I wrote the other week on one of the little hypocrisies of the secular theocracy that many of its foremost proponents simply do not recognise we are living in. In that case, it concerned the views of Charlie Falconer and the assisted suicide debate (let’s just name it what it is). He argued against Shabana Mahmood being allowed to let her religious beliefs interfere in any discussion on the assisted dying bill. She was free to hold her religious views, Falconer averred, just not impose them on everyone else whilst, as he spoke, imposing his secular theocratic values upon the rest of us. Religious views must not in any way impact decision-making, but secular ideological ones can underpin whatever decision we like. You can read that post here.

Another little example of this thinking happened at the weekend. A lesser example, admittedly. But nevertheless, a relatively clear one. This time, it wasn’t law-makers and representatives in parliament looking to expunge any hint of religion from public view – except for what is underpinned by an ideological secular worldview – but the Premier League.

It turns out, the Premier League has a specific law – a blasphemy law, if you will – on this very issue. I didn’t realise because players consistently cross themselves in prayer or prostrate themselves to thank their god after scoring. Some even wear crosses and such like, all of which have never so much as raised an officious eyebrow. But, it turns out, I just haven’t been paying enough attention. The Guardian report: ‘The appearance on, or incorporation in, any item of clothing, football boots or other equipment, of any religious message is prohibited under Rule A4 of the governing body’s regulations.’ So, there it is. It seems religious messages are verboten in the premier league.

Seems a tad unnecessary, perhaps. But, fair enough, if you apply the logic consistently. There is a case to be made that football is supposed to bring people together and things like religion and politics have a tendency to unhelpfully inflame passions. And political messages generally are verboten too. You don’t have to have seen too many Old Firm games to understand the cultural and political issues and many will remember Robbie Fowler getting hammered by the FA for that goal celebration supporting the dockers strikes. Politics and religion out. The only consistent lines you can really draw are either no such visible messaging or all forms of such messaging. If you don’t ban all political messages, including Fowler’s dockers support (to which I was entirely sympathetic) you inevitably have to permit Paulo Di Canio doing fascist nonsense too. If you can’t tolerate the latter, you have to also ban the former. But it is at least consistent. The same, I suppose, goes for religious messaging too. Consistency is key.

Which brings me on to why this happened to be a news story at all. Marc Guéhi was in the line of fire for writing ‘I love Jesus’ on a rainbow armband. Fair enough – for all the reasons in the above paragraph – you might think. It’s a religious message, all religious and political messaging is banned, he may have made a calculation that he felt strongly enough about the message to write it, but he broke the rules so fair dinkum. Only, and this is the little pickle the FA are in, as the Guardian report, ‘all Premier League clubs were given an armband for team captains to wear to promote Stonewall’s Rainbow Laces campaign.’ Oh. Only… I thought… Didn’t I understand that… All religious and political messages were banned? Except Stonewall ones apparently. And, of course, all that knee-taking and other Kick It Out campaign stuff.

Now, none of this is to do with the rights and wrongs of any of those campaigns. As you’d imagine, as a pastor, I’m pretty sympathetic to the messaging that Guéhi wrote. I am hardly going to object to ‘I love Jesus’. Indeed, who could object as it is – from Guéhi’s perspective – a simple statement of fact. He does love Jesus. He is, indeed, the son of a church minister. But I can see if you intentionally ban all religious and political messaging, it is reasonable to expect none of it to appear. Likewise, I’m not at all unsympathetic to Kick It Out and their aim to raise awareness of the issue of racism in sport and to seek to change the culture. But if you are going to ban all religious and political messaging, I’m not entirely convinced the knee-taking was actually legitimate (and that is before we get into the efficacy of whether doing that every week for ages really helped to win the battle for hearts and minds, but that’s another issue for another time perhaps). If Fowler got fined for supporting the dockers, it seems everybody should have been fined for taking the knee and the FA were utterly wrong to encourage it.

But perhaps where matters are most clear is when the ban on all religious and political messaging is waived for a Rainbow Armband campaign for the political pressure group Stonewall but the religiously-inspired messaging written upon what should be considered an offending item is cause for reprimand, we can see the problem a little more clearly. One political message is permitted above others and religious views are not. The political armband should have been considered against FA rules to begin with and so writing a religious counterpoint on the armband itself makes matters pretty clear: either all religious and political messaging is verboten or none of it should be. In either case, it cannot be legitimte to allow the political expression of certain views to be paraded with *ahem* gay abandon whilst religious views that do not accord are the subject of reprimands and potential fines.

In another interesting twist, the Ipswich player – Sam Morsy – refused to wear the armband for religious reasons. This time, Islamic religious reasons. I appreciate the diference here is that Morsy simply didn’t want to wear the armband. He opted out and didn’t offer any counter messaging. I suspect if Guéhi had opted out, he too would have been quietly overlooked. One might ask: why not just turn down the opportunity to wear the armband? A perfectly valid question and a legitimate choice another person might well have chosen to take.

But even this misses the point. For if one set of ideological messaging is permitted, why not another? If secularism truly understood is really acceptable and proper, it should not be preferring one religious or political belief over another. If the FA really want to promote certain political views – which in a sense it is entirely entitled to do – they need to permit and allow all religious, political and ideological views in the name of secularist consistency. If it doesn’t want to promote any political or religious views – and doesn’t want anyone else to do so either – it is perfectly entitled to ban all ideological, polticial and religious views.

But you neither need to be politically engaged nor religiously minded to see the probem here. It seems the FA are happy to front certain political views and reject others, they are happy to allow certain ideological views to be manifest and not others. There can be no credible justification for it; it is just glaring inconsistency. But it is worth remembering all this next time they threaten anyone with a fine or a reprimand.