‘Churches have too much power over SNP’ Anger at religion's influence

Fraser Sutherland, the leader of Scotland’s humanists, is, like most people, much more complicated than his enemies imagine. He’s certainly not some strident attack dog, mocking and deriding people of faith at every turn. He just wants an end to religion being given special privileges no longer deserved in a secular society. Worship whichever god you want, is his view – just don’t shove your morality and beliefs down anyone else’s throat.

There are a big couple of weeks coming up for the Humanist Society Scotland. Sutherland is chief executive. This weekend, the board of the International Humanists movement arrives in Scotland, with visitors from America, Africa and Asia. Then the following weekend it’s Scotland’s Festival of Humanism, where atheists from all over the country will gather in Glasgow for a sold-out event.

Scotland has become a majority secular nation – 51.1% now say they’re non-religious and that’s up from 36% in the 2011 census. Indeed, Scotland is the most secular part of Britain. That’s quite a turn of events, given in the 1950s Scotland was much more religious than England and Wales.

As a child, Sutherland experienced a pretty traditional upbringing. His grandfather was a Church of Scotland minister. “I went to Sunday school,” he says, “but like many families we drifted away from the church. Even my parents now consider themselves humanist.”

The Humanist Society's Fraser Sutherland. Picture: Gordon Terris 

By the time he hit high school, an interest in science sealed the deal. Evolution and the age of the universe meant the claims of the church “just didn’t add up. Only one of these things could be true: science which has loads of evidence and can be tested; and religion where you just have to believe. It was a no-brainer”.

He adds: “That makes me just like many Scots who aren’t religious. Would I call myself an atheist? I’d probably just say ‘I’m really not anything’.”

He moved from being a sceptic non-believer to an active humanist at the time when same-sex marriage was being legislated for in Scotland – that didn’t take place until 2014. “It was a turning point,” he says. Straight and married with a young daughter, Sutherland was shocked by the animosity towards the LGBT community from churches.

Churches were “vociferous, putting out statements like the whole Earth was going to come crashing down if this happened. I thought, really? Over a bit of paper that says ‘you’re married’? It switched a light on”.

Dominance

“These people have a lot of influence

– more than they should have,” he says. “They’re not even representative of the population but they dominate the media agenda, they dominate evidence sessions in parliament. You can’t open a newspaper without a bishop or reverend having their say on whatever ‘the moral issue’ is. Yet people who aren’t religious don’t have a say in these debates. There should be an equal playing field.”

Sutherland makes clear that humanism is just as morally virtuous –

if not more – than religious faiths. Humanists believe in the same key moral principle as all world religions: the so-called “golden rule” of do unto others as you would have them do unto you. They believe people are essentially “good”, and don’t need supernatural deities to compel humans to virtue.

Personal autonomy is at the heart of humanism: individuals decide the morality which governs their lives, not the strictures of religions rooted in the Bronze Age. That’s why humanism is so closely tied to women’s rights, LGBT rights, and campaigns like the right to die, Sutherland explains. Humanists believe nobody has the authority to tell another person what to do with their own body. Although its embrace of human rights clearly marks the movement as “liberal”, there are plenty of Conservative humanists. However, the majority of supporters do sit in the centre or centre left. Sutherland has MSPs in his organisation.

Even though established churches are declining in Britain – Sutherland thinks the Church of Scotland is now in a terminal condition as congregation numbers collapse –the religious right is a powerful force globally, he says.

The melding of extreme right politics with fundamentalist Christianity can be seen around the world from America to Hungary. Scotland, with its recent history of progressive politics, became a “lightning rod” for the global religious right. The American anti-abortion outfit 40 Days for Life has staged protests outside Scottish hospitals providing services for women.

In America, a breed of extreme Christian nationalism has sprung up, mixing with Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, and pushing “this idea that America is a Christian nation”. Aside from the fact that Christianity was unheard of on American soil until 1492, Sutherland points with irony to the secular nature of the Founding Fathers’ US constitution guaranteeing religious freedom.

