The decision on Bideford Town Council’s opening prayers gave another opportunity for people to talk crap.
The National Secular Society and an atheist ex-councillor won a test case ruling that Bideford town council, Devon, was acting unlawfully by putting prayer on meeting agendas.
It is understood the ritual dates back in Bideford to the days of Queen Elizabeth I, and the council has recently voted twice to retain it.
Lots of things date back to the days of Queen Elizabeth I; what of it? In the days of Queen Elizabeth I church attendance was mandatory and you had to pay a fine if you didn’t go. Is that a good arrangement? Miss that, do we? The mandatory attendance was also, of course, to one church only, all others being outlawed. Mosques and temples weren’t even thought of.
In short, Britain under the Tudors was a theocracy and that was that. No muttering there in the back row, or we’ll have your arm off. Council prayers shouldn’t be seen as a cozy old custom but as a vestige of an authoritarian godbothering society of a kind that pretty much no one in the UK wants to live in now.
Harry Greenway, a former Tory MP and ex-chairman of the National Prayer Breakfast, said: “I trust this ruling will be quickly reversed. If people do not want to attend prayers of this nature, they can stay away instead of meddling and busybodying with other people’s beliefs.
…
“Non-believers are not harassed in this way by believers. Why cannot the non-believers show the same kind of tolerance? I find this ruling puzzling in the extreme.”
The same kind of tolerance as what? How would believers go about harassing non-believers in this way? By telling them to stop not praying? Non-believers can’t show the same kind of tolerance because tolerance of not doing something is not the same as tolerance of doing something. A nuisance is not comparable to the absence of a nuisance. Cigarette smoke is not comparable to no cigarette smoke; loud music at 3 a.m. is not comparable to quiet at 3 a.m.; and so on. Non-actors are not making the nuisance, so other people are not “tolerating” anything by not hassling them; people who are making the nuisance are the ones requiring some kind of “tolerance.” Not all kinds of nuisance should be tolerated. It’s quite simple really.
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I like the intro to the quotation in the OP: “Harry Greenway, a former Tory MP and ex-chairman of the National Prayer Breakfast”.
🙂
One bit of religious privilege will cease and the ex-chaircritter of the National Prayer Breakfast is whining about it. Many goddists hate when their privilege is challenged and get downright petulant when the challenge is upheld.
We have a *National Prayer Breakfast* in the UK? Eeegh.
Persecution. Where would christians be without it? If they can’t make other people go through the motions of their potty customs, the other people are just plain intolerant. Stands to reason. God is the ultimate narcissist.
Note for ‘merkins, “potty” as in “eccentric”, not “toilet”.
Effing really?!?!?!?!
“Well, it dates back to before electricity. It dates back to before antibiotics. It dates back to before vaccines. It dates back to before internal combustion. It dates back to before confirmation that the Earth is round and revolves around the Sun. It dates back to before the Theory of Relativity. It dates back to before indoor plumbing. It dates back to just after the printing press.”
So… we should take this seriously because what? Really? Go get bent, you medieval idiots?
Damn straight! What business do they have at a town council meeting anyway?
Are the prayers fried, poached or boiled? Are they free-range prayers?
If people want to attend prayers of this nature, they can do so in buildings called churches intended for that purpose instead of meddling and busybodying with other people’s nonbeliefs.
Look on the bright side. Had you ever heard of the UK’s National Prayer Breakfast before ? Greenway is clearly doing a bad job at promoting the idea, but then he is a former Tory MP!
So basically, this fool’s position is that if people don’t like him imposing his cult on them during secular council meetings, they shouldn’t go to the meetings? Wow, what a thoroughly blinkered, selfish, nasty piece of work.
I believe that the NSS initially suggested that the prayers could be held seperately before the meetings, so that those who wished to attend could, and those who wished not to attend could enter after the prayers had finished. This really sensible and obvious compromise was refused by the council. Now that they have lost the case, various Christian talking heads are putting this suggestion forward as if it is their own idea.
I caught a bit of a discussion on Radio 4 while changing my CD. Christian guy was asked about the fact that Christianity was fairing much better in the US where religion and politics were kept seperate from the start. He then contradicted everything that he had said up to then by coming out in favour of the American system. He also said that it was time for Christians to stand up and be counted. The CofE counts them every year and every year there are fewer of them.
Tradition meaning unable to adapt.
Put another way, the rules are for people who don’t know any other way.
That was George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury who is intent on using his retirement to show just how foolish he is. In that regard, if no other, he is succeeding beyond anything he could have considered possible.
This was one of two rulings that went against the godbotherers yesterday. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/christians-outraged-after-court-rulings-push-religion-to-margins-6720020.html). I particularly enjoyed the remark by Simon Calvert, a spokesman for the Christian Institute:
You see, Mr Calvert, the law isn’t just there to prop up your own superstitions and prejudices. Oh and, by the by, this is nothing to do with “opposing philosophies”. It’s about not being forced to join in with your “Christian belief”.
By instituting mandatory prayers at secular events? Nah, that’s unthinkable.
Whenever someone makes an argument from tradition, I mentally replace the word ‘tradition’ with ‘something we’ve been doing for a long time’. It helps remove the word’s emotional baggage and see the nonsense for what it is.
