Sir, – The current debate on religion in schools seems to entangle the beneficial side of teaching children about tolerance, love, empathy and desire for meaning with the other side of the particular religion of the school in question (why that religion is the “one true religion”, the moral rules of that religion, such as condoms are wrong or even evil, the sexist norms of it, such as only supposedly celibate men can lead it and the requirement to accept absolute authority without question).
It is a very simple matter to separate them and to have love, empathy, tolerance and meaning for life without the need to preach one particular religion.
No individual religion has the monopoly on which are the correct moral rules or “ethos” as we call it when we associate it with sectarian (sorry “faith”) schools. Separating children in a local area along sectarian lines or forcing children to sit at the back of a religion class that does not apply to them cannot be beneficial to the children or to our society as a whole.
Secular education means treating all children equally, whatever the religion of their parents. This seems to be something our Government, our politicians, our schools and particularly our churches seem incapable of grasping.
There are no bodies lobbying for setting up atheist schools. There are very few advocating the banning of religion in schools. Most of the dissenters are simply asking that we find a way to treat our children equally, with tolerance, love, empathy and attempt to satisfy their desire for meaning in life.
Further educational segregation along sectarian lines seems to be the worst approach to this goal.
Teaching our children to treat others the way they want to be treated in turn would be a good start. – Yours, etc,
ANDREW DOYLE,
Bandon,
Co Cork.
Sir, – Terry Moylan contrasts the “love-centred code of conduct that was preached by Jesus” with what he terms the “primitive nonsense” “about “impossible events such as rising from the dead and virgin birth” of the Nicene Creed (August 11th).
One's initial response to Mr Moylan is to feel surprise that the old liberal Protestant version of Jesus Christ as one who was only an ethical teacher is still alive a century and more after Schweitzer's Quest of the Historical Jesus. One's second response is to regard his letter as being as much ahistorical in approach as it is atheological.
Even before the teaching of Jesus was recorded in the gospels St Paul had developed a sophisticated Christology (theology of Jesus); the best explanation of that theology is that it was formed in response to the person and acts of Jesus as well as his teaching.
The gospels themselves have accounts of what Mr Moylan terms “primitive nonsense” and “impossible events” – the appearance of an angel to a young girl who was destined to bear God’s son, the miracles worked by that son, his crucifixion and his rising from the dead.
What is more much of this “primitive nonsense” was preached by Jesus himself; no careful reader of the gospels can miss his conviction of his closeness to his heavenly Father.
Mr Moylan may think that the ethics of Jesus are compatible with his own purely materialist philosophy; the one who proclaimed that code would, one suspects, have been baffled by such a view.
The gospels were preserved and included in the canon by a church which held and developed the doctrines Mr Moylan rejects.
Mr Moylan wants the message of love preached by Jesus to be taught in schools as part of a course of ethics; he thinks the “useless theology” should be discarded.
I am afraid that the two are not so easily divorced. – Yours, etc,
CDC ARMSTRONG,
Belfast.