National Secular Society

I visited the NSS website and extracted this info from it:-

About the National Secular Society

We want a society in which all are free to practise their faith, change it or not have one, according to their conscience. Our belief or lack of it should neither advantage or disadvantage. Religion should be a matter of private conscience, for the home and place of worship; it must not have privileged input into the political arena where history shows it to bring conflict and injustice.

The National Secular Society is the leading pressure group defending the rights of non-believers from the demands of religious power-seekers. We campaign on a wide range of issues, including religious influence in the government, the disestablishment of the Church of England, the removal of the Bench of Bishops from the House of Lords and for conversion of religious schools (paid for by the taxpayer) to community schools, open to all.

Additionally:

1. We fight to protect free expression from attacks by religious groups, often keen to restrict comment about, and examination of, their activities.
2. We want the blasphemy law to be abolished and artistic expression to be protected from religious censors.
3. We lobby the BBC to reduce the amount religious propaganda paid for by license-payers, very few of whom are interested.
4. We want to ensure that human rights always come before religious rights, and to fight the massive exemptions religious bodies are granted from discrimination laws that everyone else has to observe. The NSS was prominent in the campaign to frustrate religious bodies’ attempts to opt out of the Human Rights Act – we fought to limit exemptions in the employment discrimination legislation and other equality law.

Even now the government seems anxious to increase religious involvement in public life. Each increase disadvantages those who have no religion.

Only by secularising our institutions can we ensure that no religious ideology can dominate and discriminate against others.

More Information

• General Principles
• Honorary Associates
• Religion in Schools?
• Charles Bradlaugh
• History
• Recent Events

The NSS was founded in 1866 by Charles Bradlaugh. A message from Claire Rayner.

The National Secular Society’s General Principles

• Secularism affirms that this life is the only one of which we have any knowledge and human effort should be directed wholly towards its improvement.

• Affirming that morality is social in origin and application, Secularism aims at promoting the happiness and well-being of mankind. Secularism demands the complete separation of Church and State and the abolition of all privileges granted to religious organisations.

• Secularism affirms that progress is possible only on the basis of equal freedom of speech and publication; that the free criticism of institutions and ideas is essential to a civilised state.

• It asserts that supernaturalism is based upon ignorance and assails it as the historic enemy of progress.

• It seeks to spread education, to promote the fraternity of all peoples as a means of advancing universal peace to further common cultural interests and to develop the freedom and dignity of mankind.

• To remove an impediment to these objectives, we demand the complete separation of Church and State and the abolition of all privileges granted to religious organisations.

Welcome

Those of us who value reason are becoming alarmed about the increasingly extreme religious influence in our government, our lawmakers, and our public institutions - especially in our education system. Many people, while standing up for freedom of religion, and freedom not to believe, feel that the proper place for religion is in the place of worship or home. They see the danger of religion becoming too politically ambitious.

The NSS is a rallying point for opposition to this religious resurgence. We must convince our politicians and public servants - as well as our friends, neighbours and colleagues - that our institutions and public life should be secular. A secular state should guarantee freedom of conscience, but eliminate religious privilege.

The only way to prevent the kind of religious power-seeking that leads to conflict is to make both religious discrimination and religious privilege constitutionally impossible.

We need a secular constitution that will:

• End the privileged input of religious bodies to policy making and law-making
• Keep all public services free from religious control so that that they remain equally available to all on the same terms
• Abolish the established church and all its privileges (including 26 bishops in the House of Lords)
• Put an end to the divisiveness of publicly funded religious schools by making them open to all without discrimination on grounds of religion, or lack of it, and bringing them under local authority controll
• Abolish blasphemy and similar repressive laws, rather than extend them

Religious influence in Government has not been higher in living memory. The rise of fundamentalist religion of all shades has the potential to seriously erode hard-won freedoms.

Individually, we can only look on with mounting fear, but working together we can make a difference. Join the fight for a truly secular society and join the National Secular Society today.