This weekend I was invited onto the TV show The Big Questions, to talk about whether all religious institutions should be charities.
The debate came about because of a Ten Minute Rule Motion, proposed by Peter Bone MP, which proposes that all religions should be presumed to have charitable status.
I went on the show prepared to argue that Peter Bone’s decision to put this bill forward is wrongheaded, and while I didn’t get the chance to put that point as fully as I would have liked, I remain convinced that’s right.
Bone proposes charities must pass one of three tests to have charitable status – an organisation must either provide prayer, do social work and education, or provide money to other charities.
The ironic thing is that in other circumstances, I would enthusiastically support this.
Bone’s tests are noticeably stricter than the requirements currently laid down in both statute and case law, which allows not just for the conduct of religion, but also its advancement.
In particular, Bone’s bill does not include a test that would give charitable status to preaching and proselytisation. This means it would not allow tax relief for organisations that exist only to lobby for greater state protection for religion, or for door-to-door preachers.
This is pretty much my own view. I think it’s fair enough that you should get charitable status for conducting a public act of prayer; in most cases, it benefits those who go and it does no harm to others.
But I also think it’s time we scrapped some rules that often allow religions special privileges when advocating their point of view.
The current rule allows tax relief to a Christian to attempt to convert a Muslim, to that same Muslim to attempt to convert a Christian, and to both of them to convert an atheist. The poor atheists gets no tax relief for putting their point of view, which seems to me rather unfair.
The case law that supports this currently says “any religion is better than none”, and dates back to the 19th century. I think we should be in favour of a law free of archaic religious privilege, and would advocate scrapping this principle.
So why don’t I support Bone’s bill?
Basically, because it would create a complex, difficult and messy legal framework that would be hard to administer. Because almost certainly if the commission wasn’t checking whether religious organisations were doing something useful, HM Revenue & Customs would have to do the same thing. And because I support a level playing field for all charities, not one rule for the religious and one for the secular.
There are already all sorts of odd exemptions and benefits for religious organisations – one particularly odd one means the commission is required to regulate 80,000 churches from 19 denominations who are exempted from having to register with it, and which it would therefore, practically, find extremely hard to identify.
I don’t think we need another odd exemption.