[David Pollock, President of the European Humanist Federation, spoke to us on humanism, or rather (his preferred title) church and state, in Europe.]

In view of the variety of languages, attitudes, and constitutional arrangements across Europe, it was not surprising that words such as "humanism", "secular" etc. had different meanings and resonances. In France and Italy, for example, humanisme, umanesimo was a broad concept with implications of humanitarianism, and humanism in the Renaissance sense of the rediscovery of classical learning in the later Middle Ages. In those senses even the Catholic church could lay claim to humanism. "Secularism" too had an odd history, and in modern English is used in two slightly different senses: 1) a non-religious life-stance, and 2) belief in the separation of church and state. The two senses were quite compatible: most secularists in France were firmly wedded to the official separation of church and state which dated from 1905. French laïcité well described the non-religious stance, and it would be better to keep "secularism" for the second sense.

There was a broad division between a Catholic south and a Protestant north. In Italy, elements within the recent coalition government had argued for a separation of church and state such as does not exist at present, while in Spain the [recently reelected] socialist government had challenged the Catholic church's privileged position in the schools. In some countries there was no education about religion(s). The Toledo guidelines on religious education in state schools [try the Internet for these] were in line with the BHA view. In northern countries, including the UK, Netherlands and Norway, the concept of a non-religious stance had taken root, and was recognised by the UK government, in practice at least. In the Netherlands and some German Länder the government had devolved, with funding, the provision of some services to both religious and non-religious organisations: humanists in the Netherlands thus had facilities such as premises, staff, and TV channels [which British humanists can only dream of!] yet ran the risk of losing their critical engagement with religion. Society in Belgium and the Netherlands was "pillarised" [Dutch verzuiling from zuil="pillar"], but it might be doubted whether personal belief was so important that everything had to be organised along such lines. In the UK by contrast, surveys had shown that belief was not an important factor in personal identity. Meanwhile state funding meant a life-support system for waning churches.

Examples from the EHF "Church and State" database showed considerable variations between countries. In most countries, religious and other organisations have to be registered to receive state funding. Finland has two established churches, an orthodox and an evangelical lutheran. In France, churches built before the separation of 1905 are maintained by the state. Germany and many other countries have a church tax included with income tax [opting out is possible but the churches benefit greatly from inertia].

The rise of Islam, together with the churches' attempts to counter the decline in Christian belief, was of concern to EHF, with the tendency of Moslems to interpret any criticism of Islam as insult or persecution. The churches continued to seek consultation at the pre-legislative stage in the EU. The Vatican was demanding a ban on "religious defamation." Concordats existed between the Vatican and individual countries which by their very nature bypassed domestic law. Although the Vatican was neither a member state of the EU nor a signatory to the ECHR, the Pope had been invited last year to address the European Parliament, and EHF had protested against this. Article 16C of the Lisbon Treaty implied discrimination against the non-religious, and EHF had written to EU President Barroso in January to protest against this too. Meanwhile face-to-face meetings with Barroso in 2005 and 2006 had been useful: he appeared surprised by and genuinely interested in non-religious stances. In Romania, the churches had re-emerged since the fall of communism, and some Christian schoolbooks slandered other belief systems: elsewhere too in the former communist countries, atheism still suffered by its association with communism.

[For me, David's talk shows how far we (non-religious) have to go before we reach a neutral space for the discussion of public issues, in Europe and elsewhere. In a letter to the current issue of the New Humanist (Mar/Apr 2008:8) he refers to the open society, an ideal much publicised by the BHA in its early days: I seem to recall a conference held under that title, inspired I think by Karl Popper's book The open society and its enemies. An open society is one in which "people cooperate for the common good despite irresolvable differences about fundamental beliefs." I haven't heard the phrase much recently, and it is good to see it being dusted off and given an airing. It implies that we non-religious should be prepared to sit down with religious people and seek agreement on those issues where agreement can be reached without our compromising our principles (or expecting them to compromise theirs). Surely this should be possible, for example in SACREs, without our appearing to have "gone along with the religious agenda", as Terry Sanderson suggests we would be (in his statement to NSS members, Nov. 2007). Terry also suggests (ibid.) that religious education should not be taught as a separate subject in schools, but included within other subjects such as history or geography. But that would surely risk losing sight of it entirely, especially in the present crowded curriculum, which seems a pity since children need to learn about belief systems other than those in which they have been brought up: it might also encourage them to examine them more critically.]

Charles Rudd
[with additional remarks of mine in square brackets]