Newsline 8 April 2016

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News, Blogs & Opinion

	Parliamentary RE group 'turning into a religious sect' News \| Wed, 6th Apr 2016 The founding chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on religious education has warned that the group has been taken-over by religious "fundamentalists". Stephen Lloyd, the former MP who founded the APPG on religious education in 2012, wrote for Politics.co.uk that the "The APPG is in danger of turning into a religious sect." Mr Lloyd said that non-religious world views were being excluded by the APPG and that its remit "has been changed to specifically exclude the teaching of values of people with no faith." "In the previous parliament it was absolutely core to the APPG's view, and remains so to that of the RE Council and the majority of RE teachers, that a key part of good RE teaching in schools should be to educate our children about all different faiths and about people with none." He added: "In today's ever more polarised world, where there is a woeful level of ignorance about people's different beliefs, it was essential to me that the APPG support and encourage a gold standard of broad, informed debate across the different religions and non-religious worldviews." Now however, the former chair says that the group is "in danger of turning into a religious sect overwhelmingly directed by the fundamentalist Christian wing of the Conservative parliamentary party, which I think is utterly deplorable." Since the 2015 General Election, the APPG has been chaired by Fiona Bruce MP, who has said that "Being a Christian in Parliament means I focus on issues that I believe matter to Christ". Bruce also chairs the pro-life All-Party Parliamentary Group. The RE Council criticised the manner of her appointment, and wrote that while a process was underway to reform the group in the aftermath of the election, "Fiona Bruce MP decided to hold an AGM for the group, securing her own election as Chair, without notifying the REC of the event until after it had occurred. She also did not notify some of the other officers of the fact that they had been elected alongside her." Lloyd said the RE Council was "highly respected" as an "umbrella body for those who teach or have an interest in RE" and that he was "profoundly disappointed" by Bruce's takeover of the APPG and her unilateral decision to remove the RE Council as the secretariat for the group. The former MP said that the moves were a "shocking sign of things to come". One of the current vice chairs of the APPG is David Burrowes MP, also a trustee of the Conservative Christian Fellowship. Lloyd reported that in 2012 Burrowes tried to "pressure" him into "dropping a colleague from the new executive of the APPG because he was an agnostic." When Lloyd refused, Burrowes resigned from the executive. Burrowes recently called for religious organisations to refuse to cooperate with plans to regulate supplementary schools – despite widespread reports of educational failure and risks to children's safety – and said "I will not let inspectors into my youth camp". The other vice chair of the group is Mary Glindon, one of the few Labour MPs to vote against same-sex marriage. Stephen Evans, Campaigns Director of the National Secular Society, said: "Religious education is a contested area and it's not helpful that teaching and learning in this area is so heavily influenced by groups with a vested interest. "There is a growing consensus behind the need to reform religion and belief education to ensure that all children receive impartial education about religious and non-religious worldviews. It is therefore very disappointing to see these MPs using the APPG to further their own narrow, ideological interests at the expense of promoting good quality education."
	NSS urges schools commissioner to reject church plan to control community schools News \| Tue, 5th Apr 2016 The National Secular Society has called on the Regional Schools Commissioner for the North of England to oppose plans for a Church of England takeover of four Newcastle schools. The Commissioner, Janet Renou, is currently considering a proposal to form a multi-academy trust (MAT) which would include one Church of England school and four non-religiously designated schools. According to one city councillor, the Church would have three out of five seats on the trust's board, despite just one of the five schools currently having a religious ethos. In a letter to the Schools Commissioner, Stephen Evans, NSS Campaigns Director, urged Ms Renou to preserve local provision of secular education and protect children's rights to religious freedom by blocking the proposal. Despite MATs being under a contractual obligation to protect schools' individual character the NSS says it has "little confidence" that in reality the ethos of the community schools will be protected through the funding agreement with the Secretary of State. The letter invites the Commissioner to "consider how non-religious schools can realistically be protected from an encroaching religious ethos if the most senior people in the trust are all advancing the interests of the Church." The Newcastle Diocesan Education Board claims that the ethos of the individual schools will be protected – despite representatives of the Church controlling the trust's board. Newcastle City Council is seeking assurances that the schools will continue to adopt a "fair approach to school admissions." In the letter to Ms Renou the