Thread: The Myth of Militant Secularism

Last Monday 13th Feburary an unelected minister of the Conservative party, Baroness Warsi led a ministerial delegation in visiting the Pope in Vatican city in reciprocation for his state sponsored visit in 2010. The following day the same minister unleashed an attack on those she dubbed as "militant secularists" in which she said

"one of the most worrying aspects about this militant secularisation is that at its core and in its instincts it is deeply intolerant. It demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes."

Her main gripe and what she sees as a new totalitarian assault, she says can be seen "in any number of things’", such as "when signs of religion cannot be displayed or worn in government buildings; when states won’t fund faith schools". Religion, she insists, has been "marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere’"

Her inflammatory language has since been ignorantly co-opted by many religious people in the UK and used to attack those who do not deem it necessary to identify themselves with a religious label. It is remarkable that after going on such a trip, that a minister from the ruling parties government should be so ill-informed to Lie about the laws and conditions of her own country. A liberal country that not only does fund faith schools, but also does not forbid the display of religious symbols in government buildings. All this religious propaganda too, after the state sponsored nature of both her visit to the Pope and his visit here in 2010?

Religion's role in the Public sphere may well be downgraded but that does not excuse the bandying about of terms like Militant, Atheists are not the militant faction that is dividing British society. Atheists do not use violence to attack and incarcerate Christians, Muslims or Jews. This is not China. Atheists are not aiming to remove the rights of religious believers to worship freely. The separation of Church and state is something Jesus vehemently believed in and the rights of unbelieving democratic citizens to challenge laws should not be met so readily with clumsy, false, insecure rants about militancy.