Madam, – John Waters writes that secularists “have nothing to offer society as an alternative source of ethics, meaning or hope” (Opinion, November 20th).
Mr Waters continually misrepresents secularism as a desire to destroy all religious belief and subject us all to some atheist dystopia. Political secularism is, by definition, the separation of the State from religion. This ensures two things. The first is that no one religion may be favoured by the State and the second is that all religious beliefs are treated equally and allowed the freedom to practise. Secularism of this nature has allowed religion to flourish in America.
Mr Waters’s insulting language, describing calls for secularism as a “moronic cacophony”, does nothing to advance this debate and his essential argument, when stripped of its pseudo-theological florid language, is that without religion life has no meaning and without public religion, society has no coherence. This nonsense is belied by the valuable, purposeful and happy lives lived by the quarter of a million citizens of this country who professed no religious belief in the last census.
All this aside, the secularism I’m interested in is the freedom to send my child to a local national school that is funded by my taxes where my child will not be subjected to hours of prayers, communion, confession, confirmation, nativity plays and all the other indoctrination particular to the Catholic church. Unfortunately our State abdicated its responsibility to educate our children several generation ago, handing this duty over to a foreign church that now controls 96 per cent of our national schools. – Yours, etc,