Humanists UK have released their annual missive whinging on about Operation Christmas Child. You can read their concerns here. Notably, one of their Vice Presidents – Polly Toynbee – took up the case in the national press a few years ago.
You can usually find someone in the Guardian willing to argue about how awful it is that Christians might send presents to children at Christmas. It is deemed pernicious and covert evangelism because they include some Christian literature in the shoe boxes and so Humanists UK are adamant schools ought to have nothing to do with it. I answered these objections several years ago and little has happened, or changed in the Humanist UK argument, to make it any less valid six years later. So, rather than re-invent the wheel, I thought I would re-share the link below and read what still essentially holds today.
If you read it, you will hear about how Samaritan’s Purse covertly and perniciously evangelise through OCC by telling everybody quite clearly on their website that is what they do. You can also read about how Humanists UK are mad that Christians might use Christmas as an opportunity to talk about their faith – which is hideous evangelism – whilst they may talk about humanism to their heart’s content and seek to convince people of its core tenets and absolute rightness, which definitely, absolutely, without question isn’t evangelism at all. Indeed, they are angry that Christians might seek to convert Muslims to their faith, and seem terribly worried for the Muslims and how upset they might be to receive Christian literature, but seem of the view that public comments from a humanist perspective, that would similarly seek to convert them away from Islam is, well, perfectly reasonable. You will also find they are very angry Franklin Graham has said some things they don’t like about gay people – which in and of itself might have some legs as a complaint – except they then go on to worry about the poor Muslims who might hear this terrible bigotry without recognising they would broadly share his views as far as LGBT+ issues go and thus not be troubled by such associations. Nor is there any recognition that a little comparison of the New Testament and Qur’an might give some quite different approaches to how those shared views should play out in practice.
Their latest missive still worries about ‘veiled evangelism’ that the organisation say – quite upfront and clearly – they will do. But this time it targets schools. What school would want to associate with this? If only they knew? So, they argue, why not spread some non-religious Christmas joy? As if that isn’t a complete contradiction in terms – I’m not entirely sure they have quite grasped what Christmas is and why it is celebrated at all! Surely somebody might ask, even a non-religious gift giver, why are you sending this at this time of year? And when the answer ‘because it’s Christmas’ comes back, it’s hard to imagine the follow up, ‘what’s that all about then?’ They could fudge it, of course, but it’s quite hard to insist those first six letters don’t have anything, like anything at all, to do with it.
Humanists UK fail to acknowledge that every organisation has its reasons for what it does and every organisation operates in line with its core convictions. What they seem to believe is that such is fine when those core convictions are secular humanist ones, but not if they happen to be Christian. Even, it seems worth noting, at the specifically Christian-adjacent festival of Christmas where Christians celebrate the implications of the birth of Christ which their Bible (where they got the idea of the story from) insists is good news for all the world which they, funnily enough, think might be a good idea to share given they actually believe it.
Humanists UK have moved on from simply saying we shouldn’t send anything at all like the institutional personification of Ebeneezer Scrooge. They now insist that schools should be told of the shocking associations of OCC and that anybody concerned should give through some non-religious means. Which is interesting that Christians altruistically wish to give in line with both their Christian principles and their genuine belief in the gospel where Humanists UK initially don’t want to give anything altruistically at all and only reluctantly came round to the view that it might be better to do something non-religious at Christmas to one-up the Christians whom they hate most of all. By their fruits you shall know them. I read that somewhere once and it seems apropos.