Is being pubicly atheist a recent thing, especially re. collective worship?

[wanderings]

Firstly, I'm taking no sides - I had strong atheist views when I was younger, but gradually changed my mind.

There are many threads on MN about this, especially annoyance by atheist parents about collective worship in schools, and I have been wondering if it's recent that people have felt so strongly about it. I find it hard to imagine buses in the 1980s and 90s saying "there probably is no God", or parents taking their children out of assembly, or people muttering and sneering in the back row when attending baptisms (under duress): if it happened I was blissfully ignorant.

Speaking for myself, I rebelled with my heart and soul when my parents suddenly dragged me to catholic church every Sunday when I was 9. I saw the whole thing as utter nonsense, and a waste of valuable weekend time. However, I gradually changed my mind as an adult, but went CofE rather than catholic. I took the view that you did not have to take a literal view of the Bible and the church's teachings; as a child I was very literal-minded. I also love the sense of community in church.

Does anyone think it is because a generation of young adults are remembering being forced to obediently sing hymns, hear prayers from their school days, had to learn "impossibilities" such as the great flood, and are now making sure their children won't have to do the same, now that they have the right to say something which they didn't as a child?

These are public figures paid by public in a time of austerity

Bishops' stipends are paid by the Church of England; they aren't paid out of taxation.

Bishops' stipends are paid by the Church of England; they aren't paid out of taxation.

At least expenses

And how much do Life Peers claim? My guess is that £27k is pretty small beer compared to the grand total of peers' expenses.

(And, of course, not all the Lords Spiritual claimed in 2010-11, which is when those figures date from.)

And how much do Life Peers claim? My guess is that £27k is pretty small beer compared to the grand total of peers' expenses.

just countering the claim they don't cost the public purse.

I agree with all those changes you suggest niminy - also being a school governor. I worry greatly about SEND provision and curriculum changes forcing huge, unecessary stress on teachers and school budgets.

Interesting stats re. HOL, Ricardian - I did read that the bishops turned out in 'force' (ie a few more than two, but not many) when the bedroom tax was under discussion, and registered their opposition to this (in fact, I think there was some open letter from a lot of bishops about child poverty going around at this time, haven't got link but do remember reading it) - I can only see their influence in the HOL as being a positive one at the moment - if we have to have a HOL, at least there are some in there who are for the good of society.

These are public figures paid by public in a time of austerity.

So what? The house of Lords is a revising chamber, and the Lords Spiritual are precisely the sort of people who should be serving in it as currently constituted: people with experience of governance but whose life experience includes dealing with real people in extremis. They have voted, and spoken, generally progressively and thoughtfully and are widely respected. They represent less than 3% of the membership of the House of Lords and do a pretty good job compared to the other 97%, and I don't see why serving bishops should be any more dubious than ex-ministers, rich donors and so on (the hereditary peers are of homeopathic importance these days). If they all claimed maximum expenses (which they don't) they are costing about half a million quid a year total: there are individual MPs claiming more on their own account.

There isn't currently a proposal for an elected House of Lords on the table that looks like anything other than stitch-up by its proposers, so we're left with the current system working reasonably well with an entirely irrational basis, rather than moving to a more rational system which would work badly (the US Senate is hardly a reassuring model). As an engineer, I'm sceptical of engineers who assume that something whose basis is rational design is inherent preferable to something which is pragmatic and currently functioning.

In other news, people who have privilege like having privilege.

Amazing how sensible people who agree with you seem...

Amazing how sensible people who know what they're talking about seem, more like. Or do you seriously dispute what Ricardian is saying? If so, on what grounds?

Re the statement upthread about free schools not being able to select on religious criteria - is that definitely right? The 2 new secondary schools here both operate on religious criteria, I'm not sure if they are free or not.

Anyway while I was googling I found this which says that lots of faith schools are not adhering to admissions criteria / laws etc which was a big problem a few years back (there was an investigation) so I'm surprised they haven't pulled their socks up as they got clobbered last time and all schools had to start publishing criteria properly etc.

Anyway I'll keep googling about the local schools.

