Religion and Belief
“Christians aren’t above the law” says Equality chief.
EHRC head criticises some Christian leadership.
A week after a court ruled that it was discriminatory for Christian prayers to be said during the formal proceedings of a council and a court ruled in favour of two gay men who had been the victims of discrimination at the hands of two Christian guest house owners, the head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission has given a thoughtful response to the position of Christian faith in Britain.
In the week that has passed Baroness Warsi has spoken in the Vatican about how secularism has become an aggressive force in British society and the former Archbishop of Canterbury has argued that Christians need to become more vocal to defend their faith.
Faith and politics is always a heady mix, and we have commented in this blog both about the flirtation with God on the part of the Prime Minister David Cameron and the apparent decline in Christian belief in our country.
Trevor Phillips speaking to the Telegraph has said that rreligious rules should end “at the door of the temple” and give way to the “public law” laid down by Parliament..
He argued that Roman Catholic adoption agencies and other faith groups providing public services must choose between their religion and obeying the law when their beliefs conflict with the will of the state.
Mr Phillips singled out the adoption agencies that fought a long legal battle to avoid being forced to accept homosexual couples under equality laws.
Last year, following a High Court case, the Charity Commission ruled against an exemption for Catholic Care, an adoption agency operating in Leeds.
Speaking at a debate in London on diverse societies, Mr Phillips backed the new laws, which led to the closure of all Catholic adoption agencies in England. “You can’t say because we decide we’re different then we need a different set of laws,” he said, in comments reported by The Tablet, the Catholic newspaper.
“To me there’s nothing different in principle with a Catholic adoption agency, or indeed Methodist adoption agency, saying the rules in our community are different and therefore the law shouldn’t apply to us. Why not then say sharia can be applied to different parts of the country? It doesn’t work.”
He added that religious groups should be free to follow their own rules within their own settings but not outside. “Once you start to provide public services that have to be run under public rules, for example child protection, then it has to go with public law,” he said.
“Institutions have to make a decision whether they want to do that or they don’t want to do that.”
Mr Phillips’s remarks were condemned as “inflammatory” and “ridiculous” by legal specialists and religious leaders.
Lord Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, called on the authorities to respect the nation’s heritage as a democracy in which the Church of England is the established religion. He described the comparison with sharia as “ridiculous” and called on MPs to find ways of “accommodation” when new laws clash with religious beliefs.
“I have argued in the past that there can be only one law to which all should be accountable. But we are not starting with a blank sheet of paper as far as religion is concerned.
“We are a democracy in which Christianity is established in the Church of England and a nation profoundly influenced by this faith in its Catholic and Anglican heritage. We need lawmakers to respect this heritage and seek accommodation wherever a strongly held faith seems to clash with new legislation.”
During the debate, he praised both the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches for their work in inner cities, particularly through faith schools, but accused some religious groups of growing intolerance.
“There is something rather odd that is happening amongst what I call the righteous brigade, that is people of good will and so on,” Mr Phillips said.
“And that is that if you don’t agree 100 per cent with them and excoriate people who have a different point of view actually somehow you are joining a bad bunch of people.”
Keith Porteous Wood, director of the National Secular Society, said Mr Phillips was “absolutely right”.
“If society has decided that it wants to ensure by law that every citizen of this country has equal rights, then there cannot be endless exemptions for religious bodies or anyone else,” he said.
“There is no such thing as partial equality, and every time an exemption is made, someone else’s rights are compromised.”
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Source: The Telegraph
Dr Donald Macaskill
