http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7885952.stm
So, asking a small child not to tell another one they're going to go to hell is 'slamming' and 'persecuting' them?Mike Judge, from the Christian Institute, which is supporting Mrs Cain, said: "A six-year-old girl and her mother have been slammed for nothing more than expressing their Christian faith.
"I am particularly concerned about the way in which Mrs Cain's private email to her church friends ended up in the hands of the head teacher.
"This is the latest in a series of cases where Christians are being persecuted for their religious beliefs."
This kid is 5 years old. How on earth are they supposed to understand what this issue is all about?
I suppose it's only natural that the kind of adult who would psychologically abuse a small child with threats of damnation would think it's OK for that threat to be passed on to other small children, but I wonder how they'd react if there was a child in their kid's class who went round telling the other children that some/all Christians were wrong and wouldn't go to heaven, or that they'd burn in eternal torment?
Does this mean religious tollerance is impossible for this group of christians?
I mean if telling people of other faiths that they;'re gopign to hell is religious intollerance and them being told not ot be intollerant in this fashion is itself religious intollerance then they're pretty fsked aren't they?
Worst part of all this is that its very common, maybe not in Britain but around the world religious people are constantly yapping away and if you dare to say anything even slightly opposed to that, you face serious consequences.
Presumably they're all going to Hell for not following Islam in any case.
What I find fascinating about the people who hold such beliefs is that they also believe that unbelievers deserve Hell. But they look terribly hurt when I suggest that this might be grossly insulting to their audience.
If I said it to them, or indeed anyone else, it would be something like fighting talk. But when they say it to me, it isn't.
What price courtesy?
Who needs courtesy when anyone who disagrees with you must by definition be in league with the devil?Originally Posted by Lord Muck oGentry
My son went to a private day nursery when I finally went back to work. While I suspect there was a tiny element of taking the pee (The owner was not Ofsted's biggest fan) they celebrated EVERY religious festival- Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Pagan, Janist, Rastafarian and many more including some I had never heard of. Yet they treated every religious story in equal terms with the tales of the Brothers Grimm. On the odd occation there was no religious holiday, it was 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' day.
Within mere weeks of moving to his non-faith state infant school, he was in tears because he thought he would go to heaven because he now believed in god and never see me again because I wouldn't get in because I don't believe.
So it isn't just damnation that upsets little ones. Seperation upsets them too, and dealing with conflicting concepts they are too young to deal with.
Thankfully three years later, and a couple of 'conversations' with the head (who, to be honest, is pretty agnostic) Son is willfully athiest.
Fair play to the school in question for dealing with the problem. They are fulfilling their 'pastoral' role for all children equallly.
As for emails - the moment you hit the send button, emails are not private. Like a secret - tell one person, it is no longer a secret.
This has nothing to do with religion, it is simply one student threatening another and the school taking appropriate action for the circumstance. The parent, like they almost always do, is lashing out trying to blame someone else, the school for being intolerant, when the problem simply lies in her needing to teach her child about not threatening other children. But as has been said that might be a little hypocritical of her because that's how she treats her own child.
Piece in today's Sunday Telegraph (http://tinyurl.com/d96tor) has me fuming - how can they call such an unbalanced piece of writing journalism?
It really is time to scrap the collective worship requirement in state schools - it's been a joke for years and is just pointless and sometimes divisive.
I'm not against faith schools (just state funding for said schools) if parents want them they can pay - why use my taxes?
I agree 100%.
In the Telegraph article, there was a call from John Sentamu for the silent majority of Christians to stand up and defend their beliefs.
Unfortunately for the Archbishop, I think that a large number of the 'silent Christians' are not only silent, but not particularly bothered what happens to Christianity.
They may appear on census returns as 'Christian', but in reality, apart from maybe using a church for the odd significant ceremony, they're rather like someone describing themselves as Labour or Conservative who not only never does anything for the relevant party, but also never bothers to vote.
If they have any meaningful belief in an afterlife, they evidently don't reckon that it requires them to take part in weekly mumblings in cold buildings to get there. After all, from a simplified perspective, if there *is* a God who can tell the good from the bad and who rewards the good, does whether there's an earthly church actually matter much?
The Telegraph article itself appears to be seriously inaccurate, (if not deliberately dishonest) as far as the couple of stories I know anything about are concerned.
In the Sheffield case, it seems to have been the headmistress trying to impose Christian hymns on the multi-faith assembly that was the sticking point for some parents, backing off when challenged, but then trying to do the same thing again when she got back from her sick leave. Even the Daily Mail managed to cover that part of the story.
http://www.blogistan.co.uk/blog/mt.p...ffield_hymn_sc
It seems like the multi-faith assemblies worked fine when the headmistress was off sick, and after she resigned...
In the child-threatens-other-child-with-Hell case, the Telegraph claimed the parent was facing the sack, despite the head denying it.
It also claimed the alleged potential dismissal was because her child talked about God in class, despite the fact that the mother is potentially being disciplined for what she said in her email, not for what her child said, and not even for filling her small child's head with scary nonsense.
Now, I don't know what was in the email she sent to her friends, but I'd suspect that if it had been an accurate account of what happened, it would be fairly tricky for her to be disciplined because of it.
If those two sections are typical, I'd wonder if the rest of the Telegraph article is similarly biased and inaccurate.
Whether the inaccuracies are just down to thoroughly slipshod research, or deliberate distortion, it doesn't say a great deal for either the journalistic competence or the personal integrity of the writers of the article.
I'd really hope they weren't putting themselves forward as examples of the typical kind of person that religious belief in general or Christianity in particular can produce.
Plus Alan Craig of the Christian Peoples Party is... well, let's be nice...a bit cranky.
http://www.cpaparty.org.uk/
It does all seem a bit, well, desperate.
Why should Christianity have a special place in the UK, let alone a have its' status in schools enshrined in law?
Where does that leave people of other faiths, or indeed none at all?
Should school not treat all pupils equally, not provide additional 'services' (a Christian assembly) for Christian children (or more likely, the children of Christian parents).
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