UK Supreme Court rules religious education in Northern Ireland is indoctrination

[CForCake]

Religious education in Northern Ireland is different from other parts of the UK. The Curriculum is almost entirely about Christianity, with only a few bits and pieces about other faiths in secondary school.

The Core Syllabus (from the NI dep. of education) starts with: "The revelation of God" https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/de/religious-education-core-syllabus-english-version.pdf

The UK Supreme Court has now ruled that this is unlawful and discriminatory.

The details of the case are on the UK Supreme Court website: https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2024-0095#case-summary
including a press summary.

JR87’s parents did not wish her to be taught that Christianity was an absolute truth. Her father, “G”, challenged the legality of the religious education and collective worship and sought judicial review against the Department of Education

in JR87’s school religious education and collective worship were not conveyed in an objective, critical, and pluralistic manner

The family had the right to withdraw the child, but this "placed an undue burden on parents"

Note that the family didn't object to the kid learning about Christianity - they just didn't want it taught as an absolute truth.

Humanists UK thinks this should trigger a rethink of religious education in the whole of the UK. In England it is rarely indoctrination like it is in NI (AFAIK), but England retains an anachronistic requirement for collective Christian worship (which many schools, in practice, ignore)

Sky News also reported the judgement

The BBC adds more colour:

• The controversy began when the girl came home from class and began to recite prayers before meals, telling her family she had learned to do so in school
• When the parents queried the child's RE provision with the school, staff replied they were just following Northern Ireland's Bible-based, Christian-focused curriculum
• The girl and her father subsequently took legal action, concerned that pupils in Northern Ireland were being taught to assume that Christianity was "an absolute truth"
• The court heard the girl's family "strongly support" the provision of religious education, "provided it does not amount to indoctrination"
• All families have the right to withdraw children from RE lessons and worship, but the girl's parents did not do so, fearing it could lead to bullying or stigmatisation

Agree.

Indeed, slavery was so important in the Bible that it not only condones and allows it, it practically orders it.

The of ten commandments most quoted ( there are 2 sets of them, different) is in Exodus 20. Chuck Heston carved watched God carve them in stone.

Right after THE TEN, there is a few lines about alters, then the Bible is straight into slavery laws, Exodus 21. Righteous laws, such as how children of slaves belong to the slave owner.

Whenever I hear someone quote the Ten Commandments, my reaction is, " can you read the next few paragraphs please".

There is no two ways about it. If someone claims the bible is true, then they support slavery. Because if they choose to brush away Exodus 21 ( and many many more worse parts), then the Bible is wrong.

DP sorry

As I said in my post that you responded to, I don't think religion itself is the problem.

Societies that have proceeded to radically secularise are arguably just as miserable as they were before then. Ideology that doesn't recognise individual dignity and revolution that puts the Cause ahead of individual rights have both been tried. Yes, there's middle ground of course, but the human inclination to gain power and wealth - the lure of worldly things if you will - trips us up. I don't see any truth in the idea of forward motion on the part of humanity, whether through technology or education or throwing off imaginary shackles, because we retain the same basic human nature.

As I said in my post that you responded to, I don't think religion itself is the problem.
Societies that have proceeded to radically secularise are arguably just as miserable as they were before then

This statement is impossible to prove or disprove because there are a gazillion factors at play. Are the secular Nordic countries poorer, more miserable or elss developed than Catholic Latin America?

It is also irrelevant for the discussion at hand. The point is not whether religion or irreligion makes people happy, the points are:

1. Why should the State promote one religion as the Truth?

2. What is wrong in teaching children that there exist multiple religions and worldviews, explain what their key beliefs are, and convey the message that children will be free to choose when they are mature enough to do so?

The panicked reaction of so many religious lobbies makes me think they probably know that the only way to have their children follow their same religion is 1), because with 2) more and more will reject it. I wonder why

PS it is paradoxical that this discussion takes place in NI, which is one of thee clearest examples of how worshipping the same deity and reading the same holy book doesn't prevent mutual destruction, and of how detrimental to peace it is to segregate schools and communities by beliefs.

Would it be fair for me to say you think religion is the solution to many problems ?

If I can pick up one part of your post, because it's something I happen to know a bit about: "....revolution that puts the Cause ahead of individual rights have both been tried..."

