Do you agree with Ofsted that evangelical Christianity is dangerous, anti-British extremism?
And if not, are you going to do anything about it?
In
a speech reported in The Times today, the head of Ofsted used the
Christian Institute - which defends nothing more than mainstream
evangelical Christianity - as an example of dangerous extremism whose
ideas need to be explicitly and deliberately combated by
school-teachers.
That Ofsted thinks and operates like
this - quite openly, quite explicitly - is is not really news. The
aggressive promotion of a particularly intolerant brand of secularism to
all schoolchildren under its remit has been normal for Ofsted for
several years. They don't expect to be contradicted if they say, and
operate, in accordance with the idea that mainstream evangelical
Christianity is extreme and dangerous, and that combating it is a child
welfare issue.
But it is, unfortunately, apparently
still news - or too hard to believe - for large swathes of evangelical
Christians and churches in the UK. We are, by and large, quite happy to
keep having our children educated under a regime run along these lines,
in the naive and wrong beliefs that a) they probably don't mean it, and
b) even if they do mean it, it doesn't make a difference to what happens
at school, and c) even if it does influence them, then we can undo that
fairly easily.
I'm convinced that everybody who claims
to believe these things really does. I'm sure there's a large element
of fear involved. If we admit that it's really the case, that has
implications. It'll involve blood, sweat, and tears - not least in
dealing with fellow Christians who disagree with us. And who wants that?
Well,
ultimately, we should want it - because we want to please Jesus, and
that means, not allowing our children to be indoctrinated into
intolerant, aggressive secularism 6-7 hours a day, 5 days a week. We
have to choose, and quickly, whilst the window of opportunity is still
open for us to do so.
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