National Secular Society also noted its broader concerns about forced academisation potentially resulting in even more schools falling under the control of religious groups. Mr Evans added: "In the long-term, there is nothing to prevent non-religious schools in [faith-based] multi-academy chains from taking on a religious designation provided they gain the approval of the Secretary of State. "At the National Secular Society we are frequently contacted by parents, teachers and governors concerned about Church of England controlled schools seeking to assert an overbearing religious ethos in its schools." The NSS has repeatedly raised concerns with the Department for Education about religious organisations using academisation to further their own interests by gaining greater control of publicly funded education, including non-religious schools.
	Spanish public schools to “inculcate” children of Muslim parents with “Islamic worldview” News \| Thu, 7th Apr 2016 The Spanish government has announced plans for a massive taxpayer-funded Islamic religious education programme which will promote 'moderate' Islam in schools to tackle Islamic extremism. New guidelines approved by the Spanish Ministry of Education seek to spark "interest for Islamic religious and cultural texts" among the children of Muslim parents and stir "curiosity for the Koran in oral and written language" while challenging pupils to learn "Islamic recitations, narrations and descriptions." Soeren Kern, an analyst who writes for the Gatestone Institute, says that the guidelines are "being touted as a way to prevent Muslim children and young people from being drawn into terrorism by exposing them to a 'moderate' interpretation of Islam." But in an article for the Gatestone Institute, Kern said that Spanish "taxpayers are being expected to pay for the religious education of up to 300,000 Muslim students between the ages of 3 and 18" when the Spanish government may have no oversight over what is actually being taught. The new guidelines for Islamic teaching in Spanish public schools state that the teachers will be designated and chosen by local Islamic communities and that the content of Islamic religious teaching and the textbooks used in classes will be 'provided by the respective communities' and approved by the Islamic Commission of Spain. 'Determining the curriculum' and measuring achievement will also be under the purview of 'religious authorities'. Kern cautioned that the new plan "amounts to a government-approved program to establish a full-fledged Islamic studies curriculum at public schools nationwide" and is "the most ambitious in all of Europe". Children will be encouraged to "emulate" the "values" of Mohammed and will study the "achievements" of Islamic civilization – including the Cairo Declaration, the international treaty that stipulated "rights and freedoms" are "subject to the Islamic Shari'ah." National Secular Society spokesperson Benjamin Jones said that the "UK has also experimented with handing over vast swathes of our education system to religious groups, with some appalling results." He added that it was "very unwise" of the Spanish government to pursue any policy which "marked pupils out on the basis of their parents' faith" and "denied them the opportunity to form their own philosophical beliefs." "I am extremely sceptical about a state-sanctioned so-called 'moderate Islam' being of any use in countering Islamic extremism. Muslims must reform their faith, not only to avert extremism, but to resist theocracy and the imposition of religion on others – which is, in some ways, a much more widespread and significant problem. I do not think that the state can be of any use in promulgating an 'approved' version of Islam. "What the state can do is insist that schools, in Spain, the UK and across Europe, are promoting human rights and common citizenship to build integrated societies. They shouldn't be forcing a religious identity on pupils. They certainly shouldn't be marking pupils out by their parents' religion and segregating them into different classes. "Of course such segregation occurs throughout the education system in the UK, with pupils divided into wholly separate schools on the basis of their parents' faith. We have seen the terrible results of this already."
	“Born-again Christian” who bullied junior NHS colleague loses appeal News \| Thu, 7th Apr 2016 A Pentecostal Christian accused of "harassment and bullying" against a junior colleague has had her appeal against an employment tribunal ruling dismissed. In 2014 Victoria Wasteney was found guilty of bullying a junior work colleague. She was found guilty of three charges, after an extensive complaint was made against her. She then took that decision to an employment tribunal in 2015, which rejected her claim that she was the victim of discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief. The employment tribunal ruled that Wasteney's religious views were not the issue, and that the same ruling would have been reached if the issue at question was her political views. However, Wasteney appealed that decision, in a case which was now been dismissed by Judge Jennifer Eady QC. Stephen Evans, the Campaigns Director of the National Secular Society, commented: "This case is being used to promulgate a false narrative of Christians being persecuted and prevented from talking about their faith. In fact, Ms Wasteney was initially found guilty in a formal disciplinary investigation of three charges and was