Yes, this has been tried, USSR and China being examples. Lets take China, but this can apply to many revolutionary states, especially the ones that became authoritarian.

China was religious, a hotch potch of different intermingled religions, that included a lot of superstition. The revolution happened, atheism was gradually enforced, and came to a peak in the cultural evolution, specifically in Maos " 4 olds campaign" that he launched in the mid 60's. Ideas, customs, culture and habits of mind were to be destroyed. Temples were destroyed, and religion pretty much wiped out.

But the superstitions survived of course, ancestor worship came back, first in secret, then some temples were rebuilt in the mid 90's, and people, went back to open prayer etc.

That carried on, but come about 2011, Xi came to power, and he cracked down on it again. Temples made into tourist attractions, churches demolished, Xi decides what it is, and while not compulsory, far from it, but if you want to be religious you can, but its better it's an "approved" one.

Why ?

Well because a state religion is a great way to control the masses. It's a tool dictators often use. Putin does it now in Russia.

Religion can be, and is, an authoritarian's tool. The theocratic states, all authoritarian. Authoritarianism and state religion go hand in hand.

I prefer freedom of religion, more importantly, freedom from religion and I am very against state enforced compulsory religion.

There is no evidence ,I am aware of, that religion solves any societal problems.

What they actually teach in school is "bible-lite" - the bible sanitized to remove all the nasty barbaric bits that are incompatible with modern morality, and the bits that are so ridiculous as to be clearly false.

As you've pointed out. slavery is seen as just fine, and the natural order, throughout the new and old testament. It's fine, according to the bible, to own slaves and beat them half to death, and you are blameless as long as they live for two days after the beating. Genocide is also condoned in several passages. polygamy is tolerated particularly in the old testament. Rape is mainly seen as a property crime and/or a tool of war. There are passages in the bible that condone dashing the heads of children against rocks and tearing the unborn children of pregnant women from their bellies. Oh, and God is so merciful that he thinks that a proportionate response for making fun of someone's baldness is to ensure they are mauled and eaten by bears.

The bible has mythical creatures galore - dragons, sea serpents, satyrs and, depending on the translation, unicorns. However, it forgot to mention kangaroos and other marsupials, not to mention germs and microbes. It's exactly what you would expect if it were written by a bunch of credulous iron-age provincial hicks, not divinely inspired by god.

The bible (or rather the Israelite faith from which the old testament came) also started out polytheistic - "God" was one of many, sitting on the divine council. He even had a wife - Asherah. She got edited out, because rulers from Josiah onwards found it more profitable to have all temple tributes to be centralised and paid in Jerusalem. So even the monotheism that is taken for granted as a "basic feature" of Christian theology was not there originally and was "written in" for political/economic motives in the 7th century BC.

Kids learn in science/physics that rainbows are caused by refraction and total internal reflection of light in raindrops. But go to RE and they're expected to believe that the rainbow is God’s visible sign of the covenant with Noah - when God sees the bow in the clouds, he will remember the covenant and refrain from sending another universal flood.

The most ludicrous and barbaric bits of the bible are left out of school RE. Why? Because if they taught people the whole truth of what the bible said, too many people would conclude: If those are "Christian values", I'm not interested.

If we must have religion in schools, it could at least be taught properly: for Christianity that would mean critical scholarship rather than redacted, sanitised half-truths and fairy tales.

"If we must have religion in schools, it could at least be taught properly: for Christianity that would mean critical scholarship rather than redacted, sanitised half-truths and fairy tales."

@mitochondrialdna, point well made.

Personally, I am of the view that religion i should be kept out from school life. That frees up the whole space. Religion and faith are what you practise amongst family, in most respects. So, why does it need to be practised at school?

If taught properly and if all faiths are taught objectively, yes, then, there is potential for it to make the world a better place by promoting mutual understanding and tolerance.

This reminds me of the Amish at the time of the Vietnam war.
There was initially an exemption whereby the Amish would not be drafted but continue to work on family farms. Then more and more Amish men were sent to work in hospitals (not in the battlefield).

Guess what? Many of them decided, after seeing the external world, that they didn't wat to go back to an Amish life after all. Aish leaders panicjed and lobbied the government to stop that.

This is what the religious lobbies are worried about

Can people on this thread please be clear that the school landscape in NI is very, very different from that in the rest of the UK (with the possible exception of Scotland)?

