Last Tuesday I attended a conference organized by the Charity Commission for England and Wales. Representatives of the main religions and of the British Humanist Association spent the day trying to answer a number of questions that the Charity Commission has to answer in the next month or two.

Before I ask you the questions, I’m afraid I will have to explain one or two boring details about English charity law. Bear with me.

First of all, there is no way in English law to register a religion as a religion. From time to time, Baha’i National Spiritual Assemblies (national governing councils) from other parts of Europe write to the UK National Spiritual Assembly to ask what we had to do to register the Baha’i Faith as a religion in the UK, just as they have to do in their countries. The answer is? Nothing! We have no Ministry of Religion, no bureaucracy to regulate religions as religions. The state is, generally speaking, not interested in defining what is and what is not a religion, preferring to leave this to the courts.

However, if, for some strange reason, I wanted to persuade people that worship of, oh I don’t know, let’s say watermelons would redound to their spiritual health, the courts might now accept my claim that I had established a religion with charitable objects. In English law, a “religion” must believe in a transcendent object (let’s say a “supreme being”) and express that belief through worship.

Even thought we don’t need to register ourselves as a religion, we are registered as a charity with religious objectives (or objects, to use the legal term), and that means we can reclaim the income tax paid by those who donate to the Baha’i funds on the amount they have donated.

Until 2006, charities with religious objects - “the advancement of religion” is, in English law, a legitimate charitable object - were presumed in law to provide a public benefit.

No longer. The Charities Act 2006 removed what’s known as “the presumption of public benefit”, and religious charities, like any other charities, will have to demonstrate that they provide a public benefit before they can get the tax breaks. The National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the UK, along with all other religious charities, will have to pass the public benefit test.

So now the Charity Commission has to do a couple of things before it can implement the new law. It has to:

1. Define various terms that appear in the legislation.
2. Decide in what ways religions and non-religious belief organizations (such as the British Humanist Association) can satisfy the public benefit test.

But the language embedded in the legislation is problematic in a multi-faith society. Not every religion believes in a “supreme being”, a transcendent creator God, nor does every religion incorporate acts that would be considered as “worship”.

The questions

So they sat us down in groups of 8 and asked us to help them by answering the following questions:

1. The meaning of religion in a multi-faith context, including:
• What does “supreme being” mean?
• What does worship mean?
• What does the “advancement of religion” mean?
2. What we mean by “religious beliefs” and “non-religious beliefs”
• What are the characteristics of charitable belief systems, whether religious or non-religious?
• What are the characteristics of a religious belief system - i.e. a religion?
• What are the characteristics of a non-religious belief system?
3. There must be an identifiable benefit
• How do benefits differ between religious and non-religious belief systems?
• Are there moral and ethical codes in all belief systems?
• What about spiritual benefits?
• What about potentially harmful aspects? What might they be? How are they balanced against the benefits?
4. Benefits must be to the public or a section of the public
• Who benefits?
• How do religious/non-religious belief communities engage with the public?
• Is proselytizing a proper charitable purpose? How do we define proselytizing?
• What about benefits to spiritual leaders and trustees of religious charities?
• Is it charitable to provide accommodation, living expenses, etc. to members of the faith community?

The answers?

Truth be told, the discussion around our table (one Baha’i, three Christians, a Humanist, a retired academic with an interest in new religious movements, an official from the Department of Communities and Local Government, and a senior Charity Commission staff member) produced rather more fog than clarity, more questions than answers.

So I am going to leave you to try to answer them for yourselves!

And think about this. Should religions be supported by state funding (whether direct or indirect)?

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