The National Secular Society has urged the Northern Ireland Executive to end regulation exemptions for specific religious charities.
NI’s Department for Communities is consulting on amending the Charities Act to “modernise and strengthen” charity regulation. This includes giving the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland powers to issue official warnings to charities where there has been misconduct, mismanagement, or a breach of trust or duty.
It also includes the power to direct trustees not to undertake certain actions during a statutory inquiry.
However, charities with ‘designated religious status’ will be exempt from these powers.
In response to the consultation, the NSS said that instead of exempting these charities, the ‘designated religious status’ should be abolished, pointing out that many of these charities are currently embroiled in safeguarding scandals or have promoted extreme homophobia.
It also recommended a broader review of religious charities to prevent the charity sector being used to promote harmful religious ideology.
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‘Designated religious’ status is available to religious charities which hold public worship as their principal activity, have been established in NI for at least 10 years, have at least 1,000 adult members in NI, and have “an internal system of governance with supervisory and disciplinary functions and a requirement for the keeping of and auditing of accounts”.
The NSS estimates there are nearly 400 designated religious charities in NI. These are affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, and the Methodist Church in Ireland.
Exemptions to charity regulations mean the Commission cannot remove trustees or appoint an interim manager to protect members and other trustees if there is suspicion of wrongdoing. This is because it is assumed these charities “can govern themselves and have mechanisms in place that provide accountability to their members”.
But the NSS pointed out the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI), whose churches make up the bulk of designated religious charities, is under police investigation for its “continued embroilment in child sex abuse scandals”. Last year, former PCI safeguarding head Dr Jacqui Montgomery-Devlin accused the church of having a “culture of control”, adding that its higher authorities did not “understand safeguarding” and it “wasn’t a priority for them”.
The NSS said the scandals reveal PCI “cannot internally manage governance, supervision and discipline adequately to protect children and vulnerable people”.
There are also concerns regarding the Methodist Church in Ireland. In 2023 it was forced to apologise after a safeguarding review found there had been 30 historic cases of abuse within the denomination. Most of them happened after 1998.
Additionally, the NSS highlighted how the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and its associated charities have promoted “virulently homophobic ideologies”. This includes calling lawmakers who approved same-sex marriage “legislators of evil”, comparing gay marriage to bestiality, and saying Gay Pride should be called “Gay Shame”.
Charities have a duty to “help the public in a clear and meaningful way”.
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Most charities registered under the charitable purpose of “the advancement of religion” do not have “designated religious” status. However, the “advancement of religion” charitable purpose “can enable charities to promote harmful ideologies under the cloak of religion” and should therefore be reviewed with a view to its removal from the list of charitable purposes, the NSS argued.
The NSS highlighted how one religious charity, Core Issues Trust, promotes so-called ‘gay conversion therapy’ but the Commission has refused to take action despite leading psychotherapy bodies and the UK Government condemning the practice. The UN Human Rights Committee has expressed concerns that the Commission’s refusal to penalise Core Issues Trust means conversion therapy may be considered “a protected religious practice in Northern Ireland”.
NSS: “these charities cannot be trusted to regulate themselves”
NSS head of campaigns Megan Manson said: “It is extraordinary that certain charities can be exempt from aspects of regulation just because they represent large, well-established institutional religions. As recent sex abuse scandals within these churches demonstrate, these charities cannot be trusted to regulate themselves.
“Rather than entrenching and extending religious privilege, reforms to charity law should be an opportunity to end designated religious charity status, and to review how the ‘advancement of religion’ enables the promotion of homophobia and other harmful ideologies within the charity sector.”