I seem to be writing a lot of open letters these days. It’s mainly for two reasons. The first is that it’s a lot cheaper to write an open letter than one you post in the traditional matter – the cost of a stamp may not seem much but actually I need to buy a book of stamps and a pack of envelopes, I then use one of which and the rest eventually get lost which is a waste not to mention the huge cost of my time for doing all this. The second is of course that Royal Mail would probably lose the letter at the end of all that. But anyway…
Having read the recent BHA e-bulletin, Pepper kindly pointed me in the direction of this Conservative blog post in which David Cameron is quoted as saying
take me to a humanist soup kitchen
Given that David was at the time talking about religiously-inspired volunteering (as opposed to volunteering carried out simply because you have good morals and care about your fellow human being) it seems appropriate to use the Biblical quote “ask and you shall receive.”
As a consequence I would like to extend an invitation to Mr. Cameron to spend an evening with the Humanist Action Group here in Leeds which regularly go out to offer soup and hot drinks to the homeless living on the streets.
Come spend some time helping out – not because your god or your holy book tells you to but purely on the basis that it’s the right thing to do. I’m sure many religious people volunteer for the same motives but the suggestion that volunteering is purely the pursuit of the religious is simply beyond laughable.
Even a quick glance at statistics show that the non-religious give more to the charity than the religious do. But of course that doesn’t even begin to paint an accurate picture because most non-believers don’t give to charity in the name of atheism so the actual higher is much higher.
So come down, spend some time volunteering in Leeds, see how it’s possible to give out a cup of coffee without a verse from a holy book cleverly inscribed on the lid.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Rev Chris Worfolk
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Humanism, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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