Whew, Doubting Thomas! What a dilemma.

You obivously love this music and see the importance of it being spread through the competitions for young people that you are trying to fund. It is important in my view.

You've got a cultural bias that you're dealing with. Most of the members of the organization apparently have a religious agenda as I understand it.

The organization is only as potent as it's membership. When it comes to religious beliefs, they are strongly rooted in individuals with cultural roots IE: Roman Catholics and Irish majority.

Are you able to do what you want to do with your own organization without religious ties to the one you are in? In the States, this is a serious matter that we refer to as "the Separation of Church and State" and what our founding fathers had in mind was to protect those who wish to worship as they please and to keep any one religion from dominating our government. (No Anligcan Church or RC pressure here).

I don't see how you can continue with the organization unless you go along with it's religious agenda. But as Pete Seeger once told me, "It's important to get along with having to go along." An ancillary organization run by you that could work in concert with the one that you are now in seems a solution.

Our country (States) is now as divided as it has ever been in our history over what some of us feel is a short-sighted approach to the problem of Iraq.   So far, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Socialists and Catholics, Jews, Protestants, and most Muslims are not in the streets shooting each other but have learned ways to get along and work together on various issues that they can agree upon. If there is ever to be peace in Ireland, there must be a bridge that spans the gulf of the "Troubles". Forcing a religious agenda is not a stable spansion.
You may have to open the door yourself by not following a "party line". It's not an easy task but an important one in my view.

God bless and the very best of luck to you.

Frank