When is a non-religious body a religion? When the Irish state says so.

The recent marriage figures that Atheist Ireland obtained from the CSO show that there is a major cultural shift in Irish marriages. One group with a significant increase is those who have spiritualist ceremonies.

Spiritualist marriages are defined legally as religious marriages. They are counted by the Central Statistics Office as religious marriages.

Despite the fact that they are defined legally as religious marriages, and counted as such by the CSO, some of the bodies that solemnise these marriages claim they are non-religious!

Recent research from Kathryn O’Sullivan from the School of Law, University of Limerick gets to the heart of the problems in relation to expanding the definition of religious bodies to those who claim they are not a religion.

In ‘Defining ‘religious body’ under Irish marriage law’, Kathryn in her conclusion states that:

“This article has shown how the Registrar General’s interpretation of ‘worship’, specifically, pursuant to the 2004 Act has exacerbated the differential standards applied to religious and secular bodies as well as appearing to have permitted ostensibly secular bodies (who may have been unable to meet the stringent criteria required to gain status as such) to secure recognition as ‘religious bodies.”

The Civil Registration Act defines a religious body as:

“an organized group of people members of which meet regularly for common religious worship”

But the Register General has expanded the term ‘religious worship’ to include bodies that claim they are not a religion at all!

OneSpirit Ireland (registered as a religious body for the purposes of solemnising marriages in Ireland, as part of the wider OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation) says on its website that:

“InterFaith is not a new religion or even an old one. In fact, it’s not a religion at all… We cater for people of all faiths and none. We believe that people may not be religious but they do have core values and secular beliefs that are the foundation stones for living life.”

Entheos (also registered as a religious body for the purposes of solemnising marriages) says on its website that:

“Entheos ceremonies are entirely non-denominational, and can contain as much or as little spirituality as you’d like… The presumption that the majority of people regularly practise a formal religion is outdated, but the call to share in some form of community celebration remains.”

The issue with a lot of these bodies is that they can’t register under the secular category to solemnise marriages, because of the stringent rules for that category. There are more rules for secular bodies than for religious bodies. This is of course religious discrimination but who cares, this is Ireland.

Atheist Ireland has been raising these issues for years in relation to the difference in treatment of religious and secular bodies, and also the fact that the Civil Registration Service seems to be making it up as they go along.

Has this situation skewed the marriage figures? Are there, in reality, far more secular marriages than the figures suggest? We think so.

Human rights law uses the phrase ‘freedom of religion or belief’, where the word ‘belief’ refers to a coherent nonreligious philosophical worldview.

Indeed, the OneSpirit foundation is registered under ‘belief’ in Scotland and under ‘religion’ in Northern Ireland.

If it was possible for many of these bodies to register under a category of ‘belief’, instead of ‘religion’, the official marriage figures could be more realistic about the cultural shift in marriages in Ireland.