Letters To Newsline
From Hamish Renfrew:
Because my stance on this has been made clear to my six year-old daughter’s non-denominational school, her teacher handed me a sheet outlining the Year 2 syllabus item “Special Books” which explained that Sue Short from the Spinnaker Trust would be coming in to take 3 sessions each week for three weeks plus two Assemblies.
I looked up the Spinnaker Trust (a registered charity) on the internet, and was appalled by what I found! Assembly material that teaches “exploring the idea of ‘survival of the fittest’ and see how that is contrary to the teaching of Jesus”! Then I found the page on Sue Short. As so often happens, you don’t need to shoot these people down in flames, they do it themselves. For those with internet check http://www.spinnakertrust.org.uk/SpinJesus_the_answer.htm (SpinJesus! They have no sense of irony, do they?).
For those without, in her own words: “…one of the teachers commented on how little the children, even in this Church school, seemed to know about the Bible. Far fewer children go to Sunday School or church-run clubs these days, so if they don’t hear at school, how else will they know? But the situation showed how easily children become conditioned to answer our questions in a certain way.... But perhaps there is a truth here. Whereas the children are only guessing at the required response, as Christians our experience and teaching has shown us that Jesus is always the answer. Whenever things are tough, confusing, difficult, or even wonderful, exciting and challenging, He is there for us – to be praised, thanked, confided in, confessed to. Thank God for Jesus!”
I immediately spoke to the school and to the Borough Education authority. I withdrew my daughter from RE, again, until the situation was resolved and also from all Assemblies with God-botherers included in them. Since those in the Spinnaker Trust were used to having their every thought and action monitored by god, I suggested it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition if I filmed them in action at Assembly and class so that other adults might also see what she was doing.
I also pointed out that there might be problems if a Muslim of similarly dogmatic viewpoint were to come to the school with equal access and, as the pope may attest, more if one wasn’t. I also requested that the parents be informed by the school of this woman’s views and impending visit or I would inform them myself.
It seemed only fair to warn the Jesus Spinners of the storm into which they were heading and, I have to say, the woman I spoke to there was very nice and helpful, but I failed to get a hold of the director.
I also spoke to the local education authority and made my points with sufficient force that the Deputy Director of Education called. We had a pleasant discussion regarding the policy on RE and my concerns. He has asked me to submit a list of questions for the local SACRE, and assured me that they will be answered fully.
DAY 2 having received no word from the school I printed off a dozen or so copies of the web page and handed them out to a cross section of parents. All but one were shocked and surprised that any individual with those views should come into the school to address infant children. Several asked me to write a petition, which they would sign, protesting the visit. On glimpsing the headmaster, I impressed on him the importance and the time constraint. He said that he would call me later in the day.
I again spoke to someone at Spinnaker to impress upon them that they might wish to re-think the wisdom of sending this woman into my daughter’s school. The lady took note of my concerns and said the director would be in later. On a second attempt I spoke to the one responsible for putting the page on their Web-site, which had now been withdrawn. They told me the headmaster had sent a number of e-mails to the director and things were being resolved.
I then rang the school and couldn’t get a hold of the headmaster, but was told a letter would be given to me, when I came to pick up my daughter, informing me the planned sessions had been cancelled. I’ll let you know how it goes with the borough. I shall be seeking an assurance that this woman does not have access to any child in a Non-Denominational School in the borough without the informed consent of the parents.
From Bob Churchill:
Alan Urdaibay asks for suggestions as to what his daughter might be taught now that she is out of biased and discriminatory RE classes. To some extent, she sounds like a budding secularist already, and can perhaps be consulted as to what she might want to investigate that she doesn’t already get taught in school.
But my suggestion is that whatever else she learns, some unbiased and undiscriminatory RE can be included, if only as an aside to a social/civic and philosophical education. Because personally, I think that the ins and outs of religion are too historically ubiquitous, and increasingly politically potent, to ignore entirely. (Imagine not studying Nazism on the basis that we don’t agree with it!)
By laying religious viewpoints alongside one another, and laying those along side the philosophical criticisms and alternatives, not only will she be on the right side of the educational/instructional divide, but the education will be far richer than that of her classmates. The benchmark is this: her classmates may learn to recite religious “information”; but if through civic and philosophical insight she can comment on this information in ways that her peers would never even expect, then she is getting the right kind of “religious education”.
From Muriel Fraser:
Even without RE in its state schools, the US has become the most religious country in the industrialised world. However, this should not be used to minimise the importance of RE, since something else seems to be largely responsible for the increase in American religiosity.
This is the thirty-year rightwing campaign to saturate the American media. Because their rightwing ideology inextricably mixes religion and politics, and the NSS doesn’t do party politics, I’ll just refer you to the first chapter of David Brock’s book about their rightwing media here. And if you’re interested in the political usefulness of “values voters” you can look at pieces by and about Thomas Frank, such as the review by an historian here. .
With religion banned from American schools by their 18th-century Enlightenment constitution, the best remaining hope of evangelising was to corrupt the media. This has been accomplished to the point where the most popular media there are now “faith-based”, rather than quaintly “reality-based”.
