Meaning of 'Religion or Belief'

As Brian Quinn presented in BHA Group Representatives Annual Meeting 2010 (Voice in the Community.ppt):-

Religion or Belief

“In the Equality Act*, religion includes any religion. It also includes a lack of religion, in other words employees or jobseekers are protected if they do not follow a certain religion or have no religion at all.

……

Belief means any religious or philosophical belief or a lack of such belief.

……

Humanism is a protected philosophical belief.”

               

                The Equality Act – What’s New for Employers?   ACAS 2010

*: refers to the Equality Act 2010 (wikipedia). 

Equality Act 2010

The full Equality Act 2010 at Equalities.gov.uk. The Equality Act 2010 (PDF). 

Protected Characteristics are "Religion or Belief" 

PART 2

EQUALITY: KEY CONCEPTS

CHAPTER 1

PROTECTED CHARACTERISTICS

4 The protected characteristics

The following characteristics are protected characteristics—

age;

disability;

gender reassignment;

marriage and civil partnership;

pregnancy and maternity;

race;

religion or belief;

sex;

sexual orientation.

Source: page 16 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/pdfs/ukpga_20100015_en.pdf

10 Religion or belief

(1) Religion means any religion and a reference to religion includes a reference to

a lack of religion.

(2) Belief means any religious or philosophical belief and a reference to belief

includes a reference to a lack of belief.

(3) In relation to the protected characteristic of religion or belief—

(a) a reference to a person who has a particular protected characteristic is

a reference to a person of a particular religion or belief;

(b) a reference to persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference

to persons who are of the same religion or belief.

Source: page 18 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/pdfs/ukpga_20100015_en.pdf

Equality Act 2010 (c. 15)

Part 2 — Equality: key concepts

Chapter 1 — Protected characteristics

Over at ACAS site I've found:-

What is the definition of a philosophical belief?

To be protected under the Equality Act, a philosophical belief must:

• be genuinely held
• be a belief and not an opinion or viewpoint, based on the present state of information available
• be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour
• attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance
• be worthy of respect in a democratic society, compatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.

Humanism and atheism are examples of philosophical beliefs. 

Source: ACAS  (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=3133

British Social Attitudes 26th Report

http://www.natcen.ac.uk/study/british-social-attitudes-26th-report

BHA summarise the  British Social Attitudes 26th Report

The British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA) is published annually by the National Centre for Social research since 1983, and conducts around three thousand interviews each year with a representative sample of the British population.
The 26th report, published in 2010, includes a number of issues of interest to humanists in two of its chapters, ‘Religion in Britain and the United States’ and ‘Religious faith and contemporary attitudes’.
Voas, D.  and Ling, R. (2009), ‘Religion in Britain and the United States’,  in Park, A., Curtice, J., Thomson, K., Phillips., Clery E., and Butt, S. British Social Attitudes: the 26th Report, London: Sage

Key points:

• In Britain, those who profess no-religion have risen from 31% to 43% between 1983 and 2008.
• Conversely, in 1983 66% identified as Christian, in 2008 the number was 50%.
• The proportion identifying as belonging to some other religion has risen from 2% to 7%.
• 37% of the UK population are sceptical, 35% have definite or doubtfu.
• Only 18% of the British population attend religious services at least monthly, and only 10% attend at least weekly.
• Those self-described as members of the Church of England consist of 23% of the population (40% in 1983). 49% of this group never attend services; only 8% of people who identify with the CofE attend church weekly.
• 62% of people in Britain never attend a religious service
• 42% of all those questioned are against any form of faith school
• 52 % agree that “Britain is deeply divided along religious lines”
• Religion in Britain is estimated to have a ‘half-life’ of one generation

Views on Religion and Politics:

“Three quarters (75 per cent) maintain their religious leaders should not try to influence voting behaviour while two-thirds (67 per cent) think religious leaders should stay out of government decision making”(Page 74)
“Nearly half (45 per cent) of people in Britain take the view that laws and policy decisions would probably be worse in these circumstances and only a quarter (26 per cent) think that decisions would probably be better.”  (Page 74)
“There is also disquiet about the extended to which religious faith can lead to intolerance. Three quarters (73 per cent) of Britons maintain that “people with very strong religious beliefs are often too intolerant of others”. Naturally, agreement was highest among the unreligious (at 82 per cent), but even 63 per cent of religious people concurred.” (Page 75)


McAndrew S. (2009) ‘Religious faith and contemporary attitudes’, in Park, A., Curtice, J., Thomson, K., Phillips., Clery E., and Butt, S. British Social Attitudes: the 26th Report, London: Sage

Key Points:

• 71% of religious people and 92% non-religious (82% in total) believe that a doctor should be allowed to end the life of a patient with an incurable disease.  29% of religious people believe pre-marital sex is wrong, compared to 3% of non-religious people
• 50% of religious people believe homosexuality is always or almost always wrong
• 21% of religious people believe men should work and women remain in the home
• The non-religious are far more likely not to vote
• Religion is a weak measure of party affiliation