On September 18 2010, 10,000 people lined London’s streets to protest against Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain. Some were dressed in red cardboard papal hats that read “bigot” or “homophobe”; others carried balloons made from condoms. One giant banner even featured Benedict XVI carrying a swastika (this was later removed).
The venom of those days still leaves a sour taste almost six years later. If ever there was a moment in Britain’s post-war history to make Catholics feel like a despised minority, that was it.
Consequently, some Catholics may have been baffled – even disgruntled – last week when Bishop Declan Lang of Clifton diocese implored his flock to stand up for persecuted atheists.
Wasn’t this the equivalent of a shepherd instructing his bewildered sheep to protect a local pack of wolves? In an article for The Universe the bishop wrote that “the persecution of atheists is a grave violation of human dignity throughout the world”. Catholics in England and Wales, he said, must strive to ensure that the Government stands up for people who are “imprisoned, tortured or killed on account of their atheism”.
The bishop’s plea was provoked by the disturbing case of Ahmed Rajib Haider, one of nine atheist bloggers murdered or seriously injured in Bangladesh over the past three years. Rajib Haider was hacked to death by two Islamists with machetes in a style chillingly reminiscent of mob attacks on Christians in the Middle East.
Islamist persecution has already succeeded in bringing Catholics and the Orthodox closer together. Could it lead to new alliances between Catholics and atheists too?
On the front line this is already happening. Benedict Rogers, a Catholic campaigner for religious freedom across the globe, told the Catholic Herald that in 2012 he crossed Indonesia to visit a young atheist named Alex Aan who had been jailed for a Facebook post. “When I introduced myself he was very surprised and slightly defensive. He said: ‘Don’t you know I’m an atheist?’”
Rogers explained that, although he is a Christian, he passionately supports the right to believe, which includes the right not to. Rogers ended up recommending the writings of Christopher Hitchens to Aan, while in turn Aan recommended passages he liked from the Bible. “You had a Christian recommending Hitchens and an atheist recommending the Bible,” Rogers recalls. “That is what religious freedom is about.”
Even in Britain new kinds of alliances are being formed – not against violent persecution, but against infringements on freedom of belief. Last month gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell announced that he had changed his mind on a landmark legal case – and was siding with Christian bakers who had refused to bake a cake with a pro-gay marriage slogan on it.
Tatchell explained his change of heart in the Guardian: “It is an infringement of freedom to require businesses to aid the promotion of ideas to which they conscientiously object. Discrimination against people should be unlawful, but not against ideas.”
Could it be that Tatchell, who campaigns at the coalface of so many human rights issues, can see where the logic applied to the cake case might lead? There is clearly a pragmatic and astute case for defending the rights of atheists, but more importantly it is simply a matter of justice. That is why it is an issue for the Church.
Dialogue with atheists is not new. Benedict XVI tried to encourage it with his “Courtyard of the Gentiles” project, a structure for permanent discussion between believers and non-believers created by the Pontifical Council for Culture. But it was not a widely publicised project and it seemed to trail off.
The chilling fact remains that Islamists are persecuting Christians and atheists alike, sometimes in the most brutal and barbaric of ways. If Pope Francis was to place solidarity with atheists at the heart of his message for the Year of Mercy, this would send a clear signal that the Catholic Church is committed to defending the dignity of all human beings, Catholic or not.
The witness of Catholics such as Benedict Rogers shows that the burden of defending freedom of belief must extend to non-believers too. This burden is much better shared.
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