By RICHARD DAWKINS - NEW STATESMAN
Updated: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:15:44 UTC

An open letter to the Rt Hon David Cameron MP from the New Statesman’s Christmas 2011 guest editor, Richard Dawkins.

Richard Dawkins at the New Statesman offices.

Dear Prime Minister,
Merry Christmas! I mean it. All that "Happy Holiday Season" stuff, with "holiday" cards and "holiday" presents, is a tiresome import from the US, where it has long been fostered more by rival religions than by atheists. A cultural Anglican (whose family has been part of the Chipping Norton Set since 1727, as you'll see if you look around you in the parish church), I recoil from secular carols such as "White Christmas", "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and the loathsome "Jingle Bells", but I'm happy to sing real carols, and in the unlikely event that anyone wants me to read a lesson I'll gladly oblige - only from the King James Version, of course.

Token objections to cribs and carols are not just silly, they distract vital attention from the real domination of our culture and politics that religion still gets away with, in (tax-free) spades. There's an important difference between traditions freely embraced by individuals and traditions enforced by government edict. Imagine the outcry if your government were to require every family to celebrate Christmas in a religious way. You wouldn't dream of abusing your power like that. And yet your government, like its predecessors, does force religion on our society, in ways whose very familiarity disarms us. Setting aside the 26 bishops in the House of Lords, passing lightly over the smooth inside track on which the Charity Commission accelerates faith-based charities to tax-free status while others (quite rightly) have to jump through hoops, the most obvious and most dangerous way in which governments impose religion on our society is through faith schools - as Rabbi Jonathan Romain reminds us on page 27.
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Czy to do Pana dotarło, Panie Premierze?

Autor tekstu: Richard Dawkins
Tłumaczenie: Andrzej Koraszewski
List otwarty do Szanownego Premiera, Davida Camerona, z redakcji tygodnika New Statesman od pełniącego gościnnie funkcję redaktora naczelnego Richarda Dawkinsa z okazji Bożego Narodzenia 2011r.
Drogi Panie Premierze,
Wesołych Świąt Bożego Narodzenia! Poważnie. Wszystkie te bzdury z okolicznościowymi pozdrowieniami, „sezonowe" kartki, to męczący import obyczaju z USA, który począł się dawno temu raczej z rywalizacji między religiami niż przez ateistów. Jako kulturowy anglikanin ( którego rodzina brała udział w Chipping Norton Set [ 1 ] od 1727 roku, co łatwo sprawdzić zaglądając do ksiąg parafialnych) znam świeckie kolędy takie jak „White Christmas", „Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" czy okropne „Jingle Bells", ale lubię również śpiewać prawdziwe kolędy i w dość rzadkich sytuacjach, kiedy ktoś prosi mnie o odczytanie fragmentu Biblii, chętnie się zgadzam — oczywiście tylko z Biblii króla Jakuba .
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TAGGED: RELIGION, RICHARD DAWKINS, SECULARISM