Richy Thompson describes a typical day in the office

Richy Thompson

Richy is the British Humanist Association’s Campaigns Officer (Faith Schools and Education) and the UK’s only dedicated campaigner against ‘faith’ schools. The BHA is currently fundraising to support the post for 2012. Please donate today at http://www.justgiving.com/nofaithschools

It’s been a while since I’ve written an article for HumanistLife. The previous two were both written when I was President of the AHS, before I started working as the BHA’s ‘faith’ schools campaigner. I’ve been in this job for slightly over four months now, and I thought it’d be interesting to talk about some of the things I get up to by exploring a typical day – yesterday.

I started the day doing our internal media review, replying to some queries from parents about collective worship, worked in support of local campaigns against ‘faith’ schools, and navigating creationist attack mail. The first big thing I looked at was an email I had received from a member of Milton Keynes Humanists, who I had arranged last week to attend a public meeting being held by anti-choice group, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), in association with a number of local Muslim groups. SPUC’s “Safe at School” campaign works against good Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) in state-funded schools, particularly focussing on the primary level. Our local member took extensive notes, which should prove very helpful in understanding their tactics. We had another member at their Wakefield meeting last night, who I’m looking forward to hearing more from shortly.

After that, I spent a while investigating a tip-off I had received about a bid from some creationists for a Free School. The bid, on the surface, appears to be from an evangelical Christian group that has nothing to do with creationism, but someone who had met them found that the leadership privately holds creationist beliefs, and intends to ‘teach creation and evolution, but not creationism’ – whatever that means. A number of evangelical groups have bid for Free Schools – more evangelical than any group already providing state-funded education – and serious questions need to be asked about what these groups actually believe, and what they intend to teach, about all sorts of things, not just creationism. I imagine many will have seen the negative publicity that Everyday Champions Church’s bid has attracted, and decided to mask their true colours, perhaps even from the Department for Education. With regards to this particular bid, we’re considering appropriate further steps.

The Education Bill finished its Committee Stage in the House of Lords yesterday, and we’re busy preparing for the Report Stage. Our aim for the law to be changed to put an end to discrimination against teachers and pupils and, really importantly, to stop the huge proliferation of new ‘faith’ schools of all different denominations that we are seeing. We worked with peers in the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group to get a wide range of amendments tabled during Committee Stage, and during Report Stage we’ll be looking to take a number of these forward for further debate, though perhaps tightening the focus on some in response to what was said during Committee Stage. So yesterday I prepared an internal document where for each of the amendments debated, I looked at what we wanted, what was said, what the Government’s response was, and what I would recommend for further action at the next stage.

Finally, I’ve been doing a lot of work lately around Standing Advisory Councils for Religious Education (SACREs). About half of the 151 SACREs in England and the 22 in Wales have a humanist as a member, but ideally we’d like to see that expanded to all of them. Yesterday we gained three new humanist reps. One of them, Zelda Bailey, I arranged to observe a meeting of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets’ SACRE  last week, and she attended that first meeting this week. At the meeting they happened to be putting the finishing touches on the RE Syllabus for the borough, and she found that it didn’t mention the non-religious in any way. Thanks to her last minute interventions, she was able to add “secular worldviews” to the religions and beliefs to be studied each year in Tower Hamlets’ community, voluntary controlled and foundation schools, and most of the Academies – therefore meaning that thousands of children should now learn about non-religious beliefs such as atheism, agnosticism and humanism, when they otherwise wouldn’t have done. New RE syllabuses are only agreed once every five years, so Zelda’s appearance at the meeting was particularly well-timed! And the meeting finished with her being unanimously voted onto the SACRE as a co-opted member.

I finished the day looking at the Humanist SACRE Reps handbook, and how we can improve it to help further instruct all reps in how they can best carry out their role on their SACREs, and doing some preparation for a talk I’m giving to King’s College London Atheist, Humanist and Secular Society I’m giving next week.

All in all, I think this is a really great, tremendously interesting job, but also a hugely important and highly unique one – there’s no-one else in the country (perhaps the world?) working full time to abolish ‘faith’ schools, and yet many non-religious people in the UK would agree that education is the single biggest area in which we are disadvantaged due to our lack of belief.

I would very much like to continue this job, and I think it’s really vital that the British Humanist Association continues to employ a ‘faith’ schools campaigner. So please donate to our JustGiving appeal at http://www.justgiving.com/nofaithschools so that this work can continue.

A relatively mainstream theologian William Lane Craig tells us that we should stop being so “wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective” and realise that genocide and infanticide are okay if God undertakes them. Dead babies, he says, “are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy.”

* * *

Offering his humble input into Malta’s current debate over whether to legalise divorce (you read that right, that’s the big current debate in Malta) a Minister by the name Tonio Fenech said that the Virgin Mary is very upset about the country even considering allowing divorce. Fenech warned that anyone voting for reform on marriage law is acting against the will of God Almighty. It seems the Baby Jesus wants the people of Malta to stay in their loveless marriages.  Obviously, the Malta Humanists have other ideas.

* * *

And conservative Anglican blogger “Archbishop Cranmer” revs himself up to threat level barking Tolkien-esque nutsoid over the royal wedding, as he slathers over the coverage, types up his notes, and generally has an ecstatic, pant-wetting, metaphysical breakdown about Royalty and “the inner being of the Church of England”.

