Demos’ report Faithful Providers – for which, in the interests of full disclosure, I was on the advisory committee – argues that “commissioning faith groups to provide services can save money and strengthen a community”. It has created quite a stir, with coverage in the Independent, the Guardian and Public Finance, among others. It was also the subject of a discussion on BBC’s Sunday Programme (click here, about 17 minutes in) between Andrew Copson of the British Humanist Association and Demos’ Jonathan Birdwell, the report’s author.

The discussion was good-natured and intelligent but did contain a somewhat revealing statement. Towards the end of the discussion Andrew Copson said:

“I don’t think anyone has a problem with religious organisations self-organising… and doing good in the community with their own resources. I think that’s fine… What I object to… is statutory public services, which have previously been secular and open to all people and provided in an objective way, then being provided by religious organisations that have legal rights to discriminate.”

This is a revealing statement, although for political rather than religious reasons. The formulation suggests that it is the state that is pre-existent factor in society around which individual voluntary activities, religious or otherwise, may take place. The state is there providing “statutory public services” which are “secular” and “objective” and as long as it does that, religious (and other voluntary) organisations can play around in the shallows as much as they like.

‘Secular’ is a slippery word. It can mean creating a level playing field through inclusion or creating a level playing field through exclusion. The context in which it is being used here, coupled with the word ‘objective’ – who exactly is to determine what is ‘objective’? can politics ever be objective in this sense? – seems to suggest that the latter is in mind. In the beginning was the state, with duties that could only discharged by blindness towards, and perhaps even exclusion of people’s messy, personal ethical motivations, some of which [pause for effect] are religious.

The problem with that is that the state is made up of people and people are made up of motivations and commitments and ambitions and concerns. You do not have your soul sucked our and replaced with secular blancmange when you start providing statutory services. Indeed, the reverse may be true: you may well be driven to such provision because of your motivations and commitments and ambitions and concerns.

That does not, of course, mean those commitments should be at the forefront of your activity. Just because you belong to a club it doesn’t mean you need to wear the badge all the time. Nor does it mean that those commitments must always be honoured. Wearing a cross is not simply a get-out-of-regulatory-jail-free card.

What it does mean is that you cannot expect people to ignore or deny their motivations and commitments when they are doing what they do, whether they are direct, let alone indirect employees of the state.

The idea that as soon as anything receives any state money, regulatory hands may maul it into secular submission – like a kind of inverse Midas touch – is not tenable in a free society. Some Christians are motivated to serve, through public-funded structures, because the love of God shines in them. The only reason they should be required to switch it off is if it impedes or prevents their duties.

Ultimately, the only relevant criterion is whether an individual or organisation succeeds what they are asked to do, not whether they do so in a suitably tamed way, speaking only secular Esperanto.

Nick Spencer is Research Director at Theos