When Christian fundamentalism meets modern-day populism the brew is often anti-migrant, anti-women and anti-LGBT – which Sutherland finds quite amusing given the Jesus of the Bible seems rather “socialist”. Christ condemns the rich, talks peace and love, and befriends the poor and outcast, including sex workers.

Yet the history of Christianity is filled with violence, persecution, intolerance and cruelty – and often appears antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. The modern far right has latched onto Christianity, Sutherland feels, given religion’s history of “controlling people”. It suits far-right political aims. It also allows the establishment of an “us and them” narrative where anyone not white, straight and Christian is an outsider. “It’s a convenient tool.”

Kirk

SUTHERLAND notes this isn’t the case all over the world. Indeed, here in Scotland the Kirk gets special mention for the good work it does with foodbanks and supporting refugees. Sutherland puts this down to the Church of Scotland’s bottom-up structure. However, he doesn’t let the Kirk off the hook for its past offences, from burning witches and subjugating women, to encouraging the execution of non-believers and its anti-Irish campaigns in the 1920s. Although the Kirk now carries out same-sex weddings, it was one of the leading voices against marriage equality.

Despite his robust critique of religion, Sutherland says: “I’m not this New Atheist type – making fun of religion. If people find meaning in it, then I’m okay with that, of course. I don’t want to interfere in anyone’s beliefs, I just want religion to know its place a little better.”

What infuriates him is the power religion still wields in Scotland, and he’s as angry with politicians for allowing this to continue as he is with churches for their overreach.

“They have an influence which outweighs any other sector of society or lobbying group. There’s this deference from government towards religion – this idea that it’s really important that politicians hear from religious groups on topics like LGBT rights, abortion, and assisted dying.

“There’s never a stop point where politicians think why have they got such a powerful voice? Why are they given this special place when we know they’re a minority of the population?”

Sutherland says religion has become “very influential” within John Swinney’s administration and blames his deputy Kate Forbes who holds hardline socially conservative views. She’s anti-abortion, opposed to same-sex marriage, and believes having children outside of wedlock is “wrong”.

He’s got no time for claims that Forbes’s views are somehow “immune from criticism because they’re religiously held. That’s effectively, for want of a better word, blasphemy – it’s saying ‘you can’t question someone’s views because they’re religious’. Well, you can question those views – they’re up for debate as we live in a society that accepts freedom of expression and religion”.

He adds: “If we say we can’t question someone’s views on LGBT rights as they’re Christian or Muslim, then that’s a very bad position for Scotland to be in.”

Swinney recently met with the group Sancta Familia Media, which runs a TV service about the Catholic Church in Scotland. Sutherland says this group was “one of the main instigators of the orange jumpsuit protest outside parliament when buffer zones came into force”. He asks why the First Minister is giving up his time for “a very niche group when many other groups trying to speak to government can’t get meetings”.

FM John Swinney

Sturgeon

RELIGIOUS organisations have the ear of government in Scotland in a way other sections of society don’t, Sutherland feels. “There’s certainly more scope for influence from religious groups now than there was under Nicola Sturgeon. If you look at the First Minister’s diary the churches are getting lots of meetings.”

Scottish humanists have been asking to speak to the Equalities Minister since the new government was formed and are still waiting. Other lobbying groups – from LGBT campaigners, to trade unions or business organisations – don’t have the same access to power as churches, Sutherland insists.

“Religion gets such a primacy that other parts of society don’t get a look-in.” Churches, Sutherland feels, hold a “sense of entitlement” because of the attention still lavished on them by government.

Sutherland spotlights what he calls “astroturfing” by religious organisations – that’s an outfit pretending to be something it’s not, or not fully disclosing its background to the public.

For example, on the issue of assisted dying, the group Our Duty of Care presents itself as concerned “healthcare professionals”. It is, however, funded and administered through the organisation Care Not Killing, whose board chair, Nola Leach, was chief executive of CARE (Christian Action Research and Education).

Sutherland has asked for an investigation into recent activities by Care Not Killing at Holyrood. The organisation staffed a stall in the parliament under the name Logos Scotland linked to the debate on assisted dying. This obscured its role, Sutherland says, and was a “deliberate and underhand attempt to circumvent the rules”. Care Not Killing insists it abided by rules.