However, the American situation shouldn’t lead us to discount the usefulness of RE wherever it’s allowed, as it is in the UK. Braterman asks, “Could it be that excluding religion from schools helps shield it from rational scrutiny?” He receives his answer in the same issue of Newsline, where Alan Urdaibay scotches that notion with his excellent account of how much “rational scrutiny” was permitted to his own children in RE.
The two things that religious lobbyists want most are money and control of education. After all, look what RE and its logical endpoint, the sectarian school, really amount to: subjecting people at a formative age to pressure by both alpha adults and the peer-group. This happens to be the way young primates learn best. It’s how evolution sets them up to be inducted into the troop or the tribe. Their inbuilt vulnerability means that we must protect our children by firmly opposing all RE, just as we oppose all sectarian schools.
From Tony Bevis:
Paul Braterman raises an interesting point (Newsline last week) regarding the pervasiveness of religious belief in the USA, a country whose constitution forbids religion in state schools. This can be contrasted with England, one of the world’s more secular nations, in spite of our official state link to the CofE and all of our faith schools. This anomaly has puzzled me for a while, but I feel Paul’s hypothesis of the USA’s lack of school religious education somehow shielding it from rational scrutiny to be not particularly likely.
A more plausible explanation, I feel, is that because there are no official state subsidies for churches in the States, they have to work and act like any other corporation and rely on ultra-slick marketing to get their “customer base”. And they are very effective in getting donations this way by their brethren, though they like to call it “partnerships” (even though the flow of money is one-way!). Like all companies, the good marketers survive and the poor ones disappear.
With our churches getting tax payers’ money there’s no real need for them to do the same kind of hyped-up marketing, and maybe the old-fashioned English reserve may also play a part. But supposing the miraculous happened, and the government actually separated church & state (less likely than finding Elvis Presley on the moon, admittedly), then they too might have to start copying the American way in order to survive, and ironically could potentially increase their flock!
From Ian S. Fielding:
The current furore over comments made by the Pope should be the final straw for anyone who owns and uses a supernatural crutch. Now is the time to turn to your immediate neighbour, of whatever sex, creed or colour and wander down to the pub, the park, the coffee machine etc and just start getting on with each other, without any recourse to any ancient contradictory texts to guide you as to how to behave, and just say hello and take it from there. Love life, not the afterlife – it stands to reason.
From Rob Myers:
In response to Ed McArthur (Newsline last week), what do we call people who “bomb the crap” out of people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Serbia simply to wipe them out? If Ed objects to Israel's bombing of Hezbollah in Lebanon why does he criticize the NATO aerial bombardment of Serbia which ended the killing of Muslims in Bosnia and why does he support the insurrection in Iraq who have killed thousands of Muslims (and secularists) there?
Genocide, totalitarianism and, yes, terrorism, in the name of religious extremism are not things any clear-thinking secularist should align themselves with. Especially if they wish their criticisms of the excesses of the global economic order to be taken seriously.
From J.M. Bostock:
I would just comment, as I have before, that religion and politics don’t mix and they don’t sit well with NSS membership. United we stand and bringing our own political stance in to play does none of us any good. I would refer Ed MacArthur to the article by Fred Halliday The Left and the Jihad.
His obviously ‘left wing’ view is like many in the Labour Party and the TUC as disclosed last week. Politics gets in the way of rational thought in just the same way that religion does, if you 'believe' something then every other thing is secondary. ‘Hatred of America and its allies’ has become a mantra of the ‘left’, they should grow up and see the World as it really is, leave politics to the politicians and let us fight for FREEDOM and all that entails. Otherwise religion will have us for breakfast.
From Clive Greedus
Ed McArthur asks: “what do we call people who want to spread peace democracy and human rights by bombing the crap out of people in Iraq, Afghanistan Serbia and Iran(?) and supporting Israel’s right to do what they like?” is a real puzzler! In Iraq, the car bombs, suicide bombing, and shootings that are wiping out hundreds every week are certainly not being done by people who support peace, democracy and human rights.
In Afghanistan the Taliban supporters of Al-qaeda were bombed by US forces and killed by allies including Northern Alliance Afghans to permanently remove terrorist bases. In Serbia, I recall that bombing by the US and Britain was primarily to halt the genocide of Muslims. Iran was attacked by Iraq under Saddam Hussein and one million died in the war, but human rights was never on his agenda.
Israel is invariably supported by the US and latterly by Britain – the common link here is two devoutly Christian heads of state, both of whom seem to think they are doing God’s work and can therefore indulge themselves. Terrorists, despite Ed’s idea that they are “people who have no other choice” are also usually people indulging themselves — they are not reluctant participants, hating what they are doing — most positively enjoy the excitement! To look into the eyes of non aggressive men, women and children prior to killing and maiming them demands a degree of alienation that religions are particularly good at producing.
I might share his reservations that Western democracy is not the panacea it is made out to be, and that some aspects of US foreign policy have been diabolical, but it's nonsense to suggest that Secularism should be tied to these views. As for values, I think it is fair for Secularism to fight against those that are based on religious dogma, so by definition what is left will likely seem liberal!