OK so here are my local free schools:

Etz Chaim Primary opened in September 2011
Rimon (Golder’s Green) Primary opened in September 2012
Alma Primary opened in September 2013
The Archer Academy is a secondary free school which opened in September 2013
St Andrew the Apostle, Greek Orthodox School is a secondary free school which opened in September 2013
Watling Park is a primary free school which opened in September 2015

As you can see without too much digging 2 are Jewish and 1 is Greek Orthodox. I don't know about the others.

The first one actually straight off:

"In order to make an application to the School you will need to complete the documents below and return to the Admissions Secretary at the School by the 15th January 2016:
If you also wish your application to be considered under the sibling oversubscription criterion you must also complete and supply the Reception Supplementary Information Form (SIF) If you also wish your application to be considered under the religious practice criterion oversubscription criterion you must also complete and supply the School’s Certificate of Religious Practice (CRP)
"

So that sounds pretty par for the course for schools round here in terms of religious entry criteria.

You see I read that upthread and thought, hmmm, I'm not sure about that. Why are people stating as facts things that are wrong?

Like upthread people were saying that all schools have to have a daily act of broadly christian worship. That is not true - schools of different flavours can apply to have that changed to the religion they represent ie the Jewish schools here will have Jewish worship and etc and so on.

I assume that the pro-religion in schools posters would be comfortable with their children attending a Jewish or Muslim school?

Because they can withdraw their children from the worship, right?

How about if it's the school for Hasidic children up in Stamford Hill? All fine and dandy?

(Disclaimer: Round these parts no child who was not of those religions would stand much of a chance of getting in!)

No wonder you believe in unproven things, you obviously have poor reasoning skills...

If you believe only in proven things, I imagine you don't believe in very much at all.

As I understand it, what Ricardian is saying is that disestablishing the church and removing all church influence from state schools would (a) be very complicated from a legislative point of view, (b) require widespread public support that doesn't seem to be apparent, (c) potentially cost a fortune, and (d) be unnecessary in the long term since the influence of the church is already waning naturally. If you have good grounds for disputing any of those points, I'd love to know what they are.

Any comments on the local schools all being non christian scenario?

I assume the posters who are pro worship in schools would be fully on board with that.

You either join in (no harm done) or you opt out (no harm done)?

Right?

The quote marks around atheist, Big, are just ludicrous. Or are we now playing "there's an agreed atheist position in the big club or you're a secret Christian?" FFS. Splitter.

There is a lot of support in non CofE religions.

Apart from C0fE we have large numbers of RC and Jewish schools, and a Greek Orthodox one too I have found out!

For reasons of fairness if you allow one religion (CofE) you need to allow others (and this happens). With the C0fE in decline and other religions growing in force or simply sustaining numbers, this means that the growth areas in religious schools will be non C0fE.

Certainly I know we know have Muslim schools which we never used to have.

So, to my mind, this has a whole bunch of negative effects around:

• Embedding religious discrimination
• Fostering an "us and them" approach amongst our children - you mix with "your own"
• Some schools of very observant strains tend to push at the bounds of what we consider right, in our society. Our values. Sometimes this pushes over into illegality (in which case they get done, of course). But, there is lower level stuff too

So we follow this path and we get what we get - a lot of different faith schools, some of them very strict in their adherence, less choice for parents if they are not religious or of not the "right" faith, and less mixing of different faith (and none) together which generally is recognised as increasing intolerance.

I am interested to hear why people support these changes in the "look" of our school landscape.

The Muslim schools thing is to demonstrate "newness" - the Greek Orthodox one too probably.

We have had RC and Jewish schools in this area for a long time.

Not difficult...

As wilful blindness to the facts goes, that's almost on a par with creationism.

Thinking is hard, it's true. But at least I can do it a bit.

I think I will bite my tongue lest this become even more undignified. As you say, it seems unlikely we will agree on much. Good night.

One thing puzzles me, how can something go against an
absense of belief ?

I would have thought, if someone has an absence of belief, new information would just either help form a new belief or not...

Oh and I don't find thinking hard, I'm pretty constantly thinking whilst I'm awake...