There are many people in England who organise their lives without making any reference to a supernatural being. We may or may not call ourselves atheists, humanists or non-believers. Names, labels and taxonomies are, to my mind, less important than the fact that we lead our lives on the basis that there is no being or entity outside of earthly life forms involved in any of our affairs. We are born, we grow up, we get up, we eat, we work, we play, we mourn, we love, we die, and we do these things without religious worship or religious ceremony.
This is no secret. Many of the people who sit in the House of Commons live like this too. Less well known, particularly among young people, is that there is a long history of people trying to express this, and struggling for the right to be this kind of person. There is evidence for people developing atheistical ideas in ancient Greece, China and India. In the face of persecution, people in Europe have asserted a range of non-religious viewpoints from at least the 16th century onwards. In some parts of the world today, it is extremely dangerous to be a secularist, with possible fatal consequences. If you thought being anglo-centric about these matters was relevant and important, I can assure you that atheism and humanism in England and in the UK as a whole have a specific history. In the 19th century, your party succeeded in securing the imprisonment of an MP, Charles Bradlaugh, on the basis that he felt he wouldn’t take a religious oath when taking his seat. In countries with which the UK has had and continues to have important and close ties – in Europe, North America and in the former British empire – the writing and dissemination of atheist and humanist ideas have a long, fascinating and troubled history.
This thread of ideas and daily living practices has been a vital part in the lives of key figures in history, philosophy, politics, science and the arts. As a result it has contributed to the world we live in. Small wonder then that the Religious Education Council of England and Wales recommended that when students study religious education for GCSE, worldviews such as humanism should be included. Their Curriculum Framework [pdf] pointed out that the word “worldviews” should be understood to include humanism and consistently referred again and again in its recommendations to “religions and worldviews”, as one phrase. It in an enlightened document.
However, when the course of study was published in February 2015, humanism was not given parity of esteem and was demoted to a couple of clauses. In response, a letter of protest signed by a number of people across public life was sent to the schools minister, Nick Gibb.
You and your department refused to budge. There it would have rested if it hadn’t been for some parents challenging the matter in the high court, resulting in a judgment last week that stated that you (not personally, but in your capacity as the secretary of state for education) had erred in asserting that this GCSE would “fulfil the entirety of the state’s RE duties”.
This assertion was, the judge said, in breach of the government’s duty to ensure that the job of the wider school curriculum is to make sure that knowledge is conveyed “in a pluralistic manner”. He suggested that such a course should be giving students information about atheism and other non-religious viewpoints.
The response from a Department for Education spokesman is stunning in its refusal to respond to the criticism: “Our new RS GCSE ensures pupils understand the diversity of religious beliefs in Great Britain through the study of more than one religion – an important part of our drive to tackle segregation and ensure pupils are properly prepared for life in modern Britain.”
I put it to you: yes indeed, many people do live in “modern Britain” as believers, but many of us live as atheists or humanists. This is not the behaviour or belief of a tiny group of adherents. It may not be visible in the way that state occasions or BBC television and radio slots display the practices of believers, but that’s because for most of us our way of being atheists or humanists is simply to do life that way, whether we’re going shopping or thinking about our dead loved ones. I’m not clear how you can fully tackle segregation or prepare for “life in modern Britain” while pretending that atheists don’t exist. It looks to me as if your spokesman has erected another form of segregation: the one that excludes atheist and humanist history and practice from this GCSE.
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