throwing tons of their own money into it).

In just a few hours since launching, they’ve already raised over £3000 and you can help by donating in exchange for some sweet prizes.

Every pound raised over the first 24 hours is also being matched generously by Sanderson (up to £20,000).

While watching this video I realized what has attracted me to Sunday Assembly since it’s beginning: It is more ambitious than any other freethought group.

The video is slick, well-produced, and sets high expectations while still being fun.

It’s this attitude that’s lacking from many other groups that are content, or even excited, to see 30 or 40 people show up at an event. It’s lacking from the British Humanist Association when they have staff going on record as saying it merely reaches a “younger demographic” (thereby implying that Humanism is just for old people).

It’s that ambition and drive that have built the momentum behind Sunday Assembly. Momentum that includes 35 new Assemblies being launched in the next 40 days and likely more in very short order after that. Sanderson and Pippa receive thousands of emails from people wanting to start new groups in every corner of the globe.

Compare that with the well established Humanist, Atheist, and Skeptic groups that struggle to grow to a few new cities or campuses a year. The Secular Student Alliance is perhaps the only organization with comparable momentum (growing over the past decade from a handful to a few hundred university and high school campuses).

We’ll have to see how well this momentum keeps up. It’s always important to keep in mind that only a year ago, the Sunday Assembly was little more than the dream of a couple comedians on a road-trip.

Nevertheless, it’s an exciting movement that is doing a lot to reach out to audiences and demographics that have seemingly been abandoned by many freethought groups. We’ll have to see how long they take to catch up.