There are a tiny number of integrated schools - which gives the lie to the idea that NI society is making any kind of progress from a "themmuns and ussuns" state. Even the non-catholic schools which take all comers will still have daily Christian assemblies and Christian themed speakers. My DCs religious school here in England is far less overtly religious than the NI grammar school I went to - and I know the Catholic schools were far worse.

I see you're basing an argument on words you out in my mouth...

I'm also very familiar with history, and frankly, if you don't see in your examples how it is people who are the issue, misusing religion for worldly aims, maybe hit the books again.

You seem to be suggesting that religions and/or the religious are powerless to prevent themselves being misused. One would have thought that if religious texts and faith really are divine inspiration from an omnipotent/omniscient being that shouldn't be so easy to do...

@mathanxiety I'm also very familiar with history, and frankly, if you don't see in your examples how it is people who are the issue, misusing religion for worldly aims, maybe hit the books again.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, so can you help me understand?

Are you saying that, when evil deeds are done in the name of religion, it's not religion but it's other factors?
Yet when good things are done in the name of religion... then it's religion and not other factors?

Is this a fair representation of what you implied?

If it is, why this double standard?
It if's not, then what did you mean?

Related to that: you probably know that over the last 20 years religiosity in England has plummeted, as per the national census. I think Christians went from something like 72% to 47%, and non-religious shot up to 35ish%

Have you noticed... what exactly? Marxist atheistic indoctrination? Religious freedoms curtailed? Moral values collapsing? Debauchery and depravity?
Sure, we have our problems, but it's not like the cost of living crisis and the housing crisis would have been solved by religion, nor are they much better in more religious countries, no?

Sure, religions can be misinterpreted, but "misinterpreting" is a bit too easy when a holy book contains literally anything and its opposite. See, just yesterday I was unsure if I could sell my daughter as a sex slave, or how much to pay for the father of the virgin I want to rape. Luckily the Bible came to my rescue and answered my questions - spoiler: yes, I can sell my daughter. What is that you say? That I need to interpret, ah, sure. And what makes YOUR interpretation better than that of our ancestors who interpreted that slavery and racial segregation were God's will?

@CForCake and @mathanxiety .

Re blaming man, and not the Bible. This is exactly what I used to do.

In fact, during my 20 plus years of being an evangelical, I used to use the argument that the Bible must be true, because all the bad bits had been left in , and that if it had been changed by man, the bad bits would have been taken out.

Of course, I avoided reading the bad bits. And if challenged by anyone about it, I went into full mental contortion mode. A bit like this article I just randomly picked, about the slave Bible.

What Is the Slave Bible? Who Made it and Why? | Christianity.com

I now reckon that to believe the Bible, one has to constantly lie to oneself. Because that is the only way all the contradictions, and bad bits, can be reconciled in ones head.

And this is one reason I am against any religion being taught as fact in school.

Because once an individual has to learned to lie to oneself to reconcile the difference between what is actually written in the Bible and what the preacher states what we should think the Bible says, that individual is like lost to the world of fact based reasoning and logic. The mental contortions can, and do, spill over into everyday life.

As evidence of this, I just point to any US politician who says they are an evangelical. Ted Cruz for example.

The other reason I am against religion as fact in schools is de-conversion.

De-conversion can be traumatic, painful, alienating, and massively damaging during the process. For many, not for all of course.

It's only when de-converted that we realise just how insidious religion can be. Songs of Praise on the telly, late call, school church services etc, it is literal indoctrination. Much of it innocent of course, but many societies are indoctrinated to the point where the people doing the indoctrination do not know they are doing it, if you see what I mean.

And as a wee add. As an ex-evangelical, now atheist. I totally get why many Christians might consider likes of me the worst of the lot. A militant atheist, an online activist even ( armchair variety). Hey, it's because we know the Bible. And after we de-converted, many of us picked the Bible up again. and we DID READ THE BAD BITS.

And what an eye opener that was.

Faith schools here also teach about other religions. That was the issue in NI, not the existence of faith schools. Faith schools have not been banned there

The problem with faith schools in England is not the curriculum but the admission policy.

We would never accept hospitals or fire brigades or police forces, funded by everyone's taxes, discriminating based on faith.

Why we accept it for school remains a mistery