In a story which is yet to reach the mainstream media, but may grow as the case progresses, the Pope and two other people have been named as the Vatican has been served with court papers. The case relates to a allegations of sexual abuse against a priest, now dead, at a Wisconsin school for the deaf.

Jeff Anderson, an attorney for the man making the allegations, said he had been notified the papers were successfully filed through official diplomatic channels.

“Every time we make a step forward, as long as that takes, we are going in the right direction,” Anderson said. “And the direction we’re headed is a measure of accountability. We really believe that we need to put some heat on the Vatican to bring some light.”

The Vatican’s U.S.-based attorney, Jeffrey Lena, said Tuesday that he still has to evaluate the papers to determine whether they meet the requirements imposed by U.S. law.

“It’s premature to comment what will happen next in the case,” he said.

The lawsuit was filed nearly a year ago in federal court on behalf of Terry Kohut, now of Chicago. It claims Pope Benedict XVI and two other top Vatican officials knew about allegations of sexual abuse at St. John’s School for the Deaf outside Milwaukee and called off internal punishment of the accused priest, the Rev. Lawrence Murphy.

Full article: http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5icsvx0mcrbR3n3_u9KDl33BZ_iBw?docId=6546589

29-year-old Kate Middleton, who according to Hello! was “baptised at the age of five months but never took religion further”, has undergone a magic ritual which  instantly transforms her into a “committed Christian”. Lucky that such powerful rites are still available for princesses in the magic Kingdom.

* * *

A Catholic publication aimed at children  has been  slightly mistranslated, giving the impression that Catholics should use contraception. In a Q&A format on the subject of contraception the mistranslation accidentally rendered the text both laudable and reasonable (“a Christian couple can and must be responsible about their capacity of being able to give life”) forcing the publishers to withdraw it immediately.

* * *

Ricky Martin, a gay, is leading young people astray

Demonstrating astute moral sensitivities and a real sense of priority when it comes to the moral lives of young people, Cardinal Luis Aponte Martinez of San Juan, Puerto Rico, has told Ricky Martin that he should stop acting all gay, as his current persona will set a bad example for the yoof.

“Personally I admire Ricky for the great artistic gifts the Lord has given him,” the Cardinal opined, obviously a massive fan, perhaps obsessively so one might speculate, possibly attending his shows and putting up posters of ol’ Leather Pants on his bedroom wall, “but I implore him, for the love of his children …  to strive to be an example for our young people of the important values that we all share, including sexuality.” But not, apparently, including being true to yourself.

“In this way he will be thanking the Lord for the great gifts he has been given.” (God created Ricky Martin’s dancing abilities and singing talent, but had nothing to do with his sexuality.)

It’s okay though, because the Church “does not reject the homosexual person, but rather the actions and conduct that go against morality.” So being gay is okay in the abstract, it’s just acting gay or doing anything perceptibly gay that is wrong in the eyes of GOD Almighty.

* * *

Mental health is a personal attribute accruing to individual people. But is it possible for an organisation to be clinically insane? Bill Donohue’s “Catholic League” does it’s best to prove that it is. This week the League is very angry that the media-created sexual abuse scandal is still rolling on. The League complains that some of these so-called abuse claims go back years – shouldn’t these things just expire after a certain amount of time? – and has some excellent points to make on what’s really going on:

The refrain that child rape is a reality in the Church is twice wrong: let’s get it straight—they weren’t children and they weren’t raped. We know from the John Jay study that most of the victims have been adolescents…

Yeh, take that, all you critics of the Vatican cover-up. It’s adolescent rape, not child rape. Get it right.

Sarfraz Manzoor, who wrote last year about his own family’s objections to his marriage to a “white non-Muslim” woman and the aftermath, this week provides a rather less personal write-up of a scheme run in Luton, exposing no less a cutting example of racial divide.

In the scheme, religiously and ethnically segregated children from different schools were brought together… for one afternoon. Half the children came from a Catholic school and were petty much entirely white, the other half from predominantly Muslim families and were all Asian, bar one black pupil. The second school is a community school, not a Muslim ‘faith’ school, but of course when pupils sharing some characteristics pool in one school in an area then there are always going to be corresponding effects on the remaining community schools, regardless of their admissions policies or “ethos”.

Manzoor accepts that “the very fact that Luton felt it needed this project suggests that the town has a real, and not only perceived, challenge on its hands”. But the overall tone is irony-free. Manzoor seems pleased with the “pioneering initiative” and talks about how the children quickly overcome fear and suspicion across a racial and religious divide by playing simple games (the article’s title is “Catholic and Muslim pupils find they have a lot in common”).  That the massive town-wide segregation of children by ethnicity and religion mandates something like the “Schools Linking Network initiative” in the first place seems to go entirely under the radar. There’s no explicit criticism of the fact that the school system itself is pulling the town’s children into perceptibly tribal camps from the outset.

Luton has become media shorthand for the failures of multiculturalism, having been both home to the Muslim extremists who jeered at British soldiers returning from Iraq and the birthplace for the extreme right English Defence League, which recently marched through the town. St Joseph’s, a faith school that is 49% white British, and William Austin, which is only 2.4% white British, are one of 10 pairs of contrasting schools that have been linked up.