Gordon Macdonald, Care Not Killing CEO, was also part of Scotland for Marriage which Sutherland called “an astroturf organisation” opposing same-sex weddings.

A group called Better Way has appeared regularly in the media opposing assisted dying. It claims to be a “non-religious group”. However, an investigation of its privacy policy shows that “CARE is the data controller for the purposes of personal data shared [with Better Way]”.

There are staff links between Better Way and the group Free to Disagree which opposed hate crime legislation, Fraser says. Free to Disagree’s privacy policy advises the public to contact The Christian Institute should they have inquiries. The smacking ban, which humanists supported, was opposed by a group called Be Reasonable. Again, it’s only when someone digs deeper that it becomes apparent the group is linked to The Christian Institute.

“If you pull back the curtain, you see links to well-funded Christian organisations,” Sutherland says. “They all say ‘we’re just grass-roots people’, but they’re not.” Similar astroturfing occurred around abortion buffer zones and trans rights, he adds.

MSP Nicola Sturgeon

Phoney

During public consultations on issues like assisted dying or buffer zones, Sutherland says parliamentary committees and MSPs are “spammed to hell by automated responses often from the same IP address”: in other words, one computer sending out the same email to officials thousands of times. “That’s a real problem as it’s phoney but then presented as the results of a genuine consultation, yet the responses are identical – the exact same text just copied and pasted on every single email over and over again. It’s an abuse of democracy.”

He wants the rules regarding public consultations tightened so the public can only reply once and must give some form of identity ensuring they’re real. Emails could come in from America for all anyone knows, Sutherland adds.

In the days before the consultation on assisted dying closed, the email address of MSP Liam McArthur, who is proposing the bill, “was spammed with thousands of responses that were identical, and swarmed with bots”.

On the Scottish Parliament’s website there is a note which says that “a campaign fully opposed to the proposal was organised by the Right to Life organisation – 3,352 emails were received by Liam McArthur on the same day from the same organisational email address”.

The email address was “that of the Right to Life organisation”, the note explains. Among Right to Life’s patrons are the Catholic Archbishop of Edinburgh Leo Cushley as well as a series of other Christian leaders. The former secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain is also a patron.

Right to Life has connections to the “American anti-abortion network”, Sutherland claims. It boasts of “shaping the media narrative” on its website.

Sutherland adds: “There’s an ongoing campaign of trying to make out that there’s bigger public concern about these issues than there actually is. If you speak to the public at large, on assisted dying for instance, they’re overwhelmingly supportive – the same with abortion.

“There’s an attempt to muddy the waters and portray to parliamentarians and government that there’s a bigger community concerned than exists.”

Sometimes these lobby groups spring up and are “just two men and a dog” – a couple of activists with an axe to grind – “who then get space on GB News or in The Daily Telegraph”.

Catholic Church leaders have also been speaking out against the assisted dying bill. The Catholic Herald recently ran a report headlined: “Scottish bishops highlight ‘chilling’ economic incentives of assisted suicide”. The Church of Scotland and the Scottish Association of Mosques are also opposed.

The Archbishop of Canterbury the Most Reverend Justin Welby (R) ahead of the State Opening of Parliament in chamber of the House of Lords at the Palace of Westminster

Schools

HUMANISTS oppose the role bishops have in the House of Lords, and also the official role churches have with Scottish schools. There are three seats for religious figures on every local council schools committee in Scotland – one for the Catholic Church, the Kirk, and another denomination. Humanists have been campaigning for the removal of their voting rights on these committees.

“It’s just not right,” says Sutherland. “It should be up to councillors who are democratically accountable to the electorate.”

This April, Perth and Kinross became the first council in Scotland to withdraw voting rights. The decision followed the closure of a local non-denominational primary school, which was swung by the votes of the religious members of the lifelong learning committee. Since then, eight more councils have followed suit.

