Parents and board trustees need to be aware that the Bible in Schools program does not breach anyone’s human rights and is entirely consistent with an inclusive secular education system. Furthermore, it provides an important context for teaching values that are needed in our society.
Summary of a Symposium on Religion in Schools, held on Tuesday 15th October.
The NZCHR, generously hosted by DLA Phillips Fox, presented the Symposium on Religion in Schools. While the topic has garnered attention numerous times over the years, it is of current interest due to its recent exposure in the media. The event was chaired by John Hannam, partner at DLA Phillips Fox, and the question and answer session was facilitated by former Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Rosslyn Noonan. The panel consisted of three expert speakers; Peter Harrison, Simon Greening and Paul Rishworth.
Summary of Presentations
Peter Harrison, a Councillor of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists and founder of the Secular Education Network, discussed his concerns in regard to the transparency, or lack of, in the religion in schools programmes. He noted that the names of such programmes were often ambiguous and parents were not aware of what was being taught to their children. Additionally, children typically had to be opted out. Again, this was something that was not always clear to parents. He questioned whether children were being educated or indoctrinated. While Peter believed that children should be taught about faiths of all kinds and that there should be freedom of belief, he was uncomfortable that it was primarily Christianity being taught, and that it was being communicated as the one true faith. He noted that state education is secular and that to allow religious instruction in the school environment went against that principle. CEO of the Churches Education Commission (CEC), Simon Greening, spoke on the changes that CEC are making in terms of their religious education programme. He outlined the functions of CEC which included training, resourcing and managing their volunteer teachers. He was aware of past problems and stated that religion in schools programmes have modernised and accepted that there are a variety of beliefs. He explained that there is great oversight of their volunteers and firm policies are in place regarding how lessons are presented. Reforms to the programme are on-going to ensure what is being taught is done sensitively, as well as being made relevant to children today. He proposed that the current legal position struck the correct balance between the right of a person to express their religious belief in a public place and the right of school students not to be discriminated against because of their belief. Simon stated that ultimately it was up to the school Board of Trustees, who are elected by their community, to decide whether there is a place for religious education in schools. Paul Rishworth, Professor at the University of Auckland, discussed how religious education fitted in under the law, and in particular under the Bill of Rights Act 1990. He explained how religious instruction in schools is still allowed under the Education Act 1964 before going on to explore whether this was defensible/lawful. First he acknowledged some theories and approaches to the state and religion; total separation of the state and religion, and equality and neutrality on the part of the state regarding religion. Paul suggested there were three possible courses of action in regard to religion in schools – mounting a legal challenge to the law, interpreting the law in a rights-consistent manner, and applying the law in practice in a rights-consistent way. Challenging the law on the basis that the state and religion should be completely separate may possibly result in a declaration of a breach of the Bill of Rights, but the law would not consequently be invalidated. The other two approaches focused more on the idea that the state should play a neutral role when it came to religion. Regarding the interpretation of the Education Act, the relevant section could be interpreted as embracing all religions and therefore could be consistent with the right to freedom of religion. Finally, if the Education Act is lawful then, in its application, it must be consistent with freedom of religion. This includes having a clear ability to opt in/out and having legitimate alternatives for students who did not participate in the programme. It therefore appeared to be something that was defensible/lawful. A question and answer session followed the presentations and many members of the audience contributed with thoughtful queries and comments. There was a significant turn-out and the event was well-received. It was particularly appreciated that each speaker had something very different to bring to the table, making for a fair and balanced discussion.
New Zealand Christian Network national director Glyn Carpenter is interested in the study on religious values of Kiwis being undertaken by Professor Joseph Bulbulia, of Victoria University (stuff.co.nz. 30 Oct). But he is surprised at the comment attributed to Mr Bulbulia that ‘census data showed the country had been secular since at least the 1960s’.
“That statement is so imprecise as to be meaningless and certainly not what one would expect to hear from a professional academic’ said Carpenter.
“It is also inaccurate given that even the most recent census data still shows around half of Kiwis still call themselves Christian.
“The constant repetition through the media that New Zealand is a secular might suit some people’s agendas” said Carpenter, “but it is confusing and misleading and just plain wrong”.
It is far better to describe New Zealand as a religiously plural country. It would not be inaccurate to even describe New Zealand as a significantly Christian country because the largest belief group in the country is Christian.
Many readers will be familiar with the name Keith Newman, author of Bible and Treaty – a book we’ve been encouraging people to read in the lead up to 2014 – the year we mark 200 years since Samuel Marsden first preached the gospel in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Keith has recently released a new book called Beyond Betrayal, and was interviewed by Chris Laidlaw on Radio New Zealand, Sunday 29 September.
As Keith talked about the important role played by the missionaries in New Zealand, and especially by Maori believers, Chris Laidlaw asked “Has NZ history sold Christianity a bit short?”.
Keith’s answer will not be a surprise to most readers but the examples he gives and the stories he shares are well worth listening to.
Chris Laidlaw challenged Keith about claims over the years that evangelical Christianity had undermined the very essence of Maori culture and that in effect the decision to send missionaries to countries like NZ was a form of spiritual assimilation?