… Hassan from William Austin admits he was a bit nervous at the start of the day because he has “never really met any Christians”. He is surprised to learn the children from St Joseph’s are more similar to him than he imagined. “I thought they’d be totally different – like a different kind of person, but actually they like the same football teams and the same food.”

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/apr/12/school-twinning-catholic-muslim

The overall impression from the article itself is hopeful, in that the children are able to overcome divides that many adults wilfully allow to fester for generation after generation, but the impression from the wider context is tragic, in that these ten pairs of “contrasting” schools are ingraining such notions of alien people in the first place. How much harder will it be to bridge the gap between the same children again when they are teenagers, or later as suspicious adults, after years of their minds being narrowed by the social filters built into their very education?

If you’re going to cut something, why not abolish religious admissions criteria altogether, then you wouldn’t have to pay for sticking plaster “Linking” initiatives down the line after years of social disharmony.

Some responses to the latest “atheism in RE” story are unintentionally hilarious. Chris Theobald has a laugh.

The Sun's big shiny headline on an old story

The news that Humanism will be included in the new RE syllabus in a local authority in Lancashire from September has elicited a number of reactions in the media this week.

The Daily Express warns us of ‘Lessons in Atheism’ for young children. The move is  opposed by Councillor Salim Mulla, chairman of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, who is concerned not to ‘confuse’ children. Only religious people have values so it’s better to force chidlren to adopt whatever belief their parents first give them, apparently:

I don’t think it is right. People are born into faiths and are brought up in that faith and that’s how it should stay. The non-faith beliefs send a wrong message to the children and confuse them. Values are very, very important. I don’t think the non-God aspect should be introduced into the curriculum.

However, those campaigning for inclusive RE lessons find an unlikely ally in Rev Kevin Logan of the Christian People’s Alliance quoted in the Daily Mail:

It is quite a change but it is completely right to recognise atheism and humanism.

I am certainly not worried about Christianity. It can stand against any belief and come out in a good light.

But perhaps our favourite perspective comes in the Sun from a Catholic priest from the Blackburn area, Father Michael Lavin, who stated with no apparent sense of irony:

I think that four years old is too young to be learning about atheism, at that age they hardly know what Christianity is.

It is difficult to get youngsters to understand theology and spiritual concepts. Children tend to struggle when you are making the first Holy Communion.

Father Lavin and others seem to fail to understand that for many parents and indeed current pupils, this news story will appear wholly curious. The study of Humanism has been a feature of school RE for at least four decades and first appeared in a local syllabus in the early 1970s. The Sun refers this week to “Double Atheism”, as if Atheism was going to be studied as a full, timetabled subject in and of itself, like Geography or Physics. In reality of course, it’s just about including secular views as some minimal balance against an overwhelming religious RE. Today, most of the 152 local syllabuses in this country include the study of the humanist view of life. True, that doesn’t always mean it’s taught, or taught well. But far from being an anomaly, consensus is building that any RE which fails to teach about non-religious perspectives, is missing something pretty big.

A recent poll carried out by the British Humanist Association found that when asked the leading question: ‘what is your religion’, a question designed to measure weak cultural affiliation, 38% of people in England and Wales say they have ‘no religion’. According to 2004 DfES Research Report 564, some 65% of 12-19 year olds do not describe themselves as belonging to a religion.

Learning about the non-religious answers to big philosophical questions alongside religious ones contributes to the development of pupils’ own views and educates them about the beliefs of millions of their fellow citizens. It ensures that students that are from non-religious families or who are not religious themselves are able to feel fully included in discussions around ethics and morality.

Chris Theobald is a campaigns volunteer for the British Humanist Association.

The British Humanist Association supports local SACRE representatives, for example in local authority areas where non-religious views are still excluded from religion or belief education.

Reuters reports:

People who criticise gay sexual relations for religious or moral reasons are increasingly being attacked and vilified for their views, a Vatican diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said the Roman Catholic Church deeply believed that human sexuality was a gift reserved for married heterosexual couples. But those who express these views are faced with “a disturbing trend,” he said.

“People are being attacked for taking positions that do not support sexual behaviour between people of the same sex,” he told the current session of the Human Rights Council.

“When they express their moral beliefs or beliefs about human nature … they are stigmatised, and worse — they are vilified, and prosecuted.

“These attacks are violations of fundamental human rights and cannot be justified under any circumstances,” Tomasi said.

Link: http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE72L4XU20110322

Archbishop Tomasi has also famously linked paedophilia and homosexuality and in response to the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church tried to argue that other religions were just as bad.

At the end of his speech Tomasi promised to spell out clearly and concisely in a future session exactly which “moral” beliefs and principles made is so abundantly and self-evidently clear why homosexuality is wrong.

Amazingly, only the immediately preceding paragraph of this post is made up.

The Christian Institute is pushing their latest report (although the press release on their site has no links or other means of obtaining it). The press release launches right in:

Shocking sex education materials are being pushed by public bodies for use in schools with children as young as five, a new report reveals. The report is launched today (Wed. 9 March) in the midst of a coalition Government review of sex education guidance.

One resource encourages pupils aged five and over to learn about anal intercourse, oral sex and prostitution. Another helps five year olds to identify the clitoris, and another tells seven year olds that sex is like tickling or skipping. An educational video produced by the BBC featuring full frontal nudity of adults is being pushed to children aged as young as seven.

