According to Huw Lewis, Welsh Education Minister, religious (meaning Christian) education threatens “community cohesion” and encourages “extremism”.
Hence he proposes to muffle the destructive effect of Christianity by lumping it together in the same course with “philosophy, ethics and citizenship”, thereby instructing pupils on “what it means to be a citizen in a free country”.
A minor, or perhaps not so minor, point is that British pupils, even if they happen to be Welsh, aren’t citizens of any country, free or otherwise. They are subjects of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
This isn’t a difference in semantics. Rather it’s a clue to two diametrically opposite types of statehood and civilisation.
In the modern Western context, ‘citizen’ is a republican, Enlightenment construct that came into being as a result of a concerted effort to break away from almost 2,000 years of Christendom.
It’s not for nothing that the first secular government in history, that of the United States, almost immediately declared that religion would play no role in state affairs.
The US Constitution coyly eschews the phrase ‘separation of church and state’. Instead the First Amendment states only that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” But in his comments both before and after the ratification Thomas Jefferson was unequivocal: this amendment, he gloated, built “a wall of separation between Church and State”.
The modern state pioneered by America and later developed by France is a revolutionary contrivance, only intelligible against the background of burgeoning hostility to Christianity, along with all of its ecclesiastical and secular institutions.
Monarchy is the fundamental political institution of Christendom because it unites in itself both the secular and transcendent aspects of national history. It’s thus an organic entity, as opposed to a revolutionary one.
This was reflected in the oath Her Majesty took at her coronation 62 years ago, when this dialogue took place:
“Archbishop. Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?
Queen. All this I promise to do.”
The historical, moral, philosophical and religious background to this short exchange would take many volumes to explain and, more to the point, many hours of study to understand.
It doesn’t matter whether a pupil is a Buddhist, Muslim, Hinduist, Taoist, animist or – as is these days most likely – atheist. For our realm is Christian, and it can never be properly understood without an extensive study of Christianity, its history, scripture, dogma, ritual, worship.
Deprived of such study, British pupils will emerge as neither subjects nor citizens. They’ll be savages.
For they’ll be ignorant not only of the political essence of the realm, but also of the entire cultural heritage of our civilisation. All the most glorious achievements of Western art, music and literature, even if they aren’t overtly Christian, are a direct reflection of hearts and minds shaped by Christianity.
Of course churning out savages is the real goal of our education, this being a sine qua non for our government spivs, such as Huw Lewis, to stay in power. A properly civilised populace would run them out of town faster than you can say ‘multicultural tolerance’.
Tolerance is today’s shorthand for the absence of convictions and critical judgement. No hierarchy of ideas, tastes, faiths or anything else is supposed to exist. They are all equal.
I like contrapuntal music, he likes jazz, they like rap – who’s to say some tastes are superior to others? He tells the truth, she tells a lie, they can’t tell the difference – what does it matter?
It goes without saying that all religions are also equal, especially Islam. Of course insisting, in a Christian country, that Christianity is no better than any other creed is guaranteed to destroy Christianity, which is the whole point.
But never mind the Christian faith. Even asserting Christian morality or any of its aspects is these days classified as extremism. Hence our intellectually challenged Education Secretary Nicky ‘Nicola’ Morgan has explained that any child who finds anything wrong with homosexuality may fall prey to ISIS recruiters.
Yes, but what if the child got his ‘extremist’ views by reading Leviticus or St Paul’s Epistles? Well then, that would be even worse. He’d be an extremist twice over.
Tolerance is a wonderful thing, but only if the notion is properly understood. Yes, all people deserve love and respect because they are children of the same father and therefore our siblings.
But from that it doesn’t follow that everything anybody says, does or believes is equally respectable. Discernment and (dread word) discrimination are essential to forming mind and character.
An intelligent person knows the difference between sound and unsound, a moral one between right and wrong, one with developed taste between good and bad. It’s a school’s task to educate pupils how to judge such matters.
And, in Her Majesty’s realm, our choice isn’t between Christian education and some other. It’s been Christian education and none.