warned for 'harassing and bullying' a colleague. "Regrettably the media continue to take the claims of the Christian Legal Centre or Christian Concern at face value. Both the BBC and the Telegraph have published stories that give the impression this was over Wasteney giving a religious book to a Muslim colleague. "In reality, as the ruling of the employment tribunal and initial complaint show, Ms Wasteney had engaged in a pattern of behaviour and sought to impose her religious views on a junior member of staff in a wholly inappropriate way." The original complaint against Ms Wasteney set out a number of accusations including that the Muslim colleague received persistent unwanted invitations to attend Wasteney's Pentecostal church – with frequent phone calls and texts sent about this outside of work hours. The employee said that they finally had to block their manager on their personal mobile phone "to avoid further invites" to religious events. Wasteney had a history of advancing the influence of her Christian Revival Church (CRC) at the mental health unit where she worked. She pushed to have CRC services at the hospital and complaints soon began to arrive about the group pressurising medical staff to participate in religious worship. The initial employment tribunal ruling said that Wasteney "had been previously counselled and advised to maintain proper professional boundaries between her personal beliefs and her role at work." Andrea Williams, the Director of Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre, claimed the decision was an "injustice" and that Wasteney would "press on to fight for [the] freedom to express Christian faith in [the] work place." See also: "The Christian "fired for praying at work" – here's the other side of the story".
	Church of England bishops are more elitist than David Cameron’s cabinet Opinion \| Tue, 5th Apr 2016 A small, almost entirely Oxbridge-educated elite are given automatic seats in Parliament. How do we allow this to continue, asks Ed Moore. In 2015 a widely debated report from the Sutton Trust pointed out just how many of David Cameron's new Conservative cabinet went to elite schools and universities and how unrepresentative this was of the general population of the country. The Guardian calculated of the 32 people attending cabinet meetings: - 50% went to Oxbridge - 34% attended a Russell Group university other than Oxbridge - 53% attended an independent school - 7% attended grammar schools If we do the same analysis on the current 40 enthroned or acting diocesan bishops how does it compare? Interestingly: - 85% studied at Oxford or Cambridge - 12.5% attended a Russell Group university other than Oxbridge - 32.5% attended an independent school - 32.5% attended a grammar school Just one Bishop failed to attend an elite university and 5% more bishops attended a selective or fee-paying school than the perceived establishment Conservatives. I've been reading Secularization and Moral Change by Alasdair MacIntyre and he includes a passage that helps explain the situation: "The upper classes integrated religion into their recognized status system. Being an Archdeacon or a Dean, let alone a Bishop, confers, and always has conferred, social status in the same way as certain ranks in the armed forces do. This is scarcely surprising since so large a number of the higher clergy went to public schools and to Oxford or Cambridge and come from precisely the same families which produce Colonels and Rear-Admirals." It would be interesting to get a viewpoint from the Church of England as to why the bishops come from so privileged a position and what the church is doing to promote priests from poorer backgrounds to redress the balance. This would be their own internal problem, save for the fact that twenty-six of their bishops (including two archbishops) have a very privileged position in parliament. These clerics have votes and seats (as of right) in the House of Lords, wield significant political influence, particularly over publicly funded education, yet come from a very particular social, economic and educational class. Their backgrounds lend them to a religiosity, affiliated with their class and educational background, which is not shared by most of the population. There is much angst about the Government being unrepresentative - and if you share that view you can vote them out of office. But for the bishops there is no democratic recourse whatsoever. Alasdair MacIntyre's lecture was from 1967, in fifty years not much seems to have changed.
	Scotland is a mosaic of religions and beliefs – but the research shows people turning away from politicised faith Opinion \| Thu, 24th Mar 2016 Scotland is a mosaic of beliefs and non-beliefs where individuals are free to hold a belief, change it or not have one at all. But it's not hard to see why people are rejecting the organised and politicised aspects of religion, writes Alistair McBay. Much is being made of the Church of Scotland's latest research to the effect that although church attendance numbers continue to decline and churches continue to close in Scotland, the people leaving the pews remain believing Christians. The report concerns a new book entitled "The Invisible Church" and claims that two thirds of church leavers nevertheless maintain a strong personal faith. This, it says, challenges assumptions that declining numbers of people sitting in pews on Sunday mornings are synonymous with a decline in Christian faith and the Christian community. At the