Christian Institute describes some of the information as “obviously unsuitable”, but it’s apparently not so obvious to all the teachers, retailers, award-winning authors, councils and parents using the material in a thoughtful educational setting.

Its [Christian Institute] report, Too Much, Too Young, criticises, among others, a BBC teaching pack for its images of a nude man and woman and the children’s book Mummy Laid an Egg, by Babette Cole, for its child-like drawings of a man and woman having sex on a skateboard and wearing red noses. The book won British Illustrated Children’s Book of the Year.

A number of councils have recommended the books and lesson plans to schools in their area. The institute said many parents would be “deeply upset” to find these images were being shown to their children.

Other teaching packs criticised in the report contain short explanations of bisexuality, anal intercourse and oral sex.

A Mortarboard blog post by Justin Hancock of bishUK.com gets a bit more explicit about how the Christian Institute report exaggerates the nature of both the teaching and the resources.

If I wasn’t working in SRE, and if I had a child of primary school age, and if I were to read this report without any critical viewing whatsoever, then I’d probably be a little scared and worried about what my child might be taught.

The report repeatedly refers to sex education rather than sex and relationships education, and it cherrypicks examples from resources that refer to sexual body parts and sexual acts.

What it ignores is that sexual anatomy and descriptions of sexual acts are only a very small part of a broad and comprehensive SRE programme, especially at primary school age.

Children need to know how their bodies work; that touching, for example, the clitoris can feel nice; that some touching is appropriate and some isn’t; that adults have sex and what that means; that some people love people of the same sex. A good SRE programme might include this material in primary school (at the appropriate age), but it certainly would not include only this.

… Teachers know what level of understanding their pupils are at and they are often the best judge of what materials are appropriate. They use their professional judgment now, and, even if SRE does become compulsory, they will do so in the future. The resources recommended by local authorities and the Sex Education Forum are just that, recommendations.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2011/mar/09/sex-education-more-than-body-parts

The British Humanist Association is committed to encouraging informed and responsible choice, and as such believes that all children should be entitled to full and accurate age appropriate Sex and Relationships Education (SRE), including unbiased information on contraception, STDs, abortion, sexual orientation, and the many forms of family relationship conducive to individual fulfilment and the stability of society.

Monday’s Dispatches programme on Channel 4 is, for some reason, still not available to view online on the usual Dispatches page at the time of writing. The documentary featured scenes filmed undercover appearing to depict teachers and other adults (sometimes visiting) in Islamic independent schools  hitting children and delivering hateful messages about non-Muslims, encouraging the children to shun non-Muslims and even Muslims deemed not Muslim enough.

The BHA responded by pointing out that the problems in the schools reflect wider concerns and stand to be replicated in new ‘free schools’. New education campaigns officer, Jenny Pennington, commented, ’It is very worrying that a school that has been given a clean bill of health in this area from inspectors can teach young children abhorrent, intolerant views about people of other religions and non-religious beliefs. The evidence presented by the documentary is especially concerning at a time when the Government is moving to give state funded schools much greater autonomy over their curriculum whilst actually proposing to reduce the scope of Ofsted inspections.’

The usual anonymous idiots have threatened to fire-bomb the building (as if the bricks and mortar are to blame, and as if that’s going to solve anything). One of the schools will complain to Ofcom claiming that the footage was selectively chosen and/or out of context. A man shown physically striking children at the school has already been arrested.

Police have arrested a man concerning alleged assaults on children at a mosque after viewing a Channel 4 documentary screened on Monday.

Dispatches, Lessons in Hate and Violence, secretly filmed a man apparently hitting and kicking children during Qu’ran lessons at a school in the Markazi Jamia mosque at Keighley, West Yorkshire.

An Islamic school in Birmingham in the same documentary, where a preacher was filmed making offensive remarks about non-Muslims, said it would close early for half-term, amid fears pupils could be the target of far-right groups.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/feb/14/mosque-schools-arrest-channel-4

Family Radio - telling you and your family that Judgment is imminent

Family Radio? Sounds friendly, doesn’t it.

Let’s gather round and listen, children. What does Family Radio have to say today?

This spring, you’re probably going to Hell !

Cheers, Family Radio.

Family Radio are advertising via London Tube posters, that as of 21 May, in the year of our Lord 2011, God Himself will judge you and your family and the world will end. “Cry mightily”, the poster instructs “unto GOD for HIS mercy”.

Presumably after 21 May, Family Radio will offer an apology to all its listeners, especially those with recently terrified children in their families.

Or they’ll make excuses about the ambiguity of biblical prophecy and push the date back another few years.

Family Radio helpfully explains the proof of their infallible prediction:

In 2 Peter 3:8, which is quoted above, Holy God reminds us that one day is as 1,000 years. Therefore, with the correct understanding that the seven days referred to in Genesis 7:4 can be understood as 7,000 years, we learn that when God told Noah there were seven days to escape worldwide destruction, He was also telling the world there would be exactly 7,000 years (one day is as 1,000 years) to escape the wrath of God that would come when He destroys the world on Judgment Day. Because Holy Infinite God is all-knowing, He knows the end from the beginning. He knew how sinful the world would become.

Seven thousand years after 4990 B.C. (the year of the Flood) is the year 2011 A.D. (our calendar).

4990 + 2011 – 1 = 7,000

[One year must be subtracted in going from an Old Testament B.C. calendar date to a New Testament A.D. calendar date because the calendar does not have a year zero.]

