Then you go an spoil it all by saying something stupid like ...

... "'So this is what it's all about', I thought. 'A social worker showing no understanding, no dialogue – secularism and spiritual differences are to be fought against, and children subtly coerced into believing?'
That was the end of the atheist Guardian correspondent's close encounter with Greenbelt this year. such a shame, because up till then she'd been doing quite well. Okay, we might forgive her for the repeating the common mix-up of 'evangelism' and 'evangelicalism' (so she writes about 'post-evangelism', which is not really the same thing as post-evangelicalism which is what I think she actually meant). However, it may be symptomatic of a mindset in approaching the exercise, perhaps? Especially as she then ends the article rather abruptly with "This kind of discourse, I couldn't deal with. I turned around at once, and left." (Oh, and there shouldn't be a comma in the middle of that first sentence: berate the sub-editor).

The reason why I characterise the quoted response as 'something stupid' is that it does look like it rests on a probably misunderstanding: earlier she says that the two guys she's reacting to are "youth workers". You'll need to check out the article, particularly the last three or four paragraphs to get what I'm on about -An atheist goes to Greenbelt | Jessica Reed | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk:. In the quote, note, we have "social workers". But hang on: 'youth workers' are likely to be church-based and working for church youth outreach programmes. The attitude expressed is perfectly consonant with that job: he's not a 'social worker' any more than a vicar is. To take umbridge at his wanting to encourage young people to take the Christian message seriously is no more 'offensive' than atheists writing books and holding lectures to not-so-subtly rhetorically co-erce the sometimes frail-minded or pre-judiced to reject theism. I digress ... if the guy had been using a position as a secular social worker to do what he said, she'd have good reason; but that isn't what's going on I think.

The sudden exit seems to have been about being confronted by the possibility that some people at least would want others (including potentially the writer herself, obviously) to change their mind, and may believe that they would be better off with another belief system. This, I take it, is meant to offend against some notion of 'laissez-faire' tolerance where one is not allowed to believe that ones own views may be 'superior' in some respect to someone else's and so wish, in appropriate circumstances, to change people's minds.

I think we have to recognise that such a viewpoint is naive and impossible to hold consistently. We all believe what we do because we think it's right. Therefore the reflex of that is that we believe that others are to some degree wrong. In practice then, everyone tends to make some efforts sometimes to change others' minds. Heck, human communication is one long exercise in changing each others' minds. So I guess that the real issue is the interpretation (and I stress that word) in terms of what must be a strong understanding of 'coercion'. But this won't stand up to scrutiny either. We all agree that coercion is wrong and that relatively free responses are important. I would guess, had Ms Reed talked to the guy, she would find that he agreed. But like all of us, Ms Reed included, he is within his rights to use his influence to encourage people to consider a particular way of looking at things. By writing her article Ms Reed has done the very same sort of thing. In the youth worker's case, if he's operating from a church-base, then most of the people he will have been dealing with will have known the score.

Jessica Reed; I applaud you're going into the lion's den, so to speak. I celebrate that you found degrees of commonality with people you had misgivings about beforehand and I'm delighted that you found that some Christians are capable of being open-minded and enquiring (and did I catch a glimpse of a hope that some might, thereby, come to share perspectives you hold?) However, I'm disappointed that you haven't, seemingly, thought through more thoroughly the implications of pluralism and secularism in relation to competing truth claims (including your own) and the need to live together asd share a public sphere. I'm also disappointed that you seem not to have taken a spot more care in noting some of the important distinctions including between coercion and influence. If it weren't so distressing or tragic, the symmetry between the assumed superiority of atheism and that of many Christians as played out in their mutual exposure in this article would be amusing...