report's launch, researcher Dr Steve Aisthorpe said changes in wider society and in the practices of Christian people meant attendance at Sunday morning worship could no longer be seen as a reliable indicator of the health and scale of Christian faith. "There is decline in Christian faith in Britain, but it is considerably smaller than previously assumed," he claimed. One immediate problem with this analysis is that it appears to contradict all the Census data and other independent research (as opposed to research of the biased church-sponsored variety) which confirms the ever-growing number of 'nones' in Scottish and wider UK society. This is difficult to square with the claim that those leaving the Kirk in the formal sense of pitching up on Sunday mornings nevertheless continue to pray, discuss theology and observe traditional Christian festivals, and so Christianity is maintaining its numbers. However there is little to be gained here by looking at competing sets of statistics or delving into the nature of privately-held philosophical beliefs. The central issue revealed in the report is the challenge it issues to the Kirk as an institution, in that the faithful are rejecting the organised and politicised aspects of religious belief exemplified by such an institution, and are deciding that they no longer need any middle men to broker or mediate their personal relationship with their god. This has huge implications for the Kirk's ongoing business model, and indeed the other major Christian denominations whose models follow the same pattern. In many ways this report tells us nothing new. We know that the UK is a mosaic of beliefs and non-beliefs where individuals are free to hold a belief, change it or not have one at all, and long may it be the case. The cause of the inescapable fact that believers are rejecting the institutional aspects of religion is not hard to pinpoint. In Scotland, the hypocrisy of Christian leaders has been ruthlessly exposed by the Cardinal O'Brien affair and the twin scandals of clergy child sex abuse and its cover up in religious orders. In addition, church leaders of every denomination are finding themselves massively out of step with the views of their membership on a whole range of issues. While the Church of Scotland appears to have escaped being a safe haven for paedophile clergy (although it has had the odd difficulty) the Kirk's own credibility took a severe knock with the rape by a church elder of the Reverend Helen Percy, and her subsequent shabby and misogynistic treatment at the hands of the Kirk's ecclesiastical court. In the wider UK context of the public positioning of Christian institutions, the apparent unending obsession many Christian leaders have with homosexuality and what consenting adults are getting up to in the privacy of their bedrooms stands in stark contrast to their self-imposed culture of secrecy and cover-up of child rape by clergy. The irony of this has not been lost on the pew-fillers and more than anything else has caused them to question the exclusive claims of bishops and moderators to moral certainty and leadership by example. It has also caused many to question the Kirk's ongoing demands for special privileges in Scotland on the one hand, while claiming to be a leader in challenging inequality on the other. While it is well known that the 'gay issue' has proved a crisis for the Kirk and other Christian denominations, some of the Kirk's other initiatives have also forced its membership to question its wider role in society. There was a perfect example earlier this week, when the Kirk announced a partnership with the Islamic Finance Council to create new ethical investment models to tackle inequality and poverty. While we all want to tackle these twin evils in our society, many of the Kirk members I know will be wondering just what this initiative, and indeed an alliance with the competing religion of Islam, has to do with preaching the Gospel. It is a perfect example of what business leaders will recognise as 'mission creep', and yet another reason why believers are deciding they no longer need or want the middle men in their daily relationship with their god. The Kirk has been aware of the problem of ever-emptying pews for some time. It started a 'Church Without Walls' project some years ago, and indeed the author of the current report, Dr Steve Aisthorpe, is one of the Kirk's regionally-based Mission Development Team taking the message outside the church walls and into the community. One of the Church's principal targets has been the non-denominational part of Scotland's education system, where along with other small activist groups it has a very active endeavour to gain souls for Jesus under the euphemism of promoting 'spiritual development.' With the strong support of a Scottish Government whose erstwhile leader prefers dealing with people who believe in something rather than nothing, school has rapidly become the new church. Meanwhile, given that the focus on schools will remain (already you sense that non-denominational' in Scotland now means Protestant!) the Kirk's property web site shows for sale a number of substantial churches, former manses and land (released through church demolition), worth several millions in total. Serving Mammon is likely to keep the old institution alive for a while yet! Alistair McBay is the Vice President of the National Secular Society. The views expressed in our blogs are those of the author and may not represent the views of the NSS.