Thus Holy God is showing us by the words of 2 Peter 3:8 that He wants us to know that exactly 7,000 years after He destroyed the world with water in Noah’s day, He plans to destroy the entire world forever. Because the year 2011 A.D. is exactly 7,000 years after 4990 B.C. when the flood began, the Bible has given us absolute proof that the year 2011 is the end of the world during the Day of Judgment, which will come on the last day of the Day of Judgment.

Amazingly, May 21, 2011 is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Biblical calendar of our day. Remember, the flood waters also began on the 17th day of the 2nd month, in the year 4990 B.C.

The Holy Bible gives several additional astounding proofs that May 21, 2011 is very accurate as the time for the Day of Judgment. For more information on this subject, you may request a copy of We Are Almost There, available free of charge from Family Radio.

Link: http://www.familyradio.com/graphical/literature/judgment/judgment.html

Thanks, Family Radio. We’re all convinced.

Moralising evangelical lobbyist, Stephen Green, campaigner against abortion, against gay rights, and in favour of the death penalty, is accused by his ex-wife of subjecting her to a premeditated physical attack and “mental bullying” against her and their four children.

Stephen Green and his almost synonymous “Christian Voice” group rose to prominence in recent years after a “blasphemy” campaign against Jeremy Springer the Opera and court appearances for handing out anti-gay literature.

The media have been obscurely eager to report Green’s every decree in minute detail for years now. But they seem to be letting the offences alleged in the Daily Mail, with lengthy quotes from Caroline Green, go by without so much as a whiff of a comment. Google News currently has the original article in the Daily Mail from three days ago, picked up only by Pink News and by blogger PZ Myers. Despite the latter’s guess (“Next big item of non-news: the media continues to flock about Stephen Green, flogging his sensationalist hatred to the public, despite his patent hypocrisy”) the accusations are in fact being left well alone by the BBC and all the British press which usually repeats “Stephen Green of Christian Voice” stories with endless fascination.

From the Daily Mail article:

Caroline Green was often punished by her husband Stephen for failing to be a dutiful, compliant wife, but his final act of violence against her — the one that prompted her long-overdue decision to divorce him — was all the more chilling because it was coldly premeditated.

Stephen Green wrote a list of his wife’s ­failings then described the weapon he would make to beat her with.

‘He told me he’d make a piece of wood into a sort of witch’s broom and hit me with it, which he did,’ she recalls, her voice tentative and quiet. ‘He hit me until I bled. I was terrified. I can still remember the pain.

‘Stephen listed my misdemeanours: I was disrespectful and disobedient; I wasn’t loving or submissive enough and I was undermining him. He also said I wasn’t giving him his ­conjugal rights.

‘He even framed our marriage vows — he always put particular emphasis on my promise to obey him — and hung them over our bed. He believed there was no such thing as marital rape and for years I’d been reluctant to have sex with him, but he said it was my duty and was angry if I refused him.

‘But the beating was the last straw. It ­convinced me I had to divorce him.’

…

It is hard to overstate the extent of his control. We were shut off from the world. The children weren’t allowed to watch TV unless he approved of the programme; they were only allowed to mix with other Christians. They could only listen to Christian music.’

Looking back, she says: ‘I suppose we survived by being devious. When he was away on Christian Voice ­business, they were allowed to play by my rules.’

By now Stephen was immersed in Christian Voice, which allowed him the autonomy and freedom to express his increasingly bizarre views unchallenged. As its founder and director, he was answerable to no one.

…

‘My middle and youngest sons have been almost suicidally depressed because of his mental bullying. They still bear the scars.

‘When I see my ex-husband on television quoting the Bible, I think: “Please let this all end”.

‘If people were able to know the real Stephen Green, my hope is that at last it will.’

Full story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351585/Stephen-Green-rails-immorality-voice-Christian-Britan-private-wife-beater-says-partner.html

Indoctrinating children in faith schools, even when you tell them not to.

An irate father who withdrew his young son from school after discovering that he was reciting prayers is considering further action against the school for “not sticking to its agreement”.

Martijn Leenheer said he was “shocked” to accidentally discover five-year-old Finn had been reciting prayers several times a day at Drumlease Primary School in Dromahair, Co Leitrim, despite the fact that his parents had opted out of Catholic religious instruction for their child.

Finn now attends the Educate Together school in Sligo. But his father, who has outlined his case to the Irish Human Rights Commission, is considering taking his complaint to the Equality Authority or the Ombudsman for Children.

“I feel the school didn’t respond to my concerns and they are still not responding to me.

“My belief is that the school should be responsible for supervising children if they want to opt out because the way it stands at the moment, they ask me if I want to opt out, I say, ‘yes’ and basically nothing happens,” he told the Irish Independent.

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/republic-of-ireland/father-removes-son-from-school-over-prayers-15065286.html#ixzz1CEmcQsAc

A former journalist recounts her experience as a teacher in the Egyptian capital.

In my first week as a teacher, I was given a list of my pupils. Each had a letter in the column beside his or her name, either a C or an M. Nada and Daniel and Sara were Cs. Other students – I believe the rest of them – were Ms.

I didn’t pay much attention to this, except perhaps to the novelty of it. Perhaps I assumed that these letters were meant to increase teacher sensitivity around the holidays. I certainly didn’t see it as a fundamental division in a country growing more and more divided along criss-crossing fault lines of suburban and urban, Muslim and Christian, private- and government-school educated.