Keith’s reply was that the role of the missionaries had been quite misunderstood. He said that the missionaries had to learn and speak the language, to live among the people, learn their customs, “and of course they were working very hard to undermine some of the nastier elements of [the culture] cannibalism, utu, and bring ideas of forgiveness. But once Maori got this they realised that this was a very important change for them”. He went on to talk about how the constant utu, battles, and so on, were decimating the tribes and undermining their ability to survive and trade.
Senior Lib Dem MP Sir Alan Beith says Christians feel forced to hide their faith
Christians feel that they are being forced to hide their religion because of “silly” interpretations of equality laws, a senior MP has said.
Sir Alan Beith, the former deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats and chair of the Commons Justice Select Committee, has likened the misunderstandings to those surrounding health and safety regulation, where the rules can be overzealously applied for the wrong reasons.
Referring to recent high profile cases involving people being told not to wear religious symbols in the workplace, Sir Alan said that many Christians feel that they have to keep their faith “under wraps”.
But rather than being an issue of the law, the 70-year-old MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed said that an ill-informed sense of what it means for the state to be secular often led officials to try and hide anything relating to religious views while in “civil society”.
Sir Alan is the longest-serving Lib Dem since David Lloyd George, and has announced that he will step down at the next general election. He is also a Methodist lay preacher, and runs a group known as the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum.
Speaking at the party’s conference in Glasgow, where he is also launching a book of essays called Liberal Democrats Do God, Sir Alan said: “I think that what a lot of people feel now is that they are being asked to hide their religion, that secularism requires not wearing religious symbols.
“I think that what has arisen is that people feeling that not only does the State have to separate itself from religion under secularism, but they are being asked really to hide and keep under wraps their religious views in civil society.
“Sometimes the completely false interpretation of laws, regulations and changes leads to that happening, when it wasn’t even the intention in the first place – a bit like health and safety. You get silly things happening, which were not the intention of any legislative change.”
The MP’s comments come after the case of Nadia Eweida, a British Airways check-in attendant who was sent home from work for wearing a crucifix.
In January, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) upheld her complaint, ruling that the 60-year-old’s religious rights had been violated by the airline.
The ECHR has ruled that Ms Eweida, a Coptic Christian, was discriminated against under freedom of religion laws.
What do you think? Do we have a similar situation here? Please share your comments below.
No matter what your atheist friends or relatives tell you, they’ve got deep spiritual longings. And Jesus is the answer to those longings.
Nat Case calls himself an atheist. He says that he doesn’t believe that God, in the sense of a “living presence, with voice and face and will and command,” exists.
Yet, as he recently wrote in the online journal Aeon, he regularly attends Quaker meeting services.
The “why?” behind this contradiction says a lot about how impoverished the modern world’s alternatives to Christian faith are. Case’s contradiction can be traced to his childhood. A “voracious reader,” he was “moved to tears” by magical stories. Even as an adult, those stories and the magic they portrayed stayed in his heart and despite knowing they’re fiction, he still “believes in them.”
Most of all, they didn’t bore him, which atheism does because it tells him what he isn’t, and like all of us he yearns to know what he is.
Fifteen years ago, Case started attending Quaker meetings after being turned off by what he calls the “mushiness [he had] found in the liberal spiritual communities that admit non-believers.”
He says that “[B]inding oneself to specific patterns, habits, and language” provided what he calls a “spine” that was missing in other groups.
Still for all its subjectivity and theological imprecision, a Quaker meeting is still, as Case acknowledges, “a religious service, expectant waiting upon the presence of God.” And to put it mildly, that places someone who doesn’t believe in God in a difficult position: How do you submit, in the way that believers are supposed to, to something you don’t believe exists?
And how does that “submission” produce a “humbling of self” and “laying low of ego” when you can’t even muster a “vague” and “inwardly detected sense of the divine?”
Case’s “solution” is to treat the whole experience as a kind of shared “bubble of fiction,” in which “prayer” is addressed to “whom it may concern.” It’s all his materialistic—or as he puts it, “stuff is all there is”—worldview will permit.
What that worldview definitely will not permit is to contemplate the possibility that the stories he loves—or as C.S. Lewis puts it, “The Great Story” –really are true. His materialism causes him to reject the idea of God “as a living presence, with voice and face and will.”
Thus, he’s left feeling something akin to the “stab, the pain, the inconsolable longing” that Lewis described in “Surprised by Joy,” with no real prospect of having that yearning satisfied.
The sad irony is that when he suggests that what people like him need is a god they can “plausibly imagine,” he is apparently unaware that such a god actually exists: His name is Jesus. As John 1:18 says,
“No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”
When Case yearns for a god “that we talk to, and who [talks] back,” he is describing the God—Father , Son and Holy Spirit—who Christians profess and worship.
This was the God who satisfied Lewis’s yearning and can satisfy Case’s. He is the one towards whom the stories Case loves ultimately point. He both models and empowers the humility Case speaks of.
His name is Jesus. It’s our job to proclaim Him—both in word and deed—and to pray that people’s worldviews don’t keep them from finding what they desperately long for.