NSS Speaks Out

In the past week NSS Executive Director Keith Porteous Wood spoke about unregistered Charedi schools and children's right to an education on LBC. National Secular Society Campaigns Director Stephen Evans was quoted in the local Newcastle press over a plan for the Church to take-over four non-religious local schools in a single multi-academy trust.

Quotes of the Week

"Now I can see how my childhood was stolen from me – both by these illegal schools and by authorities who have no grasp on or interest in protecting children like me."
Anonymous former student of an unregistered Orthodox Jewish faith school.

"If you go around saying some Muslims aren't real Muslims, don't be surprised when it bites you on the bum and someone says you aren't either."
Sarah Ager, Curator of Inter Faith Ramadan, on the policing of religious identity.

Essays of the Week

Charlie Hebdo's latest editorial identifies Muslims as the solution, not the problem - how is that Islamophobic?
Julia Ebner, Independent.

The best legacy we can leave Asad Shah is to take sectarian hate crime seriously.
Tehmina Kazi, Sedaa.

Upcoming Events

Abortion Access in 2016: Preventing harassment and putting pressure where power lies

Tue, 12th Apr 2016

Day Conference on Sharia Law, Legal Pluralism and Access to Justice

Sat, 30th Apr 2016

	Parliamentary RE group 'turning into a religious sect' News \| Wed, 6th Apr 2016 The founding chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on religious education has warned that the group has been taken-over by religious "fundamentalists". Stephen Lloyd, the former MP who founded the APPG on religious education in 2012, wrote for Politics.co.uk that the "The APPG is in danger of turning into a religious sect." Mr Lloyd said that non-religious world views were being excluded by the APPG and that its remit "has been changed to specifically exclude the teaching of values of people with no faith." "In the previous parliament it was absolutely core to the APPG's view, and remains so to that of the RE Council and the majority of RE teachers, that a key part of good RE teaching in schools should be to educate our children about all different faiths and about people with none." He added: "In today's ever more polarised world, where there is a woeful level of ignorance about people's different beliefs, it was essential to me that the APPG support and encourage a gold standard of broad, informed debate across the different religions and non-religious worldviews." Now however, the former chair says that the group is "in danger of turning into a religious sect overwhelmingly directed by the fundamentalist Christian wing of the Conservative parliamentary party, which I think is utterly deplorable." Since the 2015 General Election, the APPG has been chaired by Fiona Bruce MP, who has said that "Being a Christian in Parliament means I focus on issues that I believe matter to Christ". Bruce also chairs the pro-life All-Party Parliamentary Group. The RE Council criticised the manner of her appointment, and wrote that while a process was underway to reform the group in the aftermath of the election, "Fiona Bruce MP decided to hold an AGM for the group, securing her own election as Chair, without notifying the REC of the event until after it had occurred. She also did not notify some of the other officers of the fact that they had been elected alongside her." Lloyd said the RE Council was "highly respected" as an "umbrella body for those who teach or have an interest in RE" and that he was "profoundly disappointed" by Bruce's takeover of the APPG and her unilateral decision to remove the RE Council as the secretariat for the group. The former MP said that the moves were a "shocking sign of things to come". One of the current vice chairs of the APPG is David Burrowes MP, also a trustee of the Conservative Christian Fellowship. Lloyd reported that in 2012 Burrowes tried to "pressure" him into "dropping a colleague from the new executive of the APPG because he was an agnostic." When Lloyd refused, Burrowes resigned from the executive. Burrowes recently called for religious organisations to refuse to cooperate with plans to regulate supplementary schools – despite widespread reports of educational failure and risks to children's safety – and said "I will not let inspectors into my youth camp". The other vice chair of the group is Mary Glindon, one of the few Labour MPs to vote against same-sex marriage. Stephen Evans, Campaigns Director of the National Secular Society, said: "Religious education is a contested area and it's not helpful that teaching and learning in this area is so heavily influenced by groups with a vested interest. "There is a growing consensus behind the need to reform religion and belief education to ensure that all children receive impartial education about religious and non-religious worldviews. It is therefore very disappointing to see these MPs using the APPG to further their own narrow, ideological interests at the expense of promoting good quality education."
