Monday 6 November 2017

The Land of Mist













The Land of Mist

Behind the news is a land of mist. It can be extremely difficult to work out exactly what has happened. A case in point is that recently reported by “Bishop” Gavin Ashenden in the columns of the Jersey Evening Post. 

He is looking at the case of a primary school in Tunbridge Wells:

“The latest seed bed of hate-filled extremism has been lurking undiscovered for the last 16 years in a Primary School, in Tunbridge Wells. With psychological and social consequences that surely defy imagination, a generation of children have been infected by 'hate' at the hands of an extremist organisation masquerading as a Christian charity.”

“For 16 years this charity called Crossteach has been sowing 'hate' and 'extremism' under the pretence of pretending to help local C of E Primary schools bring their Christian ethos and culture to life. Young extremists masquerading as 'enthusiasts' offered drama in assemblies with the cover story they were keeping them cool and entertaining; they even pretended to help rather hapless RE teachers in the classroom, saying this would lift the faith to from the page to give it life.”

“It seems that that the school had not been careful enough to hide from the children that Jesus taught that there was a heaven and a hell and that he had come to save people from a dreadful separation from God by dying in their place, and shedding His blood as a sacrifice, and carry them to heaven. (Oh, and in passing, marriage was intended to be between a man and a woman.)”

Note that in passing, as he sees it, the Crossteach group clearly chimes with his own beliefs that being gay is a curable disorder and gay marriage is wrong. This is not necessarily the case.

So what happened? A group of parents protested about how Crossteach were conducting teaching Christianity in assemblies:

"We recognise and respect the school's Christian values but think there is a brand of Christianity that is abusing that respect. The basis of [our] complaint relates purely to concerns over the welfare and safeguarding of children who we believe are being exposed to potentially damaging ideology."

The local vicar Reverend Giles Walter called the protesting parents as “extremists”. In a statement released to the Kent newspaper, he said: “The behaviour of this small group of parents has hurled a hand grenade into a previously happy and harmonious environment. They seem determined to drive mainstream Christian teaching out of our church school: and it is they and not ourselves who should be charged with extremism and non-inclusiveness.”

According to the Telegraph, one parent said that children were being taught about sin and told that if they did not believe in God "they would not go to a good place when they died".
  
According to the Guardian: “Incidents included a harvest festival assembly in which a CrossTeach guest speaker attempted to demonstrate ’the destructive power of God’ by smashing a model boat. One parent claimed her son had been told last week that ‘men can’t marry men’.”

And it also points out that while this is a faith school, ““faith schools must still adhere to Department for Education guidelines regarding fundamental British values, including equality and non-discrimination in matters such as gay marriage, as well as respect and tolerance for other faiths.”

The Freethinker website, which obviously has its own agenda notes:

“As a faith school, St John’s has more leeway to promote the Church of England and Christianity to pupils. But faith schools must still adhere to Department for Education guidelines regarding fundamental British values, including equality and non-discrimination in matters such as gay marriage, as well as respect and tolerance for other faiths.”

Crossteach on its own website says in a Q&A: “Do you aim to convert people?” by providing this answer: “Crossteach is an educational charity and our aims are exclusively educational: to inform students and enable them to critically engage with the Christian faith.”

The Rev Jules Gomes is incensed by the business:

“The parents want to re-define Christianity in their Tunbridge-Wellsian image and likeness – reared and carved like the Christmas turkey from Waitrose. They sincerely believe that teaching children about ‘sin’ and ‘judgement’ (as they point out in a 13-page letter) is ‘extremist’. ‘No one minds Nativity plays and Bible stories . . . I think the feeling is that it’s all too much,’ says one parent. So this parent wouldn’t mind the Bible stories of Joshua slaying the Canaanites or Herod slaying the innocent children of Bethlehem (part of the Nativity story) but the story of Jesus’s crucifixion ‘is all too much’?”

Now that is interesting, because it is the first mention we have of a letter. The snippets reported by the newspapers are parental comments, not extracts from the letter.

So what might the letter say. Kent news, close to the affair, comments that:

“Parents say the group's fundamentalist teaching had been "upsetting and disturbing" young children The move comes after a number of parents withdrew their children from assemblies over concerns about their "heavy content". One, who asked not to be named, said: "I didn't pull my mine out because overall I think it would do more harm than good to segregate them. But I do know some of the children have been upset by what they have heard. No one minds Nativity plays and Bible stories but considering most of the parents at the school aren’t practising Christians I think the feeling is that it’s all too much.”

But that's vague. 

One of the complaints is that parents can take children elsewhere if they don't want a religious school, but as one said:

“In Tunbridge Wells the vast majority of primary schools are affiliated with the church so it’s not like you have a choice whether you expose your children to this.“Personally I want my children to learn about all religions. If you want them to be raised as Christians there are plenty of Sunday schools.”

Christians in Education notes that:

“It seems it all began earlier this year when some parents raised concerns at the Parents Forum – minutes of the meeting show that the head passed on those concerns to the church. Presumably, this didn’t resolve the situation, as a formal complaint was made to the governors. Not content with this, the parents started an online social media campaign against the teaching of Christianity in the school, claiming that nothing was being done about their concerns. On Monday, for the purpose of restoring peace, the head decided to act.”

And another website has a snippet more information:

“After a conversation tonight with our CrossTeach team locally, I have discovered a number of things, 1. they have every sympathy with the Headteacher who they feel has been put in an extremely difficult position, 2. there is a lot of false information about what was or is being objected to, 3. at the root of the problem is one particular parent who largely objected to a lesson in which their child was told that heaven would be better than the best things on earth, 4. other parents have been rallied to the cause with often misleading information. It has been rumbling on for some time with the team often being misquoted or quoted out of context. In all lessons two representatives of the team are there along with a teacher.”

Archbishop Cramner website says::

“Parents have a legal right to remove their children from RE lessons and assemblies. There’s no justification for small but very vocal minorities to insist on removing Christianity from schools. Part of high quality RE teaching involves examining Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality, sin and life after death. If you disagree with the Bible, critique it and present a robust argument against it. Simply calling something toxic because you disagree with it is not a valid form of debate.”

This is, it should be noted, a very fundamentalist position, because it makes the claim that “the Bible” is the justification for one and only one point of view. Theologians and Biblical scholars, as well as the odd Bible reader, may find much to disagree with.

But what is nowhere clear what this 13 page letter said, and how, presumably, it outlined how the children were upset and how their parents found out their distress.

Without that, what we have in fact, is a collection of snippets from parents which hardly give the detail to fill one page, let along 13 pages, and a chance for merry fundamentalists like “Bishop” Ashenden to use this as a platform for his own particular agenda.

In conclusion, despite Gavin Ashenden weighing in, and various reports about Crossteach, and about how CrossTeach have been unfairly treated, or from the Humanists, how they have been proselytising ,we still have next to no idea why they were banned from the school, or what the parents complained about.

No one has published the letter!

And yet this has not stopped a number of commentaries springing up, telling us what they believed to be the case! And by dint of repetition, everyone seems to believe they know what happened, what the parents believed, and what their complaints were about on the basis of scantiest of quotations.


References




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