According to last week’s Crawley Observer, Councillor Eade does intend to try and introduce prayers at Crawley council meetings, although whether she will still be so keen now that a similar motion of hers failed to be carried in Adur I don’t know.
With that in mind, it was interesting to see this report of the goings on in Exeter City council, which the Labour Humanist brought to my attention. Down there the Tory leader of the council has said that she wants to introduce a rule requiring those who do not wish to stand for prayers to leave the meeting during prayers, and a councillor who tried to explain his reasons for not taking part in the primitive superstitious rituals was ordered to be quiet by the Lord Mayor.
The good news is that our Tories in Crawley are (mostly) a bit more sensible than they appear to be in Exeter so its unlikely we would see similar scenes here – mostly because I really can’t see them approving the introduction of prayers in the chamber in the first place.
I think an interesting response to any such moves would be for another councillor to find a religion which requires the sacrifice of live goats or nude genuflecting or something like that and request that they have equal rights to worship in the chamber before meetings… not that I condone the sacrificing of goats of course, but it would liven up the debate no end.
Note that those who propose prayers sometimes talk about members of other faiths being given a room where they can do their thing while the Christians, and those who are happy to pretend to be Christians do theirs in the Chamber. The implications being that there is a pent-up demand for prayers and that Christianity is ‘better’ or more important than any other religion. So much for multi-culturalism or any semblance of equality.
Cllr Pettinger of Exeter has the right idea when he says that anyone who wants to pray, regardless of whichever god they are directing it at, should do it in a separate room somewhere.
As a council representative and in private life I have often found myself in situations where I have gone through the motions of religion out of respect, but that has always been in churches, temples or other places of worship. Although an atheist myself I did not go into churches, mosques and temples forcing my (lack of) beliefs on people there so I would not have taken kindly to them trying to impose their beliefs in my workplace.
Personally I have always assumed that any right-minded deity would prefer to see a life lived by whatever precepts are laid down in their holy book (tolerance, patience etc) than self-righteous prayer. Also I believe that the Pagans can usually be relied upon to at least threaten nudity (the ones I know are game for a laugh….)
I like this quote from Yolonda Henson:
There are so many things wrong with that sentence it’s hard to know where to start, but it sounds like Paul Pettinger is certainly the only atheist in the room who isn’t being a hypocrite.
“Cllr Pettinger of Exeter…says that anyone who wants to pray, regardless of whichever god they are directing it at, should do it in a separate room somewhere…”
How about praying/meditating/thinking in that rather large ‘private room’ of one’s own mind – ‘the inner universe’ ?
That way, you upset people less…and allow God His/Her due…or whichever god is constructed in one’s ‘inner universe’.
Methinks Exeter’s God/god might be too small.
One problem I have with most organised religion is trying to reconcile the concept of an omnipotent, omnipresent being with the suggestion that he should have so little self-confidence that he requires everyone to keep telling him how brilliant he is.
That sounds more like a man than God/gods…well, it has been said many a time that Man often creates God/gods in his own image 😉
There cannot be any ‘multiculturalism’ or ‘semblance of equality’ between religions, because all believers imagine their faith is the only ‘true’ one. Ecumenism, at best, is a matter of “all religions are equal but some – mine! – are more equal than others”.
While there is no need to go out on’s way to be offensive, why should unbelievers show ‘respect’ for what they think is not only nonsense, but dangerous nonsense?
If that is so, Anticant, why should “believers” show respect for what they think is not only nonsense, but dangerous nonsense ?
There is a difference between showing respect for a belief itself and respecting somebody’s decision to hold that belief, which may be purely a result of childhood indoctrination or of misplaced good intentions.
I think if I had much respect for the beliefs themselves I might not have refereed to them as primitive superstitious rituals. However, many people of faith I have met have been good people, whose goodness has been channeled and directed by their faith. I have been lucky in not meeting many who let their faith feed negative tendencies.
So you would ‘respect’ people who, because of their cultural or religious heritage, believe in anti-semitism, cannibalism, honour killings, female genital mutilation etc. etc? I wouldn’t! I would regard them as benighted, and in some cases barbaric and dangerous.
Yes, there are good individuals of all religious persuasions, but they would be even better if they jettisoned the ‘sacred’ gobbledygook and thought more clearly for themselves.
And, Richard, religious people have NEVER shown ‘respect’ for non-believers, or for believers of other faiths than their own. How can they, when they know that theirs is the only ‘true’ way?
And, AC, have non-believers ever shown genuine ‘respect’ for believers – “how can they, when they know theirs is the only ‘true’ way” 😉
Live and let live I say…except when either believer (or non-believer) clearly break the law, and kill/harm etc in the name of their faith – or lack of it.
It’s disappointing that you paint this along party lines. Adur Council quite deliberately made this a free vote and, with an overwhelming Tory majority, we managed to win the logical anti-theist result.
I hope Crawley holds out against those who would merge politics and religion, but I hope it does it without doing it themselves by accident! You cannot complain about religion and politics getting too close if, in combatting that closeness, you describe the political affiliation of the proponent of religion in Council.
I don’t think I made a big deal of the party loyalties, beyond mentioning them. When writing about local politics that is a reflex similar to the one which makes jornalists give everybody’s age whether it is relevant or not.
I know that all parties have their religious obsessives (Blair didn’t try to force his religion on us, but you suspect he wouldn’t have minded) and that most religious politicians manage to construct some sort of chinese wall.
Like I said, I am sure the vast majority of Crawley’s councillors of all parties will chuck any such proposal out – as Adur did.
On the other hand… I still find that hard to square with Mrs Eades’ claim that she was only approached to be a Tory candidate because she was a good churchgoer. Either she is mistaken or lying, or the Adur Tories do let their religious views influence their practical decisions in some ways.