	NSS urges schools commissioner to reject church plan to control community schools News \| Tue, 5th Apr 2016 The National Secular Society has called on the Regional Schools Commissioner for the North of England to oppose plans for a Church of England takeover of four Newcastle schools. The Commissioner, Janet Renou, is currently considering a proposal to form a multi-academy trust (MAT) which would include one Church of England school and four non-religiously designated schools. According to one city councillor, the Church would have three out of five seats on the trust's board, despite just one of the five schools currently having a religious ethos. In a letter to the Schools Commissioner, Stephen Evans, NSS Campaigns Director, urged Ms Renou to preserve local provision of secular education and protect children's rights to religious freedom by blocking the proposal. Despite MATs being under a contractual obligation to protect schools' individual character the NSS says it has "little confidence" that in reality the ethos of the community schools will be protected through the funding agreement with the Secretary of State. The letter invites the Commissioner to "consider how non-religious schools can realistically be protected from an encroaching religious ethos if the most senior people in the trust are all advancing the interests of the Church." The Newcastle Diocesan Education Board claims that the ethos of the individual schools will be protected – despite representatives of the Church controlling the trust's board. Newcastle City Council is seeking assurances that the schools will continue to adopt a "fair approach to school admissions." In the letter to Ms Renou the National Secular Society also noted its broader concerns about forced academisation potentially resulting in even more schools falling under the control of religious groups. Mr Evans added: "In the long-term, there is nothing to prevent non-religious schools in [faith-based] multi-academy chains from taking on a religious designation provided they gain the approval of the Secretary of State. "At the National Secular Society we are frequently contacted by parents, teachers and governors concerned about Church of England controlled schools seeking to assert an overbearing religious ethos in its schools." The NSS has repeatedly raised concerns with the Department for Education about religious organisations using academisation to further their own interests by gaining greater control of publicly funded education, including non-religious schools.
	Spanish public schools to “inculcate” children of Muslim parents with “Islamic worldview” News \| Thu, 7th Apr 2016 The Spanish government has announced plans for a massive taxpayer-funded Islamic religious education programme which will promote 'moderate' Islam in schools to tackle Islamic extremism. New guidelines approved by the Spanish Ministry of Education seek to spark "interest for Islamic religious and cultural texts" among the children of Muslim parents and stir "curiosity for the Koran in oral and written language" while challenging pupils to learn "Islamic recitations, narrations and descriptions." Soeren Kern, an analyst who writes for the Gatestone Institute, says that the guidelines are "being touted as a way to prevent Muslim children and young people from being drawn into terrorism by exposing them to a 'moderate' interpretation of Islam." But in an article for the Gatestone Institute, Kern said that Spanish "taxpayers are being expected to pay for the religious education of up to 300,000 Muslim students between the ages of 3 and 18" when the Spanish government may have no oversight over what is actually being taught. The new guidelines for Islamic teaching in Spanish public schools state that the teachers will be designated and chosen by local Islamic communities and that the content of Islamic religious teaching and the textbooks used in classes will be 'provided by the respective communities' and approved by the Islamic Commission of Spain. 'Determining the curriculum' and measuring achievement will also be under the purview of 'religious authorities'. Kern cautioned that the new plan "amounts to a government-approved program to establish a full-fledged Islamic studies curriculum at public schools nationwide" and is "the most ambitious in all of Europe". Children will be encouraged to "emulate" the "values" of Mohammed and will study the "achievements" of Islamic civilization – including the Cairo Declaration, the international treaty that stipulated "rights and freedoms" are "subject to the Islamic Shari'ah." National Secular Society spokesperson Benjamin Jones said that the "UK has also experimented with handing over vast swathes of our education system to religious groups, with some appalling results." He added that it was "very unwise" of the Spanish government to pursue any policy which "marked pupils out on the basis of their parents' faith" and "denied them the opportunity to form their own philosophical beliefs." "I am extremely sceptical about a state-sanctioned so-called 'moderate Islam' being of any use in countering Islamic extremism. Muslims must reform their faith, not only to avert extremism, but to resist theocracy and the imposition of religion on others – which is, in some ways, a much more widespread and significant problem. I do not think that the state can be of any use in promulgating an 'approved' version of Islam. "What the state can do is insist that schools, in Spain, the UK and across Europe, are promoting human rights and common citizenship to build integrated societies. They shouldn't be forcing a religious identity on pupils. They certainly shouldn't be marking pupils out by their parents' religion and segregating them into different classes. "Of course such segregation occurs throughout the education system in the UK, with pupils divided into wholly separate schools on the basis of their parents' faith. We have seen the terrible results of this already."