When Edinburgh voted to remove the powers, the Catholic Church said the decision sent a “troubling message not just to Catholics, but to people of all faiths”. Sutherland says his organisation would like to see an end to religious schooling in Scotland full stop. Faith schools in Scotland are primarily Catholic. Given the history of sectarianism in Scotland, and the fact that there’s still a strong “anti-Catholic attitude here”, however, Sutherland says he understands fears within the community.

He appreciates that Catholics might see calls to end faith schools as an attack, but stressed the opposition was to religious schooling by any group, including non-Christian faiths.

Humanists in England campaign to end Church of England schooling. He knows, though, that “high-profile voices will absolutely attempt to present this as sectarian. It’s not. I would say the same about a Jewish or Muslim school, or a Hindu school”.

He adds: “I very much believe children should learn about religion, but they should not be instructed in religion. Children should have the right to make decisions for themselves when they’re old enough.”

Religious schools, he says, “essentially segregate people. That’s the problem. It instills an ‘us and them’ mentality that’s not good. That’s not the same as saying ‘Catholic schools teach sectarianism’, I’m not claiming that. I’m saying if you segregate children it doesn’t help break down the barriers that exist between communities”.

He questioned the reasoning behind religious opposition to the right to die, given the cruelty inherent in demanding the terminally ill remain alive. The Catholic Bishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, recently told churchgoers that “suffering” is an “intrinsic part of our human journey, a journey embraced by the eternal word of God, Christ Jesus himself. He brings our humanity to its full glory precisely through the gateway of suffering and death”.

In terms of the campaign for the right to die, Sutherland said that with comments like that the Cardinal should “just keep talking” as it would help to convince the public why the law is needed. “As humanists, we’re concerned about people in pain, suffering at the end of their life for a meaningless reason. The first and foremost priority is personal autonomy.”

Fraser Sutherland, CEO of the Humanist Society Scotland, said Scotland was suffering from a 'historical hangover' by keeping churches in education decision-making 

Abortion

HE mocked claims by opponents of “people being euthanised against their will” or that “soon we’ll be euthanising children”, saying humanists would be “horrified” at such abuses. Sutherland compared these comments to fake allegations from Donald Trump that American children are aborted ‘post-birth’. “That would be murder,” he says wearily. “This is about people having control over their own lives.”

Sutherland accepts that Christians and people of other faiths “genuinely believe that our lives are given to us by God and taken at God’s will so interfering in that is unethical”.

However, he noted that Christians also believe in many unsubstantiated supernatural ideas, like wine and bread becoming the body and blood of Jesus.

Regarding influence by reli – gious groups, Sutherland questioned why, when it comes to assisted dying, there has been no meeting between the parliamentary health committee considering the bill and people who are terminally ill. “Could you imagine any other piece of legislation where they wouldn’t speak to the people directly impacted? You wouldn’t pass a housing bill and not speak to landlords or tenants.”

Sutherland also broached the issue of child sexual abuse within churches, given claims often made by religious figures that they are speaking out on so-called morality issues in order to protect children.

“I’d encourage anyone to read the transcripts of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. It’s very clear many religious organisations knew about abuse and covered up abuse for decades in Scotland.” He noted that other organisations – from boarding schools to the BBC –had also covered up abuse to protect their reputation.

Two issues which have drawn religious opposition – assisted dying laws and plans to outlaw conversion therapy for LGBT young people – have both seemingly been shelved by the SNP. There’s talk of Holyrood waiting for Westminster to legislate on conversion therapy, and claims by the government that an assisted dying law is beyond Holyrood’s powers.

“A nationalist government is now scared of doing anything in case it gets told off by the Supreme Court or Westminster – I find that phenomenal given the position the SNP is meant to hold.”

Does he still think the SNP is a “progressive party”, as it styles itself? “That’s a difficult question.” The tightness of the leadership vote between Humza Yousaf and Kate Forbes showed that many members “back a socially conservative viewpoint”.

Scotland, he notes, became a focal point for the American Christian right. Sutherland believes that was primarily down to Humza Yousaf taking power and the idea among US Christian nationalists – many of whom have Scottish ancestry and hold “romantic views” of Scotland – that “a Muslim leader of Scotland was unconscionable”. He adds: “It’s ultimately racist.”

