A new parliamentary group will seek to end the “automatic right” of religious groups to charitable status.
A proposed All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on spiritual and ritual abuse will bring together MPs and peers from across the political spectrum. It is set to be established imminently.
Its chair, Labour MP Sam Carling, said the APPG will seek to “to remove the automatic right of any group that sets itself up as a religion to be given charitable status.” This will form part of its strategy to tackle abusive, ‘cultish’ religious groups which control their members through coercion.
In December, Carling highlighted the findings of the National Secular Society’s Mission and Misogyny report at Prime Minister’s Questions.
The report sets out how the charitable purpose ‘the advancement of religion’ is allowing religious charities to promote misogyny with impunity, and recommends its removal. A Government minister said the findings were “absolutely shocking”.
The NSS has also raised concerns about religious charities promoting ‘gay conversion’ exorcisms, ‘witch hunting’, and fears of ‘black magic’.
In 2024 alone, the Department for Education recorded over 2,000 assessments of child abuse “linked to faith or belief”, including accusations of witchcraft and spirit possession. Last year, the NSS hosted a screening of the film Kindoki Witch Boy to highlight the need to protect children from spiritual abuse.
The charity watchdog has frequently failed to take effective action against religious charities promoting these beliefs. Following sustained NSS campaigning, the Government last month announced it would introduce new powers for the regulator to shut down charities promoting extremism.
Public opposes automatic right to religious charitable status
NSS-commissioned research published last month found only 26% of Brits think religious groups should be automatically entitled to charitable status.
The public strongly opposes religious charities conducting ‘gay conversion’ exorcisms (79%), promoting female subordination (77%) or homophobia (71%), and promoting ritual circumcision of boys (67%).
NSS: ‘Advancement of religion’ assumed to be inherently beneficial
National Secular Society person Alejandro Sanchez said: “We’re pleased the proposed APPG shares our concerns around the seemingly automatic entitlement to charitable status for almost any religious group.
“The current legal arrangement assumes ‘advancing religion’ is inherently beneficial. Our work shows that to be untrue: some religious charities are advancing religion by promoting misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of spiritual abuse.
“There are many religious charities that do excellent work and serve a genuine public benefit. They should be allowed to register under an alternative charitable purpose, such as ‘the alleviation of poverty’. But it’s now time that all charities, religious or not, were held to the same standards.”