Odone bullshit banned

Here’s a story to brighten everyone’s day. Everyone, that is, who enjoys surreal absurdity.

Christina Odone, the former editor of the Catholic Herald and former deputy editor of The New Statesman magazine (she resigned in 2004), has pulled out of a Royal Commonwealth Society carol service, loudly proclaiming that she has been censored. Because, you see, she’s a Christian. According to Odone’s distorted version of reality, British Christians (along with other religionists) are increasingly persecuted and have diminishing opportunities to proclaim their faith.

Just to remind ourselves: religionists have a monopoly on Thought for the Day; there are Bishops in the House of Lords; religious groups have control over state funded schools, privileged input into the RE curriculum, and permission to discriminate when appointing teachers. And so on and so forth. Nevertheless, we’re supposed to believe that religious voices are being silenced by militant secularists who want to exterminate all believers and turn them into bars of soap. Or something.

Odone claims that the Royal Commonwealth Society told her that her speech might “offend” any nonbelievers who might be in the audience, and suggested a Bertrand Russell text as an alternative (listen again to unenlightening Radio 4 Today programme debate, starting at 0850). Odone describes Russell as a “militant atheist”, which is a bit strong for a man who said he was never entirely sure whether he should call himself an atheist or an agnostic.

It seems the evil atheists who apparently run the Royal Commonwealth Society deliberately invited the Catholic Odone to their viciously secularist Christmas carol service simply in order to ban her from speaking at it.

Channel 4 News kindly gave Odone a platform to deliver her suppressed speech, so that we could all hear what we were missing (here at Freethinker Towers, the Royal Commonwealth Society carol service is one of the occasions to which we most look forward each year, naturally). You can read the transcript here.

It turns out that Odone’s text is a piece of trenchant political polemic, rather than a simple Christian homily. Lots of people might agree that it doesn’t quite strike the right tone for a genteel “multifaith” carol service.

Let’s look at her examples of “repression” .

In the case of Portree Primary School what actually happened is that a parent or parents rightly objected to prayers in a non-denominational school, and for a short time lunchtime grace was replaced by a statement of general thanks, but in the end these concerns were overridden and religious domination reasserted. Odone doesn’t say that the prayer was subsequently reinstated. School is not the place for prayers anyway.

Shabina Begum‘s school didn’t ban her from wearing the “veil”. The dispute concerned the jilbab, which she regarded as a religious obligation, but other muslims do not. The school uniform at the school allowed for other kinds of head covering. What Begum wanted to wear was effectively an intimidating political uniform.

Nadia Eweida wanted to wear a Christian symbol in violation of British Airways policy. In the end, BA capitulated. As a matter of principle, either BA employees can wear jewellery, or they can’t. Assuming the ban is for a good reason, then on what grounds are crucifixes exempt?

Secularists have not banned the hijab, nor do they want to ban Christmas.

The Commonwealth Society’s fear that any nonbelievers in the audience might be “offended” is a bit silly, but they were right to knock back Odone’s paranoid rant.

(Guest post by Dan Bye)