I've just got wind of a peculiar campaign that The British Humanist Association are running regarding the forthcoming census. They have called it The Census Campaign. Its sole aim is to get people who are not religious to declare that they are not religious. Yep, that's it. They are trying to raise £15,000 to promote the importance of telling the truth. It's just as well that I discovered this campaign when I did, or I might have accidentally declared myself a Hindu. Good work, BHA! Remarkably though, as I write this in late February, they have almost reached their fundraising target.
The BHA's claim is that people who are not religious still tend to classify themselves as having faith, when asked pick from a list, due to some kind of familial loyalty or because they've been baptised. This gives a religion a greater share of the spoils than it deserves, encouraging those who govern us to believe that we're all good churchgoers whose views should be strongly represented in all areas of society. Damn, where's AV when you need it?
Personally I'm not bothered. The census is hardly the front line of battle and besides, if people feel the need to declare themselves Christian despite only setting foot in church for weddings and funerals, let them. If they were truly non-religious, they wouldn't need a crappy poster to tell them so.
And it really is a crappy poster. The Census Campaign artwork is abysmal. They're still clinging to the corpse of the Atheist Bus Campaign like a child in denial dragging around a dead puppy. I hope no one thinks I had anything to do with it. I'm sure the BHA do some good things from time to time but this isn't one of them. It's a scary recruitment drive worthy of Jehovah's Witnesses.
10 comments:
In which case you'll be pleased that the campaign has been banned from train stations. Or maybe not.
Anyway, I agree. It seems an odd thing to campaign for. I entirely agree that ticking 'Christian' just because you've bought all the old guff about this being a Christian nation and about how everyone has to have something to believe in or however else it is that the argument goes is daft, but I think people do it knowingly. I think they've chosen to identify as Christian on those feeble grounds, and they're welcome to.
The other place the campaign falls down for me is that if we're going to start thinking about this in the degree of detail the BHA's premise seems to suggest, then I've got problems with bothering to answer the question at all. For me, religion is a question not even worthy of an answer, so I'm not sure I find the idea of ticking 'No religion' all that satisfying either. 'Religion? Was ist das' would probably be my preferred choice.
For one alarming moment I thought today's word was...
If I masturbate 10 times a week, which box should I tick?
You tick the box marked 'Graham sucks at satire'.
That, Matt, is just one of many problems that can be solved by masturbating.
Actually, for what it's worth I think I should point out that originally the BHA campaigned for the loaded question "what is your religion" to be replaced with "are you religious" followed by "if so, what is your religion". It's well known that this sort of thing alters the outcome. Having been refused this, they're trying to get people to answer the question as if it wasn't loaded.
I think that's fair enough. The general version of the point (that you should think twice before endorsing a religion) is very important, and £15,000 to nudge the latest census data for a decade is probably money well spent, but I'm sceptical that the census ever directly influences policy.
And you're quite right that the poster is rubbish. Presumably media coverage was the point and the poster just a token effort to spark that off, but still, it might as well have looked good to boot.
I'll concede that my judgement may have been dragged aside slightly by the awful artwork, without which I may have been merely indifferent to the campaign.
I duly ticked the 'no religion' box when filling in my census form this evening, as I always intended to, but as Matt suggested it hardly felt like striking a blow for secularism.
Yeah, it's a bit like a Daily Mail boycott — the most we can do is hope everyone else goes along with it while doing exactly what we'd have done anyway.
Surely that's your artwork they're using isn't it?
I think it's a very worthwhile campaign, it's one of those that will get them on the radio and in the newspapers alongside some outraged religious nut and will help nudge a small number of people towards a more rational outlook.
Was that a Mr Kipling's pie, Graham?
I'm sure they're entitled to do whatever they like with the artwork, I just thought it was sloppy.
It was a Budgens deep fill mince pie. I stockpile them in the freezer over Christmas and eat them all year round.
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