A decade has passed, and my eldest son is now in school with a letter appended to his name. A bomb has gone off at an Alexandria church. People have been shot; one man was allegedly beaten to death during interrogation; others were imprisoned for protesting against the situation. The letter next to a child’s name, C or M, has taken on a different dimension.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/24/egypt-christian-muslim-religious-sectarianism

A Vatican department advised Ireland’s Catholic bishops in 1997 not to report priests suspected of child abuse to the police, a newly revealed letter shows.

Obtained by Irish broadcaster RTE, the letter shows Vatican officials rejected an initiative to begin the “mandatory reporting” of abuse claims.

The proposed policy “gives rise to serious reservations”, it says.

The Vatican has persistently said it never instructed bishops to withhold suspicions or evidence of crimes.

Abuse victims in Ireland and the US said the letter, which RTE said it had received from an Irish bishop, was a “smoking gun” that would serve as important evidence in lawsuits against the Church.

Continues: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12222612

The Guardian’s “Comment is free” pages ask the questions about compulsory, collective, “broadly Christian” worship in schools. Remember it’s not just ‘faith’ schools but even state-run comprehensives that are meant to perform these divisive daily acts in assemblies and wotnot. (As the Guardian points out, the BHA campaigns for a repeal of required collective worship, so that assemblies can talk about values and explore philosophy and belief in a more inclusive way.)

All schools are required by law to have an act of worship of “wholly or mainly Christian character” every day. Almost all don’t. So what should be done about this? The British Humanist Association and the National Secular Society want the requirement abolished entirely. There is a very small lobby in favour of enforcing it exactly as it stands.

There are, perhaps, two questions to distinguish here. Should there be any kind of daily collective affirmation of values in a school? There is a large apathetic party that would argue against this. And how particular should these values be, and how much should they be allowed to vary between schools? Obviously the values of an explicitly humanist school would differ from those of an explicitly Catholic or Muslim one.

The question is asked: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/10/schools-christian-worship-state-role

(Not that there are ‘humanist’ schools as such in the UK.)

Cif’s first featured response is from “Mouse” of Church Mouse blog.

Mouse reckons that the law should be changed to end the mandatory worship requirement. Instead, schools should be required to allow faith organisations to establish voluntary clubs.

Mouse speaks: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/10/religious-experience-schools

It seems Mouse doesn’t like the BHA very much. On the one hand the furry critter’s suggestion could actually sound a bit like the BHA’s policy (PDF) which allows for some “‘reasonable accommodations’ to meet the legitimate wishes of religious pupils and their parents”… but probably wouldn’t stretch to regular trips from just any organisation calling itself religious to “voluntarily” siphon off pupils into divisive little groups during school hours. After all, if religious practice was really optional and delivered by external organisations, then why shouldn’t it be outside school time? During school hours we can then focus on the beliefs and values that pupils are more likely to share together. That’s a thought echoed by today’s response from New Humanist editor, Caspar Melville.

In the interests of honesty, clarity and simplicity I support the British Humanist Association’s call for the government to withdraw the statuary guidance on collective worship currently in place, and produce new guidance about how to conduct school assemblies, focusing on shared values appropriate to our polyglot multicultural society, with lots of flexibility so that heads can adapt to their local circumstances. Most schools do an admirable job of ignoring the law and have rebranded and desanctified dreary Christian rituals (this year my son’s brilliant Christmas play was called CinderAbba, you can imagine why), but we should remove the threat of them being penalised for this, and protect young people from overzealous religionists in the future by rationalising the rules now.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/12/religion-morality

Ardent litigator targeting paedophile priests and the sex abuse cover-up heads for the UK.

A leading US litigator who has spent more than 20 years suing US-based paedophile priests and the church officials who moved them from parish to parish is joining a new legal practice dedicated to rooting out clerical sexual abuse in the UK.

Jeff Anderson has filed more than 1,500 lawsuits against the Catholic church in the US and thousands more against individuals and organisations, including those belonging to other Christian denominations.

His Minnesota firm says it is “aggressively committed” to child protection through civil litigation and he believes there is significant scope to expand this activity in the UK.

Anderson, whose firm recently represented all 23 plaintiffs in a suit that led to a US diocese filing for bankruptcy protection, will be working with Ann Olivarius, a solicitor who is already based in London, to expose offenders and seek justice for victims.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/10/lawyer-paedophile-priests-us-uk

New envoy to the Vatican is a “temp” because no one wants the job.

David Cameron has appointed George Edgar as Britain’s temporary envoy to the Vatican after Ann Widdecombe turned down the role.

Having been surprised by a string of rejections for the role of Britain’s ambassador to the Vatican from such candidates as Ann Widdecombe, Lord Patten of Barnes and the MP Edward Leigh, David Cameron has been forced to turn to a trusted trouble-shooter.

Mandrake can disclose that George Edgar will be the interim chargé d’affaires to the Holy See when Francis Campbell leaves his post at the end of this month.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/8246963/Criticism-as-David-Cameron-sends-trouble-shooter-to-the-Vatican.html

Oddly enough, the Church of England doesn’t want whole churches to be poached off by the Vatican.

Defecting priest feigns surprise. Tension between Catholics and Protestants…? It’s unheard of!

