Not just one but two - count them - two atheist news stories in the press today. The official representatives must really have got their confidence care of the bus campaign.
Mine won't be the only Christian response, but as these were the stories that left my husband and I getting annoyed with the radio this morning... given there's a whole world of politics out there, that takes some doing. Must've been a slow news day.
The first story was actually pretty horrible when you think about it - it was pretty much religion wastes your taxes and might be an element in your hospital being dirty.
The NHS spends £32m a year on hospital chaplains of many denominations. The spokesman for the National Secular Society (that's the same body with an advert in this week's New Statesman magazine with an advert that says if you want religious freedom to support them... as if those of us with a faith are going to prefer a secular worldview where religion is solely in the private sphere and no one can express their faith publically?) said that it was more like £40m. He suggested that the choice people should be given was between having these chaplains or having more nurses and hospital cleaners.
If I got the underlying message right were they really saying have a clean, secular hospital in which to recover or a dirty one with chaplains in which to meet your maker more quickly?
Now, I don't know if you've spent much time in hospital. Even in the nicest, cleanest hospital with the friendliest staff, if you have a child that's been admitted like we did... I'm fairly strong-willed and strong-minded but well, if the National Secular Society supporters can cope without moments of prayer when in that stressful a situation, then they must be stronger of mind than me.
Praying with someone and prayer support may initially be a bit odd-sounding but in a situation like ours one evening last autumn, it can be the most welcome thing in the world.
In its efforts to fillet out religion from every element of public society, the National Secular Society is positioning itself as saving money for the NHS.
They say that if people want religion, said the spokesman, the churches and mosques should pay for it, and not the state - local religious establishments should staff the hospitals so that the people who go there know the ministers they see. Because obviously its only those that regularly attend services that would actually want to see a minister, isn't it?
There's nothing wrong with the NSS raising this - the NSS is a secular society that believes that there's no only no place for a state religion (so disestablish the Church of England - actually a lot of us within the CofE would support that too) but no place for any religion at all in manifestations of the state, such as schools or hospitals. I just rather disliked the tone in which it was done.
The NHS has taken the opposite approach, seeking to provide the spiritual support that people in hospital as possible, hence the availability of people from different religions - I understand most hospital chaplains are rushed off their feet - so there does seem to be some demand for what they provide.
The NHS spokesperson said that they are "committed to the principle of ensuring that NHS patients have access to the spiritual care that they want, whatever faith or belief system they follow". So there's no need for humanists to worry - sounds like the inclusive approach means that if they need someone to talk to to assure them that they've made a difference in the world and that there's nothing beyond but dissapating heat energy and cooling meat, then that should also be available to them.
By the way, not all non-believers think prayer support is nonsense - and this one, a medical ethicist writing on the BBC website, notes the valuable role that chaplains bring in terms of holistic care, remembering that patients are people not just illnesses and bringing comfort.
But its also looking to remove religion from the very places where its needed - where people are facing fear, bad news, and contemplating mortality, where the things that might be bothering them about religion stop being an abstract argument or something that can happily be left, pushed away and not thought about and actually really start to matter for them.
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The second story is one that's been bobbing along for a while: "debaptism". According to the rather excellent blog the church mouse, there's a real rush on for official "debaptism certificates" from the National Secular Society - yep, that's them again- 100,000 at £3 a pop.
The idea of debaptism is simple - if you were baptised as a Christian as a child, there's no way out of it, no formal way of having it exponged from the church records if you don't grow up to have Christian faith. So the NSS is providing a way to do it "officially".
Given that the fundamental position of atheism is that none of this religious stuff matters and its a waste of space, you'd think that most people would just leave it as that - something from their childhood, laughable superstition with no relevance to them now. But it seems that leaving things be isn't enough for a significant number of people these days.
I've blogged before on the rights and wrongs of child baptism, and our decision to baptise our child, and I hope he'll never regret it. It's for him to find his own relationship with God and with the world, to find that he's loved - all we can do is try to set the best example we can.
For what it's worth, I don't think those getting debaptised have much to worry about anyway.
My home group has been doing the parables this last term, and we all found the parable of the 10 virgins (Matthew 25:1) very unsettling. We don't know what's going to happen at the end of the world (or indeed whether climate change, war or meteor might be the method), but I can't help feeling that an infant baptism that you didn't choose and has had no meaning in how you've tried to live your life will not be a massively important factor in whatever happens. Debaptism is like those punk badges in the 70s "Jesus died for his sins not mine" - a big red arrow saying that you don't only not belief but you want to point it out in case God might miss it...
But the church mouse is right that it's grassroots campaigns not dictats from on high that gain momentum. So let's put some thought into this one - what's the best way to show what's important in our lives as christians? A paper certificate reminding us? No? Then what?
Oh - we're out doing it: visiting old ladies, helping neighbours, running playgroups, spreading a little happiness into the lives of those people tend to avoid...
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