The Heresy Club is a group blog of young heretical bloggers – Alex Gabriel, Siana Bangura, Rhys Morgan, Richard Nicholl and Hayley Stevens. You’re already familiar with Alex and Rhys if you’ve been reading B&W for awhile: they were starring daily back in January. I met both of them at QED, and Hayley as well. Check them out and if you like the blog, spread the word!

To be young and heretical in 2012 is to experience the intense realities of superstitious thought.

In our schools, we see science teachers treat Genesis with kid gloves. We see intereference in students’ private lives who blaspheme online. We see religious worship in British classrooms, and prayer creeping unconstitutionally back into American schools. Those of us at religious schools see indoctrination and sectarianism first hand, often with sex-negativity, misogyny and heterosexism in tow.

On campus, we’re targeted by evangelists from day one. We get threats of violence at atheist events, face censorship attempts from student unions, witness fellow students walking out of lectures on Darwin. Our universities still frequently make Christian chaplains central to pastoral care, and cling to Christian prayers and mottos from their Latin-speaking pasts.

They’re clearly paying attention, and the right kind of attention.