Anglicans defecting to Rome are being told they must leave their churches with clergy even been asked to move away from their parish.

They have worshipped together for decades on the pews of their parish church. Generations of their loved ones have been baptised, married and buried there.

But now a Church of England congregation is being torn apart by the Pope’s offer to welcome disaffected Anglican traditionalists into the Catholic Church.

… At St Barnabas the move towards Rome is being led by the vicar, Fr Ed Tomlinson. He believes that traditionalists who oppose the ordination of women have been badly let down by Church leaders.

But he has been told by the diocese of Rochester that if he and his followers leave the Church of England they will no longer be allowed to hold services, even on a shared basis, at St Barnabas…

Full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/8247915/Anglicans-heading-to-Rome-told-they-cant-stay-in-their-churches.html

And finally, the Pope tells you how to name your children.

The pope has declared war on parents’ growing insistence on shunning the saints and naming their children after fashion designers, Sanskrit titles and things that don’t mean much.

The Holy See fears that parents are choosing modish names such as Chanel, Swami and Pesche at the expense of Maria, Martina and Giuseppe, egged on by celebrity examples.

“Every baptism should ensure that the child is given a Christian name, an unmistakable sign that the Holy Spirit will allow the person to blossom in the bosom of the Church,” Benedict XVI said, while baptising 21 infants in the Sistine Chapel on Sunday. “Do not give your children names that are not in the Christian calendar.”

Continues: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/for-heavens-sake-pope-hopes-to-end-trend-for-exotic-names-2181133.html

It’s funny, there’s rather a lot of factors that might determine the future quality of a child’s psychology, prospects, and relationships. Socio-economic class, for example, is a pretty massive one. We might also ask, Is the extended family large or small? How old are the parents and what’s the age gap? Yes, maybe, possibly, the genders (and personalities, and habits and a host of other traits) of the parents might be more or less predictive factors in the general health and well-being of children. This is all possible.

However, few of us would suggest reminding people at every opportunity that as a general trend their parenting might be affected by such a factor, still less would we single people out, or hint toward the suggestion that this factor is such a significant determinant of negative consequences that they shouldn’t have children in the first place.

Unless, that is, the target of our scorn is a same-sex couple, and we’re a bishop.

Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John is only 15 days old, but he has already provoked a pronouncement from one of the Church of England’s most prominent prelates.

Sir Elton John’s fathering of a son by an American surrogate mother with his civil partner, David Furnish, risks causing the child lasting psychological damage, claims the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester.

“I believe that surrogacy, inevitably, introduces a ‘third’ party to the legal parents,” he tells Mandrake. “This will affect the welfare of the child, psychologically and in other ways.”

… “Although society must support single parents who, heroically, bring up children on their own, all the evidence shows that children are best brought up in the context of a stable marriage where they can relate to a mother and a father, so that they can develop healthy relationships with people of both genders.”

Next week, Bishop Nazir-Ali will be telling people who earn less than the average income, and couples with more than ten years age gap between them, that they should consider the possible negative effect on their children’s “welfare” and “psychology”. Oh no, actually, he won’t.

Full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/8248072/Sir-Elton-John-has-endangered-sons-welfare-claims-Bishop-Michael-Nazir-Ali.html

Marilyn Mason has some good news from South West London Humanists

Marilyn Mason

South West London Humanists this week celebrated the success of their North Kingston campaign for inclusive education and against a proposed new secondary school being run by the Church of England when the Office of the Schools Adjudicator announced its decision in favour of a bid to manage the school from Kingston Education Trust, a consortium of Kingston Council, Kingston University and the local FE College.

SWLH found much support from local parents for an inclusive neighbourhood school that would not discriminate against their children on religious grounds. A key role for humanists was to point out what local people often didn’t know and weren’t being told by supporters of the Diocese bid:

• how much influence the Church would have over the school’s admissions policy for its very small financial investment;
• that, whatever the Diocese were saying about admissions, policies could change and the school become more religiously selective in future years;
• and that the fact that  many local parents sent their children to Church primary schools demonstrated only, for historic reasons, that there were a great many of them within walking distance, not that parents were committed to faith-based education and demanding its continuation at secondary level.

Campaigning started early, even before there was an alternative bid to the Church one, with a petition on the Council website, which eventually attracted 255 signatures, asking the council to ensure an inclusive school. From then on we used every opportunity to keep the arguments in the public eye and to encourage alternative bids to manage the school by sending out press releases, writing letters to local papers and referring reporters and editors to the BHA and Accord websites if they wanted additional material. Local headlines included: “Faith in our schools?”; “Battle rages as church vies for school control”; “Humanists’ fears over school places”; and, my personal favourite, when the Diocesan bid was formally announced, “God for bid”.

We used local demographics and the pressing need for a non-selective neighbourhood school in Kingston to support our case, and we were always careful to attack religious privilege and discrimination rather than religious belief – though others who wrote letters to local papers (on both sides) were less temperate. Via our monthly newsletter we kept SWLH members updated and encouraged them to write their own letters to the local media, councillors and MP. We offered them some arguments, both local and general, and provided the addresses of local papers, but did not provide standard letters or postcards, as individually expressed letters are far more effective. There were over 30 letters in the local press opposing faith schools during the campaign, not all from SWLH members – more numerous, and on the whole better argued, than those from Church supporters. Our chair, Jeremy Rodell, was tireless in maintaining a civilised discussion and campaign and correcting inaccuracies and misinformation in the local press.

