Kate Forbes speaking on a stage wearing a teal dress.

Kate Forbes speaks at “anti-woke Davos”, calls for defence of Judeo-Christian values as basis of democracy

June 29, 2026

Religion

Forbes also said she won “public support” during her first minister leadership bid, and that Christian views were squeezed out during the assisted dying debate.

Scotland’s former deputy first minister Kate Forbes recently made a not-so-surprising appearance at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (or ARC) conference in London. Forbes spoke on June 25, the final day of the conference, part of an ongoing events series co-founded by right-wing academic Jordan Peterson.

As reported in The National and The Christian Post, Forbes used her platform to claim that she had won “public support” during her failed bid to become first minister in 2023. During that campaign, she stated she would have voted against gay marriage had she been an MSP when the legislation passed (with Humanist Society amongst its key backers). She also stated she opposed gender recognition reform, and would have voted against the bill for self-ID that passed in Holyrood in 2022 had she not been on maternity leave. Finally, she suggested that she did not believe in sex before marriage.

Side on view of a very large room full of people seated round tables watching two speakers on a stage. — DELEGATES AT THE ARC FORUM 2023. WIKIPEDIA/CC

It is not surprising but certainly worrying to hear how Kate Forbes speaks about the principles of secularism now the shackles of government are off.

Speaking more broadly during the conference, Forbes referred to “external truths that will outlast every single one of you across the grand sweep of history — the biblical concepts of freedom, liberty, human dignity, the worth of life, and flourishing for all.” She described western society as “still largely shaped by biblical concepts and norms”. The audience was invited to “consider many of the authoritarian, regressive, oppressive regimes of death around the world”. Forbes described these as “the alternative” to a society rooted in “biblical concepts”.

Referring to the assisted dying debate, Forbes referred to “one prominent campaigner” that had “railed against undeclared personal religious beliefs”. She said that this unnamed campaigner had “dismissed arguments from those who were guided by faith.” By contrast, she said, “nobody demands that of anybody subscribing to the new faith, the new ideologies and the new philosophies of our day.” It’s not clear whether the “prominent campaigner” described was Humanist Society. Nor is it clear what the “new faith” she refers to actually constitutes.

Humanist Society chair Jennifer Buchan said:

“It is not surprising but certainly worrying to hear how Kate Forbes speaks about secularism now the shackles of government are off. During her appearance at ARC, Kate peddled the misguided idea that any ethical basis for democratic government must be rooted in Judeo-Christian belief. This, of course, reflects a fundamentally evangelical stance, ignoring the millennia-old histories of ethics attached to non-religious and non-Judeo-Christian belief systems. It also assumes, incorrectly, that the morality encoded in the bible appeared from nowhere.

“Ironically, Kate said this at a conference flanked by figures using Christian faith to justify stripping away civil liberties, personal freedoms, and democratic structures, in the US and elsewhere. She was also in the company of individuals peddling myths of a ‘great replacement’, steeped in the kind of language, stressing ‘Judeo-Christian heritage’, that Kate used during her own speech.”

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