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Defending Religious Instruction in Schools

by | Fri, Jun 28 2019

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The battle to preserve religious freedoms seems to be deepening.  While there are high profile issues that demonstrate this very real threat to freedom of speech with the Israel Folau case, there is a number of battle fronts where Christian freedoms are under threat.

This week, Channel 9’s ‘A Current Affair’ has taken aim at religious education in schools.

The Channel 9 story involves mother and former lawyer Alison Courtice, who is petitioning the Queensland Government to remove Religious Educators and their classes from State Schools, through her Parents for Secular State Schools Movement.

Ms Courtice claims that for school children, “It’s just education and that’s what state schools are supposed to be in the business of doing.”

Channel 9 has taken these claims to public opinion and asked their audience to vote on whether schools should have religious education or not.  At the time of publishing this article, the Facebook poll had received 155,000 votes with 51% of voters saying that schools should indeed continue to have religious education.

Often these online polls can be quite misleading and lacking integrity.  The survey that really matters is not likely to get air time in mainstream media, is one that was conducted professionally and independently in 2018 which found that almost 80% of Australians believe that schools should be a safe place for students to explore deeper questions of faith and belief.

Dave Pellowe, founder of the Church and State Summits’ spoke to Neil Johnson on Vision Christian Radio’s 20Twenty program about concerns that stories like this one from A Current Affair can lead to.

Dave Pellowe

“There is a number of facets to this issue and the first one is very obviously that we are seeing a multi-pronged attack on Christianity, specifically in Western society and in Australia since the postal survey on marriage.”

“[That vote] seems to be a license to attack anything and anyone who is publically Christian.  My concern is probably more specially about the quality of education we’re offering our young people.”  

“The Bible is so fundamental to even understanding the language we speak in this nation.  So, more than religion broadly we should be teaching the Bible in schools. I don’t mean we should be teaching people religious devotion to God, but it would be intellectually dishonest to say that religion and the Bible has no place in professional education in a Western democracy.”

You can continue listening to the full discussion between Dave and Neil on this issue in the podcast below.

Tune into 20Twenty and join the conversation with Neil Johnson, weekdays on Vision Christian Radio. Click here for your local times.

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The featured image in this article has been sourced from Shutterstock.