farnham
HUMANISTS
farnham
HUMANISTS
Community Involvement
| Ceremonies
Farnham Humanists has members who are officiants for Baby Namings,
Civil Partnerships, Weddings and Funerals
- click on ceremonies for more information |
Talks to schools - Farnham Humanists have provided talks to schools.
Follow the link to find the transcript of recent talks by Jim Herrick Humanism talk in Farnham school Humanist talk to Bedales School 11th May 2009
|
|
| Humanist chaplaincy - prisons and hospitals
Prison
Humanist Chaplaincy support - David Savage and Alec Leggatt of
Farnham Humanists met the C of E Chaplain of Send
Woman’s' Prison for a friendly and constructive meeting about
establishing a non-religious chaplaincy role. We will develop this role,
providing the prison with Humanist books, leaflets and attending the
Prison’s regular ‘Faith Fairs’, as well as visiting individual prisoners
when requested. As far as we are aware this is the first time there has
been an agreement to establish a non-religious chaplaincy role in
prisons in England. Humanist Chaplaincy support - Leaflets have been provided to the Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice in Farnham describing what Humanist support could be provided as an additional option to religious chaplaincy. So far only one patient has requested and been provided with support.
|
Support to RE in Surrey (through SACRE) Religious Education is the only subject which does not have a statutory national syllabus for all state schools. Each Local Education Authority, LEA, has a Standing Advisory Council for RE, SACRE, which manages RE locally and as part of its remit produces an RE syllabus for its local non-faith state schools. It also grants determinations to schools to allow them to hold acts of collective worship which are not "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character" - currently 3 schools in Woking with a significant proportion of Muslim pupils have SACRE permitted determinations. SACREs are made up of 4 groups: (1) Church of England; (2) Non C of E Christian denominations and other faiths (e.g. Judaism, Islam, Buddhism); (3) Teacher Unions and (4) Surrey County Councillors. Each SACRE has a chairperson taken from one of the groups and a religious adviser funded by the LEA. There are 170 SACREs in England and Wales, of which 80 have some form of Humanist association. This varies from Humanists who are only allowed to observe meetings to a Humanist being the chair e.g. the Brent SACRE has voted the Humanist as chair for the second time. Farnham Humanists applied for membership of the Surrey SACRE in 2004 and attended several meetings as an observer. The opportunity to present a Humanist membership case to the SACRE was taken up in November 2005 following which Jennie Johnson is now a temporary SACRE member (with no voting rights). An identical opportunity and outcome was afforded to a representative of the Ba'Hai faith at the same time.The links below give Farnham Humanist's case for SACRE membership Farnham Humanists believe that Humanism (or similar) should be represented on the SACRE and taught in RE so as to inform children about non-religious ethical world views as well as religious ones. Humanists have always worried that too close an identification of morality with the six world religions usually studied in RE might lead to those students who not share religious beliefs (65% of 12-19 year olds do not describe themselves as belonging to a religion according to 2004 DfES Research Report 564) thinking that morality also has little to do with them. The usual contemporary justifications for RE in the school curriculum – its contribution to social cohesion and mutual understanding, its presentation of a range of answers to questions of meaning and purpose, its role in the search for personal identity and values – can best be served by including humanist perspectives and non-religious students. The Surrey SACRE produced an Agreed RE Syllabus in 2007 for Surrey Schools (Maintained and Voluntary Controlled) which used the Government's 2004 Non-Statutory Framework for guidance. The latter recommends the inclusion of "secular worldviews such as Humanism" in school RE "as appropriate". The Surrey syllabus now includes a few phrases such as "religion or belief" and "non-religious ethical worldview" which were not present in the old syllabus, but Humanism still isn't mentioned. Following a request from the SACRE
Jennie Johnson recently provided a talk on "What it means to be a
Humanist in Surrey today" The BHA has campaigns relating to religion in schools as follows:
|
|
| Attendance at Remembrance Day ceremonies
|
||
| Local Development project The BHA are concerned about a lack of representation at local level for non-religious people which means that, unlike religious people who can be consulted through recognised methods of communication, non-religious people’s needs and views can be excluded from decision making bodies.
|
||
|
|
For several years now Farnham Humanists have laid a wreath at the
cenotaph in Farnham on Remembrance Day in memory of all those who gave
their lives for the UK including non-religious believers.