Pro Atheism groups have continued their aggressive campaigns to eradicate religion from public life in the United Kingdom, as they have now funded advertisements that urge people to tick “no religion” on census forms.
The British Humanist Association has placed ads on more than 200 buses throughout the United Kingdom carrying the slogan “Not religious? In this year’s census say so.” The BHA have launched the campaign because they say the results of the 2001 census gave a distorted picture of the religious composition of Britain, and want to ensure that those who do not attend church actually say so.
The BHA was ordered by the Committee of Advertising Practice to change their original slogan from “If you’re not religious, for God’s sake say so,” after it was deemed this could cause “widespread” and “serious” offense.
In response to the BHA campaign, the influential U.K. theology think tank Theos has criticised it as “misconceived” and “unnecessary.”
Theos argue that BHA are not taking into account the fact that in the 2001 census, the religious question was the only optional question in the entire form, and that “No religion” was also the first option available to be ticked.
Paul Bickley, a senior researcher at Theos, said that BHA was doing a great job of keeping religion in the news, but that the entire campaign was flawed from the start.
“The campaign grossly exaggerates the extent to which the religious affiliation results of the 2001 census have shaped government policy or influenced spending decisions,” he insisted. “In any case, the British people are quite capable of judging for themselves what box they should tick. They don’t need to be told.”
“If the Archbishop of Canterbury were to launch a campaign pleading for people to tick the Christian box, it would be rightly ridiculed as a sign of desperation,” he continued.
“I suspect that this is what may happen with this campaign, too.”