Faith at home News - June 2017

Withdrawing children from RE lessons

Parents currently have the right to withdraw children from religious education lessons but a senior Church of England official recently warned that this denies children the chance to learn about different backgrounds and beliefs.

In Britain the world we live in has many people of different faiths. If that’s not the case where you live now, almost certainly your children will encounter people of different faiths as they grow up so the task of Christian parents and churches is to equip our children for being followers of Jesus in the world that is, not the world as we might want it to be.

So how do we prepare them to encounter people of different faiths? Most RE is actually a fairly safe place to explore that. Good RE values the faith of the children taking part. It’s not a place for getting children to compromise what they believe, it’s about getting them to understand and have some appreciation of the beliefs of others without necessarily agreeing with them. RE lessons are potentially a really good place to encounter and understand why people wear turbans, why they aren’t eating this month, as well as learning to have some appreciation so we can understand who they are. Learning to love our neighbours means really learning to engage with them. The kid in your class who’s a Sikh or the people we see on the television who are Muslim – how do we learn to love them?

RE lessons give a basic introduction as well as giving space for questions. It certainly shouldn’t be about sowing great seeds of doubt and encouraging pupils to give up their faith but about asking: “From your faith, how do we make sense of some of these questions?”

When I was at primary school in the mid-70s I was given a really hard time by an atheist teacher. It was an outrageous piece of teaching – in year three I was ridiculed in front of the class as to why I believed in God. That’s on the worst end of it but I’ve recently been in a meeting where we were talking about how we support schools where parents are refusing to allow their children to visit a mosque.

My youngest son is doing GCSEs and the ethical questions he has to grapple with in RE have enabled us to have really good conversations at home around things such as abortion. It’s forced us to have those conversations which I think have really helped him grow as a person.

God’s still there in an RE lesson, he hasn’t gone: “That looks scary, I’ve left”. It’s not like we’re sending our children into some godless terrible place where Jesus is going to abandon them at the door!

If you’re worried about RE lessons; talk to the teacher. Don’t assume you know what’s going on. Parents might say: “This might confuse them so I’ll take them out of RE lessons,” but if you’re at a school with a child of another faith or no faith what are they going to do in the playground? Are you going to tell them they’re not allowed to talk to anyone who isn’t a Christian? And let’s be honest, most children of Christian parents don’t convert to another religion, they become secular so if you’re worried about RE lessons, I’d be far more worried about the influence of secular friends in the playground! You need to help them to be Christians in that place – don’t take them out of the playground. It’s better for them to be educated and equipped when they encounter other faiths than pretend they don’t exist.

Dr Andrew Smith is director of interfaith relations for the Diocese of Birmingham

Celebrating Godparents

The Church of England recently devoted a whole day to honouring the role of Godparents. Godparents Sunday on 30th April recognised the six million or so people who have become Godparents since 2000 and supported the relationship between Godparents and Godchildren.

Rev Canon Dr Sandra Millar, who leads research on christenings for the Church of England, told Premier Youth and Children’s Work: “Godparents are part of a child’s life for a long time and families really appreciate having an extra voice to bring wisdom, encouragement and love.”