About us

We are a broad mixture - some of us are secularists, some are humanists and most of us are both!

We have a meeting once a month and anyone is welcome to attend - to find out what we stand for, to offer help in our campaigns or just to give vent to their feelings.

Some of us are individual members of the National Secular Society, the British Humanist Association or both.

Our "group"

We have "supporters" rather than "members" and we keep things very informal because:

• We don't need membership fees - what would we do with them?
• We are not trying to provide a social life for members - we would be amused by the concept of a social life based on non-belief!
• We don't want to spend our time organising constitutions, appointing a committee, worrying about funding etc.
• We don't want any of the silliness that can often occur when organisations become formally structured.
• We work better with a loose affiliation of like-minded people.
• We try to represent the god-free in Derbyshire - but we don't expect several hundred thousand people to join us!
• We are not a religion or a faith - we have no need of buildings, formal structures or leaders.

Reasons to become a supporter

One look at the TV News, or read of a newspaper, will show that religion continues to tear the world apart - despite the desperate pleas of the timidly faithful that others are mis-interpreting the meaning of their religion.

We are faced with increasingly strident demands for the religious to be able to do almost anything - from taking time off work to pray, to demanding special food in the works canteen, to wearing their religious paraphernalia when they are on company business.

Other religions don't want to be left behind in the "demand race" which increasingly impinges on those of us who enjoy happy, god-free lives.

Religions are not happy interfering with the lives of their members, they want to interfere with our lives as well - they want to peer in at the bedroom window and tell us how to go about the most intimate parts of our lives. They demand the protection of the law to stiffle criticism or mockery and they want to make laws to restrict our freedoms and to tell us what we are allowed to say or do.

How dare they! How arrogant! How insulting! Who the hell do they think they are? (Sorry - quick rush of blood to the brain there.)

Our politicians (Catholic Blair, Presbyterian Brown, CofE Cameron) pass grand-sounding laws to combat discrimination and to promote community cohesion while at the same time giving exemptions to religious groups who continue to discriminate not only on the basis of religious belief but also on the basis of gender and sexuality.

The concept of compulsory religious worship in schools, at a time when the majority of adults and young people have no involvement whatsoever in religious activities, must surely be an anachronism - something forced on us by strident religious lobbying and religious leaders at the top of every political party.

Religious Education is supposed to teach about different religions yet it is dominated by the god-assumption - from the simple stories told to reception class children to the syllabus in secondary schools. (The Derby Syllabus does not yet mention those who enjoy good and happy lives without god, religion or superstition.)

We welcome new supporters

You can become a supporter by coming along to one of our meetings or by emailing us and asking to go on our emailing list.

We don't have a regular email newsletter (The NewsLine weekly newsletter from the NSS does a fantastic job in keeping us up to date) but we circulate information when there is anything about local issues or anything that would be of specific interest to our supporters.

Please contact us if you would like to be on the emailing list or if you simply want to send a message of support.