We also responded to consultations individually and collectively, attended the local consultation meeting and held a public meeting of our own with James Gray of the British Humanist Association speaking persuasively for inclusive schools. According to a reporter at the local paper, the Diocese is now claiming that SWLH packed the public consultation meeting with humanists; in fact we would have had problems packing such a large meeting and most of those present and speaking against the Church bid were unknown to us – just local concerned parents. Before the end of the consultation period, we leafleted local primary schools, helped by some keen local parents.

We were also helped by the majority (Lib Dem) party on the local council wanting the Kingston Education Trust bid to succeed, and by having some friendly contacts amongst local councillors who seemed glad that we could campaign more freely than they could. Local Conservative councillors and MP Zac Goldsmith, while probably keener on the Church school bid, tended to sit on the fence and say they wanted whatever local parents wanted.

While SWLH can take a great deal of credit for raising local awareness of the issues and for increasing the number of responses to the consultation, in the end the adjudication was not based on the numbers supporting or opposing, or on the principles that we highlighted, and for future campaigns the full adjudication is well worth reading and instructive.

Though the Adjudicator acknowledges that a large group strongly opposed the principle of faith schools, he says:

Clearly we cannot reject the SDBE [Southward Diocese Board of Education] proposal on the basis of the objections in principle: the law provides for faith schools… (para 40)

and he appears to have been convinced by Diocesan claims that their admissions policy would be inclusive and proportionate (despite its setting aside of one third of places for children of practising Christians and a further 7% for other faiths). However, he did note that earlier consultations had found “little evidence of demand for faith-based provision” (para 39) and that “Whilst there is no Church of England school in the Borough of Kingston, such schools are available in neighbouring boroughs and within reasonable travelling distance” (para 22). The decisive factor seems to have been the distinctiveness of the KET bid and its potential to increase local choice and diversity:

The KET proposal is stronger than the SDBE proposal when examined from the point of view of diversity of provision and local support.  Its proposal would lead to the establishment of a unique new option which would be welcomed by parents.” (para 41)

These are all local factors and arguments worth looking out for in future local campaigns; in particular, it is clear that while “choice and diversity” continue to be political buzz-words, alternatives to faith-based schools must be seen to contribute to that.

Whether it was the SWLH that tipped the balance or not, our campaigning certainly raised our profile locally, established good contacts with the local press, attracted active support from a number of new people, and allied us with the majority party on Kingston Council – all good results, though nothing like as good as the final decision.

See also

• http://www.surreycomet.co.uk/news/8770507.BREAKING_NEWS__Council_beats_church_in_race_to_run_new_school/
• http://www.kingston.gov.uk/information/news_and_events/news.htm?id=111406
• http://www.schoolsadjudicator.gov.uk/upload/STP526%20Kingston%20Comp.doc

Marilyn Mason was a teacher for 20 years before working as Education Officer of the British Humanist Association (BHA) from 1998 to 2006. She is a campaigning member of South West London Humanist group, affiliated to the BHA.

The British Humanist Association has warned that ‘free schools’ could create ethnic and religious enclaves, argued that they are not protected by enough educational regulation, and echoed concerns that substantive measures to counter-balance their ‘freedom’ in order to prevent against extremists running the schools are entirely lacking. It seems that many of the critics’ fears about educational quality of these largely unregulated schools is shared by parents and teachers.

Coalition plans for a generation of “free schools” suffered a blow today as it emerged they were backed by a minority of parents.

Research found that just a quarter of adults wanted new-style schools run by parents and private companies in their area and the majority opposed proposals to give them extra independence.

The study by the National Union of Teachers also revealed that three-quarters of parents were unaware that a free school was being planned the local community.

The disclosure prompted claims that the reforms were “not wanted or needed” and that the Government was attempting to hide them from local families.

Free schools are among the Coalition’s most controversial education reforms. Under proposals, parents’ groups, charities, businesses and teachers can apply to open their own Government-funded school free of local council control.

The schools will be given more freedom than ordinary state schools, including the power to hire teachers without formal teaching qualifications.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8235886/Free-schools-not-wanted-by-parents-says-research.html

Science teacher and writer Alom Shaha celebrates a rare piece of original research by school children and how it found its way into a Royal Society journal.

A scientific paper published today in the prestigious Royal Society journal Biology Letters reveals that “bumble-bees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from.” This is an exciting discovery that deepens our knowledge of the buff-tailed bumble-bee (Bombus terrestris) and is described in an accompanying commentary as a “significant piece of research giving a novel insight in the colour and pattern vision of the bee”.

However, there is a more important discovery that is included in the paper, a discovery that I hope readers of this blogpost and the original paper will share with as many people as possible – the authors, while researching the behaviour of bees, ”also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before”.

As you’ve probably guessed, the authors of this particular paper are not your usual research team. The research was “conceived, carried out, summarized and written up by a class of 8 to 10 years olds” from Blackawton Primary School in Devon. The paper is deliberately written in “kids speak”, which, as well as being charming (“if we are lucky we will be able to get them to do Sudoku in a couple of years’ time”), serves as a constant reminder that this work was genuinely carried out by young schoolchildren.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/dec/22/schoolchildren-bumble-bee-research-journal