From Connor Birch:
Ed McArthur makes a valid point about Western foreign policy killing more people than terrorism. With no logical link he then asserts that secularists should become a movement against the current ‘socio-economic system’ and liberal values.
The reality is quite simple. The West has only become militarily superior BECAUSE it has embraced libertarian values and has a largely unrepressed economy. Because the West is relatively libertarian, governments can be challenged by their populations and indeed premiers have a shorter time in office in the West than they do in totalitarian states. It is up to us to use the advantages of liberal society to ensure that politicians are held to account. I for one will do what I can to protect libertarian values.
Ed’s conviction that we must move away from liberal values to progress the “fight against religion” seems to entirely miss the point. Religion is worth fighting largely because it is a threat to liberal values and rational thought.
From Tim Atkinson:
Ed McArthur criticised my own remarks of the week before: I take his point and stand corrected. However, my admittedly sarcastic joke was as much a pot-shot at the eternal religious fanatic, as well as the extreme PC language we frequently seem to be compelled by the establishment to adopt toward everything these days, and I stand by that aspect of what I said.
Do we imagine that, without the current conflict abroad, Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri would be preaching love and tolerance toward us infidels? There is no doubt that the behaviour of the western powers has made everything far worse, and you are quite right to point that out, but please bear in mind that according to these extremists we were all fit for Hell under any circumstances all along, were we not? Even if we had never assaulted them at any time ever in their history the concepts of jihad and the infidel-slaying martyr are part of the religious culture and their religious text. Given that fact it would surely have been inevitable that eventually our civilisation would find itself on the receiving end of this kind of action, just as they would of course have suffered from our matching religious fascism. This is not merely contingent upon the present disastrous war, or any long term political-social-economic situation that preceded it.
And I am not naïve enough to think that if religion and its various attendant problems suddenly vanished off the face of the earth we would immediately find ourselves in a paradise world without conflict or enmity. Our problems are far too complex for that. But I do know that that would be one less divisive force amongst us. Nothing fuels irrational hatred and fanaticism like religion. Nothing.
I find your final paragraph confusing too, Ed. You wrote ‘… until the secular movement becomes a movement against the current socio-economic system and stops backing western so-called liberal values there cannot be any progress in the fight against religion’. By definition I would have thought that ‘the secular movement’ was about … secularism. The separation of religion and the various apparatus of the state.
Nonetheless, I’m sure the majority of people who would define themselves as secularists recognise that there are a lot of complex influences at work in these situations which need addressing. I am certainly not aware of many people who write in to Newsline voicing their approval and enthusiasm for the actions of Messrs Blair and Bush in the Middle East. Quite the opposite if anything. Most seem perfectly well aware of the dangerously exacerbatory effect this has on the situation — both there in those specific countries and in the world at large — and are very concerned about it.
There also seems to be something self-contradictory about much of that last paragraph of yours, and a number of ill-defined terms and assertions. How exactly would you define ‘the secular movement’? Given that our socio-economic system is a theocracy, isn’t said secular movement already against it, at least to some extent? What do you mean by ‘liberal values’ or even ‘so-called liberal values’? You seem to suggest that ‘the current socio-economic system’ and these ‘so-called liberal values’ go hand in hand, or are perhaps almost synonymous, but isn’t the problem that our current regime is propagating a situation that is anything but liberal, a near police-state where Orwell’s ‘thought crime’ is rapidly becoming a reality? And given that religion is similarly illiberal, how is it that we must stop backing liberal values in order to defeat it so that we can have liberal values? Sorry. Please understand I’m not trying to be bolshy or pick a fight here, but this pronouncement of yours seems to be far more of a Gordian knot than anything I said.
From Paul Brown:
I think that Richard Batchelor is treading on extremely dangerous and dubious ground in saying “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. Does that apply to people that live under theocracies as well? Must people conform to the dominant values of the day, no matter what society they live in? I thought that the NSS valued dissidence, not conformity and convention.
Of course, I do not support Lloyds TSB in pandering to the Muslim pound, but I do not feel the need to espouse BNP-type rhetoric in response. Surely we in the NSS are Cosmopolitans as opposed to Chauvinists, to use Robin Cook’s terms, and as such we embrace a society with a wide range of views and lifestyles, and not one monolithic, singular culture. We do, after all, support great dissidents that emphatically do not accept the status quo in their countries, such as feminists and atheists in Iran, so why adopt the conservative slogan “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”?
From Paul Braterman:
Moslem or Mohammedan? I do not know the answer to Fiona Weir’s question (September 1) about the chronology of these terms, but have heard that ‘Mohammedan’ is felt as offensive, because it suggests the ignorant notion that Moslems worship Mohammed in the same way that Christians worship their Christ.
From Alan Rogers:
The BBC 2 broadcast University Challenge 18th September pitted an Oxford college against a “plate glass” provincial university. So it was with great pleasure that I watched both sides fail on religious questions but in contrast, correctly identify “Charles Bradlaugh” as the courageous man who repeatedly refused to swear a religious oath after winning election to parliament. In spite of the rantings of popes, imams and born again lunatics there still is hope that the young will achieve a healthy world-view.
Some letters have been held over
