My Christmas message? There's probably no God by Polly Toynbee (President of Brit. Humanist Assoc.)

It is neither emotionally nor spiritually deficient to reject religions that seek to infantilise us with impossible beliefs

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• • Polly Toynbee
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 23 December 2008
  • Article history

Antidisestablishmentarianism is on the march. Which is odd, considering there is only the faintest whiff of disestablishmentarianism to fight. The Archbishop of Canterbury set this hare running with his usual confused mumbling into his beard. To disestablish the church would be "by no means the end of the world", he said bravely. He hastened to add that he did not want the church sundered from the state right now. And he would oppose "secularists [boo, hiss] trying to push religion into the private sphere". This sent the Telegraph and Mail into a spin, claiming a devilish distestablishment plot on the Labour backbenches - though they could find only three usual suspects. These MPs say the likely move to end the 1701 Act of Settlement that bars Catholics from the throne will make an established church impossible.

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