	“Born-again Christian” who bullied junior NHS colleague loses appeal News \| Thu, 7th Apr 2016 A Pentecostal Christian accused of "harassment and bullying" against a junior colleague has had her appeal against an employment tribunal ruling dismissed. In 2014 Victoria Wasteney was found guilty of bullying a junior work colleague. She was found guilty of three charges, after an extensive complaint was made against her. She then took that decision to an employment tribunal in 2015, which rejected her claim that she was the victim of discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief. The employment tribunal ruled that Wasteney's religious views were not the issue, and that the same ruling would have been reached if the issue at question was her political views. However, Wasteney appealed that decision, in a case which was now been dismissed by Judge Jennifer Eady QC. Stephen Evans, the Campaigns Director of the National Secular Society, commented: "This case is being used to promulgate a false narrative of Christians being persecuted and prevented from talking about their faith. In fact, Ms Wasteney was initially found guilty in a formal disciplinary investigation of three charges and was warned for 'harassing and bullying' a colleague. "Regrettably the media continue to take the claims of the Christian Legal Centre or Christian Concern at face value. Both the BBC and the Telegraph have published stories that give the impression this was over Wasteney giving a religious book to a Muslim colleague. "In reality, as the ruling of the employment tribunal and initial complaint show, Ms Wasteney had engaged in a pattern of behaviour and sought to impose her religious views on a junior member of staff in a wholly inappropriate way." The original complaint against Ms Wasteney set out a number of accusations including that the Muslim colleague received persistent unwanted invitations to attend Wasteney's Pentecostal church – with frequent phone calls and texts sent about this outside of work hours. The employee said that they finally had to block their manager on their personal mobile phone "to avoid further invites" to religious events. Wasteney had a history of advancing the influence of her Christian Revival Church (CRC) at the mental health unit where she worked. She pushed to have CRC services at the hospital and complaints soon began to arrive about the group pressurising medical staff to participate in religious worship. The initial employment tribunal ruling said that Wasteney "had been previously counselled and advised to maintain proper professional boundaries between her personal beliefs and her role at work." Andrea Williams, the Director of Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre, claimed the decision was an "injustice" and that Wasteney would "press on to fight for [the] freedom to express Christian faith in [the] work place." See also: "The Christian "fired for praying at work" – here's the other side of the story".
	Church of England bishops are more elitist than David Cameron’s cabinet Opinion \| Tue, 5th Apr 2016 A small, almost entirely Oxbridge-educated elite are given automatic seats in Parliament. How do we allow this to continue, asks Ed Moore. In 2015 a widely debated report from the Sutton Trust pointed out just how many of David Cameron's new Conservative cabinet went to elite schools and universities and how unrepresentative this was of the general population of the country. The Guardian calculated of the 32 people attending cabinet meetings: - 50% went to Oxbridge - 34% attended a Russell Group university other than Oxbridge - 53% attended an independent school - 7% attended grammar schools If we do the same analysis on the current 40 enthroned or acting diocesan bishops how does it compare? Interestingly: - 85% studied at Oxford or Cambridge - 12.5% attended a Russell Group university other than Oxbridge - 32.5% attended an independent school - 32.5% attended a grammar school Just one Bishop failed to attend an elite university and 5% more bishops attended a selective or fee-paying school than the perceived establishment Conservatives. I've been reading Secularization and Moral Change by Alasdair MacIntyre and he includes a passage that helps explain the situation: "The upper classes integrated religion into their recognized status system. Being an Archdeacon or a Dean, let alone a Bishop, confers, and always has conferred, social status in the same way as certain ranks in the armed forces do. This is scarcely surprising since so large a number of the higher clergy went to public schools and to Oxford or Cambridge and come from precisely the same families which produce Colonels and Rear-Admirals." It would be interesting to get a viewpoint from the Church of England as to why the bishops come from so privileged a position and what the church is doing to promote priests from poorer backgrounds to redress the balance. This would be their own internal problem, save for the fact that twenty-six of their bishops (including two archbishops) have a very privileged position in parliament. These clerics have votes and seats (as of right) in the House of Lords, wield significant political influence, particularly over publicly funded education, yet come from a very particular social, economic and educational class. Their backgrounds lend them to a religiosity, affiliated with their class and educational background, which is not shared by most of the population. There is much angst about the Government being unrepresentative - and if you share that view you can vote them out of office. But for the bishops there is no democratic recourse whatsoever. Alasdair MacIntyre's lecture was from 1967, in fifty years not much seems to have changed.
