Today's Remembrance Day ceremony - hijacked.

For the first time in years, I attended a Remembrance Day service at the commemorative cross on the local green here in Stony Stratford. I wonder how many of us usually pay our respects in this formal way? - not many I am sure. But for some reason this year I was drawn to do so. Not being Christian or indeed following any faith, my reason for attending was simply, for once, to be counted - appreciating the immense sacrifice of lives made during the last century, and this, all to maintain the freedoms so many of us take for granted.


And while the throng settled into the usual Christian ecumenical ceremony lead by the local parish clergy, Church of England and Catholic, I stood there at the back, appreciating the brass band's impressive performance during the hymns, marvelling at the lone female trumpeter's perfectly blown "Last Post" and generally detaching myself from the liturgy, lost in thought contemplating the unimaginable masses of the dead, and the numerous great uncles I had lost in the first world war, which for me had only ever been names and sepias of young men in uniform.


And then came the short homily delivered by one of the clergy. His words were well-chosen, apposite and sensitive to the situation and delivered so effortlessly without notes that my ears pricked up and for a moment I felt wholly attuned with everyone as we stood as one around the commemorative cross.


But then his words hit me ".....but for the secularism which pervaded the powers of the day, our great losses might never have materialised...........and in god we trust and from him we acquire great strength and moral rectitude......."


Standing as I was at the back, nobody would have noticed my head beginning to shake from side to side in disbelief at this statement. I looked around expecting to see some raised eyebrows or nervous sideways glances, but I witnessed none. It was all I could do to suppress a Tourette-like urge to utter the unutterable at that point, amazed as I was that nobody had been fazed by the remark! Don't people truly listen? This man of the cloth had decided to direct a jibe specifically at "secularists", which is perverse given that there are no theocracies in the western world - we are all secular nations. So - what exactly did he mean?


The implication might seem trivial and some might entreat me at this point to just let it pass - but I cannot. He was clearly equating a lack of a belief in god, a-theism, with a unique preponderance towards the atrocity of war. But, this is so off beam given that such preponderance has been the hallmark of allegiance to King and Country down the centuries - an allegiance made all the more unquestioning by the then god-given authority of monarchy!


It would seem, from my perspective at least, that the Vatican's recent plea for people to guard against the vagaries of so-called militant secularism/atheism has turned into such a war-cry that the RC priesthood now see it as their duty to put down secularism at every opportunity. Today's remembrance ceremony was accordingly hijacked! It was just one simple sentence, but it did not pass beneath this person's radar!


Why should remembrance ceremonies across the nation traditionally be the preserve of the Christian faith? This is preposterous when one considers how few people attend church these days. What this demonstrated to me today is that we secularists, those of us who count ourselves not only as a-theists but as humanists (and I suspect a great many a-theists would see themselves as such) ought to organise our own annual remembrance ceremonies, infused with humanistic sentiment, self-reliance and call for positive action rather than passive prayer. Such gatherings would not be conducted in the "sight of god", but rather in the collective sight of each other - the humanist way. We would feel more comfortable and attuned in the way we pay our respects, and what is more, as the word gets around, we'd be reminding people that there is a large secular demographic out there that cares and is just as moral and responsible and able to distinguish right from wrong as godly folk.