No odes to Dawkins at council meetings, either, Mr Pickles

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/07/no-ode-dawkins-council-eric-pickles

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The communities secretary, Eric Pickles, gave an odd speech at the Conservative conference at the weekend (Report, 7 April). We were told that Britain is a Christian nation, which is true, and "militant atheists" should all "get over it". Yet he failed to understand what it is that secularists are actually campaigning for. We don't mind that most people are Christian. We definitely don't mind Christianity being a part of public discourse. What we object to is Christianity, as a majority opinion, being imposed on everyone else. We believe that everyone should be on a level playing field, regardless of their beliefs, and that the state shouldn't favour one particular religion.

On the specific example he cites, prayer in council meetings, he completely misses the point. The problem is that it shouldn't be part of the formal meeting. People have a right to pray wherever and whenever they like, but they don't have a right to force it on to other people or force it onto the official minutes. If, for example, the majority of people became atheists, we would still have no right to begin any council meeting with an ode to Richard Dawkins.Christopher CurtisMilton Keynes

• Giles Fraser (Comment, 7 April) rightly takes Eric Pickles to task for crass Christian flag-waving at the Conservative conference, but then refers to "a handful of middle-class atheists who think that reading half a chapter of The Selfish Gene at university has turned them into zeitgeist-surfing cultural radicals". Most of the many atheists I know have considered their position very deeply, and have read widely in forming their view. Not all people who call themselves Christian have thought as conscientiously about the belief they hold.Paul SurmanOxford

• If this is a Christian country (which I would like to think it is), why does the current government seem so much to enjoy humiliating the poor, the sick and the unemployed, and driving them into destitution; a very unchristian course of action. No, Eric Pickles, it is not a Christian country.David SantamariaBushey, Hertfordshire