	Scotland is a mosaic of religions and beliefs – but the research shows people turning away from politicised faith Opinion \| Thu, 24th Mar 2016 Scotland is a mosaic of beliefs and non-beliefs where individuals are free to hold a belief, change it or not have one at all. But it's not hard to see why people are rejecting the organised and politicised aspects of religion, writes Alistair McBay. Much is being made of the Church of Scotland's latest research to the effect that although church attendance numbers continue to decline and churches continue to close in Scotland, the people leaving the pews remain believing Christians. The report concerns a new book entitled "The Invisible Church" and claims that two thirds of church leavers nevertheless maintain a strong personal faith. This, it says, challenges assumptions that declining numbers of people sitting in pews on Sunday mornings are synonymous with a decline in Christian faith and the Christian community. At the report's launch, researcher Dr Steve Aisthorpe said changes in wider society and in the practices of Christian people meant attendance at Sunday morning worship could no longer be seen as a reliable indicator of the health and scale of Christian faith. "There is decline in Christian faith in Britain, but it is considerably smaller than previously assumed," he claimed. One immediate problem with this analysis is that it appears to contradict all the Census data and other independent research (as opposed to research of the biased church-sponsored variety) which confirms the ever-growing number of 'nones' in Scottish and wider UK society. This is difficult to square with the claim that those leaving the Kirk in the formal sense of pitching up on Sunday mornings nevertheless continue to pray, discuss theology and observe traditional Christian festivals, and so Christianity is maintaining its numbers. However there is little to be gained here by looking at competing sets of statistics or delving into the nature of privately-held philosophical beliefs. The central issue revealed in the report is the challenge it issues to the Kirk as an institution, in that the faithful are rejecting the organised and politicised aspects of religious belief exemplified by such an institution, and are deciding that they no longer need any middle men to broker or mediate their personal relationship with their god. This has huge implications for the Kirk's ongoing business model, and indeed the other major Christian denominations whose models follow the same pattern. In many ways this report tells us nothing new. We know that the UK is a mosaic of beliefs and non-beliefs where individuals are free to hold a belief, change it or not have one at all, and long may it be the case. The cause of the inescapable fact that believers are rejecting the institutional aspects of religion is not hard to pinpoint. In Scotland, the hypocrisy of Christian leaders has been ruthlessly exposed by the Cardinal O'Brien affair and the twin scandals of clergy child sex abuse and its cover up in religious orders. In addition, church leaders of every denomination are finding themselves massively out of step with the views of their membership on a whole range of issues. While the Church of Scotland appears to have escaped being a safe haven for paedophile clergy (although it has had the odd difficulty) the Kirk's own credibility took a severe knock with the rape by a church elder of the Reverend Helen Percy, and her subsequent shabby and misogynistic treatment at the hands of the Kirk's ecclesiastical court. In the wider UK context of the public positioning of Christian institutions, the apparent unending obsession many Christian leaders have with homosexuality and what consenting adults are getting up to in the privacy of their bedrooms stands in stark contrast to their self-imposed culture of secrecy and cover-up of child rape by clergy. The irony of this has not been lost on the pew-fillers and more than anything else has caused them to question the exclusive claims of bishops and moderators to moral certainty and leadership by example. It has also caused many to question the Kirk's ongoing demands for special privileges in Scotland on the one hand, while claiming to be a leader in challenging inequality on the other. While it is well known that the 'gay issue' has proved a crisis for the Kirk and other Christian denominations, some of the Kirk's other initiatives have also forced its membership to question its wider role in society. There was a perfect example earlier this week, when the Kirk announced a partnership with the Islamic Finance Council to create new ethical investment models to tackle inequality and poverty. While we all want to tackle these twin evils in our society, many of the Kirk members I know will be wondering just what this initiative, and indeed an alliance with the competing religion of Islam, has to do with preaching the Gospel. It is a perfect example of what business leaders will recognise as 'mission creep', and yet another reason why believers are deciding they no longer need or want the middle men in their daily relationship with their god. The Kirk has been aware of the problem of ever-emptying pews for some time. It started a 'Church Without Walls' project some years ago, and indeed the author of the current report, Dr Steve Aisthorpe, is one of the Kirk's regionally-based Mission Development Team taking the message outside the church walls and into the community. One of the Church's principal targets has been the non-denominational part of Scotland's education system, where along with other small activist groups it has a very active endeavour to gain souls for Jesus under the euphemism of promoting 'spiritual development.' With the strong support of a Scottish Government whose erstwhile leader prefers dealing with people who believe in something rather than nothing, school has rapidly become the new church. Meanwhile, given that the focus on schools will remain (already you sense that non-denominational' in Scotland now means Protestant!) the Kirk's property web site shows for sale a number of substantial churches, former manses and land (released through church demolition), worth several millions in total. Serving Mammon is likely to keep the old institution alive for a while yet! Alistair McBay is the Vice President of the National Secular Society. 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