B-but… It’s tradition. To quote Terry Pratchett, “how could millions of dead people be wrong?”
I can only approve of this ruling. And I didn’t know that the UK had a National Prayer Breakfast either.
“If people do not want to attend prayers of this nature, they can stay away,” is willfully dishonest, or at best willfully stupid. It should be amended to “if people don’t want to attend prayers of this nature, they should stay away from local government”. Does it make sense still, Mr Greenway?
A tradition since the days of Elizabeth I? I take it we can soon look forward to the revival of catholic hunting throughout the length and breadth of the “scepter’d isle” and it’s crowning spectacle, the public hanging, drawing and quartering of jesuits at Smithfield. It could fit on the Beeb between the nature show about the Iceland bunting and a riveting half-hour on bee-keeping. Wow!
And at the same time we can look forward to a fatwa by the pope instructing loyal Catholics to kill the Protestant monarch.
Those were the days, fer sher.
I would accept the mandatory playing of Motorhead’s Orgasmatron ( at a very high volume) as a Secular equivalent. In fact if we can have Motorhead prior to meetings I would allow them their prayers-fair’s fair
The idiots like Rowan Williams who so cleverly pinched the NSS’s proposal of private meetings before the council convened, will soon be hoisted by their own petard when it turns out that hardly anyone will bother to go.
At least when the prayers were within the meeting they had the sanction of marking non-prayers late, as though they were naughty schoolchildren. (This they apparently did, according to a woman on Radio 4’s “Any Answers” just now.)
Yes, that was then and this is now.
I,m sure that over the years large numbers of both Catholics and Protestants have stood together and recited their prayers.
Montreal’s city hall did away with opening prayers and they even removed a historic cross at the insistence of local secularists who claimed that both were offensive.
Once done half the city rose to its feet and screamed “Free! Thank god I’m free at last!”
When Family was in town last summer I took them on a tour of the old town including city hall.
Upon walking in I noticed that there was a prayer room, ostensibly set aside out of sensitivity concerns and such, for city hall’s muslim employees. You couldn’t miss it, it was just off the main hallway.
And it was only slightly larger than a cross.
And I also noticed that the sober, not-too-friendly receptionist, sitting front and centre, was sporting a large ostentatious passive/aggressive hijab.
It, too, was only slightly larger than a cross.
Now I realise this state of affairs is not exactly secularist in nature, but at least the secularists have completely eradicated every last vestige of Christianity from the portrait.
No, they may not have imposed secularism, but at least they’ve done that.
Ah well, you can’t fight city hall and you can’t stop progress.
That was debated live Friday evening on BBC Radio 4’s “Any Questions”, which I heard as a re-run on Saturday afternoon. The Saturday, taped, version is followed by a phone-in programme (“Any Answers”), during which two people disputed the idea that having an optional prayer before the meeting would solve the problem.
Unfortunately, I can only remember one of the points made (argh), but it was that in Parliament, which starts each day with a prayer (the public is only allowed in to listen after the prayer has finished), the age-old rule is that if you grab a seat in the House of Commons debating chamber, it’s yours til the end of the day–you can leave all day and come back if you like, the seat is yours. There aren’t, believe it or don’t, enough seats for all members, and while it’s rare that late-comers don’t get space to sit down, they can sometimes end up in the gallery (the balcony — there are two: one for the public and one for distinguished guests), from which they can only listen, not speak. So there’s a distinct advantage given to those who come to the “optional” prayers.
Maybe “Any Answers” is available for listening via the web site and somebody can track down the other advantage conferred by attendance at prayers; I don’t have time to go check, alas.
That’s insane. Stark raving bonkers. Job 1: provide enough seats for all MPs!!
Honestly, is this the kind of “muddle through” that worked so well for Scott at the South Pole?
Yeesh.
And thanks, Mary Ellen! Great bit of information.
Harry Greenway, a former Tory MP and ex-chairman of the National Prayer Breakfast, said: “I trust this ruling will be quickly reversed. If people do not want to attend prayers of this nature, they can stay away instead of meddling and busybodying with other people’s beliefs.
Yes, well done that tory MP, they can stay away. But only now that the court has ruled they can
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-16989232
I love what that article quotes Councillor Imran Khan saying. Stout fella.
I remembered the other point made about how “optional” prayers are not optional because there are consequences for people who don’t attend; a woman pointed out that anyone who doesn’t show up for prayers on the agenda at that council (where the flap started) is marked as being late. So the voters, looking at such a council member’s record, will see that member marked as dragging in late every time — not good, and not fair.
W.S. Churchill discussing the rebuilding of the House of Commons in 1943 said:
@ Ophelia #23
Where can I get a copy of the bible like yours? Mine just has a boring sentence in Job 1:”In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job”. Your version sounds much more interesting and modern.
(Nit-picky addendum to my comment re Parliament)
I forgot there’s a third balcony; it’s for the press, with special front seat reserved for Hansard’s, the company that publishes the official record of who said what. It’s at the opposite end from the public gallery, where I sat when I visited; the press sits above and behind the Speaker.
(Like anybody cares. What–me? A perfectionist?)
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