“Trans people,” he continues, “then became this lightning rod. They were used as a hook to say ‘this is ridiculous, look at what progressives are promoting now, people can identity as a helicopter’. That was the kind of nonsense they came out with.”

Rowling

THE global profile of JK Rowling, who lives in Edinburgh, also focused attention on Scotland, he says. “There’s something about the power of social media, particularly Twitter, and how it almost radicalises people to the point where it becomes really obsessive. There are a number of public figures really obsessed with trans people in a way I find quite strange. It’s quite extreme views sometimes.”

He referenced the writer Graham Linehan, who created the Father Ted sitcom, saying: “He’s almost become one of his own characters. I know a lot of people are angry about him, I just find it sad. I think he’s in a bad place.”

Sutherland is astonished at the vitriol directed at trans people. When one trans person breaks the law or behaves threateningly online, the whole community gets tarnished, he says. “If you’re able to weaponise hate towards one small minority, the same could happen to British Indians, Jewish people – any other group.”

Sutherland also wryly noted the number of men who took anti-trans positions claiming they were pro-women rights, while also opposing abortion. “It kind of speaks for itself, really, doesn’t it? I take what they say with a huge pinch of salt.”

Sutherland believes that women’s rights and LGBT rights are no longer safe given the rise of the far right and religious right globally. “If we’ve learned anything in the past 10 years it should be that Roe v Wade shows the debate is not settled.” The attempt to “roll back” rights for women and minorities will continue, he warns.

He’s also wearied by attempts from the religious right to roll back sex education in schools. “Teachers take a sensible approach. It’s not ‘corrupting young people’. It’s answering questions, providing advice to make them safe from abuse or unwanted pregnancy or STDs.

“Teenagers have always had sex and always will. If we don’t give them proper advice they’ll find it on the internet, and it’s a mess of misinformation.”

Attempts to whip up hysteria around sex education are also “co-ordinated”, Sutherland says, with MSPs targeted by spam email campaigns.

JK Rowling

Persecution

IT’S not only religion that gets held to account by Sutherland – the hippy “wellness industry” is in his sights too for selling health remedies “for which there’s no proof”. Recently, Russell Brand – who became a Christian after denying allegations of sexual assault – was selling a “magical amulet” to protect wearers from “evil energies” like Wi-Fi. Sutherland added Brand’s conversion was “convenient”.

Sutherland says he has more respect for religious people as “they genuinely hold their beliefs, than New Age practitioners just looking to make money”.

Unsurprisingly, Sutherland and his team come in for a lot of online hate, particularly for supporting trans rights. “It’s nasty, angry, vicious.” He shakes his head at allegations of misogyny given that “many of the people who took the decision around our position are women. It’s not up to me alone, I’m just the face of the organisation”.

When it comes to poison pen attacks over his secularism, he gets “green ink” letters calling him “Satan’s foot soldier”. He says: “That’s water off a duck’s back, it’s just a bit mad.”

The anti-abortion lobby also attack his team as “murderers who want to kill babies”. He often sees such abuse as proof that he’s doing his job right.

Finally, he turns to persecution. To Sutherland, religious groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to authoritarianism. The Nazis banned them and Russia has also banned them. “Democracy is very important to humanists as authoritarian governments don’t respect human autonomy.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses “are a litmus test of religious freedom. They’re often the first to be persecuted”. While humanists “may disagree with their supernatural view of the world”, they’d fight hard for the right of Jehovah’s Witnesses – or any other faith group –to worship as they please. While Christians regularly talk of being hounded around the world, Sutherland points out that atheists are among the most persecuted groups on Earth. In some states, “being openly humanist” is a death sentence, not just by the courts but by mobs. Atheist bloggers were murdered by Islamic gangs in Bangladesh.

Many of the people trying to claim asylum in Britain are atheists fleeing religious regimes like Iran, and would be killed as “heretics” if forcibly returned. “It’s just so depressing,” he says. “You look at your own problems and they’re so small in comparison to what our colleagues are facing elsewhere in the world.”