We need to remove religion from the Heads of Charity and replace it with sustainability.

In charity law there are four priorities, referred to as Heads of Charity. These include:

the relief of poverty

advancement of religion

advancement of education

other purposes beneficial to the community

Heads of Charity are important because they define what activities are eligible for taxation benefits and grants from the government and institutions. They thus have a big role in shaping the resources available to organisations and their causes.

The Heads of Charity were established in an 1891 legal case that drew on the 1601 Statute of Charitable Uses, also known as the Statute of Elizabeth (Elizabeth 1). To put this era into context, back then there were no plastics, and the main source of energy was wood, some of which was used to burn witches.

While the definition of what is and isn’t charitable has remained largely unchanged for over 400 years, our world has been profoundly transformed during this period. Today, climate-changing coal is the primary power-source and there are 8 million tonnes of plastics entering the ocean annually. There is 405 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere, and the sixth extinction of wildlife is unfolding across the planet. We are on the verge of near term human extinction.

In 1601, there were no fears about ecological sustainability. Today, on the other hand, world leading scientists tell us that the rapid advance of global environmental threats imperils the survival of the human race, as well as most of the species with which we share this planet. This century will determine whether humanity can create a sustainable global society, or whether the human race goes the way of the dodo and the dinosaur.

It is therefore alarming and paradoxical that sustainability is not one of the Heads of Charity. Instead, it is relegated to the ‘Other’ section, and forced to prove its benefit to the public. To put this paradox into perspective, this means that a proposal to establish an Australian branch of Islamic State would be assumed to be in the public benefit (religion), but a proposal to replace a coal fired power station with a community-run non-profit solar farm would have to prove its worth to the bureaucrats.

During Elizabethan times there was no advanced scientific understanding of the world, and the corpus of knowledge came from folklore and the Bible. Now, we know that the world is not flat, and that the Earth rotates around the sun.

Today, religion hinders society by spreading the belief that our planet is of lesser priority that the purported afterlife; religion says that praying is more important than preventing runaway climate change. This is a profound irony, because without a functioning biosphere on Earth, there can be no human population, and therefore no religions or prayers.

World leading scientists warn that humanity is in grave danger and if we are to avoid global collapse. Our institutions and laws must keep up with the times. That includes charity legislation.

It is therefore proposed to remove Religion from the Heads of Charity and replace it with Sustainability. This will make the automatic assumption that efforts to address sustainability are of public benefit; and put the onus on religious organisations to explain how their belief systems benefit the public.

Guy Lane - 11 July, 2016

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