New Humanists tolerate religion

A number of us who have worked 'religiously' in secular institutions have tended to find that secularism can be pretty hostile to religion. Some of it openly so, rarely passing up chances to score points. Some of it probabl;y most of it tacitly and for the most part unwittingly so: it is simply assumed that the way to approach things involves a 'neutral' and therefore non-religious starting-point. Of course there is no such thing as a neutral standpoint and such an agenda is bound to cut across some religious sensibilities at some point. Part of my battle has been to get secular authorities to recognise that they are not neutral and that their claims are paradigmatic with religious claims and that therefore the imposition of secular solutions is the same kind of imperialistic/chauvinistic approach that they [rightly] decry in religious or, say, Marxist proposals.

So it was good to come across this humanist article in which is said:
"To rerail the humanist agenda, a less adolescent approach by the carriers of the humanist tradition would help. Humanists who mostly read about the ills and evils of religion and other superstitions, need to be challenged to remember that there are decent folk among the religious, and that we need to work with them if we want to achieve our larger goal of a more just society. "
New Humanist November 2004: