Protestant Truth Society Statement on the recent Supreme Court ruling on the teaching of Religious Education in Northern Ireland Schools.
‘The provision of Christian religious education in Northern Ireland schools does not comply with human rights standards and is unlawful’, the UK Supreme Court has ruled.
In a landmark judgment, the court upheld an appeal brought by a pupil at a Belfast school and her father, and reinstated an earlier court ruling that the teaching of RE and collective worship breaches human rights standards and is unlawful, the UK Supreme Court has ruled. In addition the Judge ruled that Religious Education as currently taught in our schools amounts to ‘indoctrination’. Such a statement is both untrue, and highly offensive to teachers who have faithfully and sensitively taught Religious Education with professionalism over many decades.
This ruling flies in the face of the Christian foundations upon which our education system has long rested. A Christian ethos has shaped our society, our laws and our moral compass, as well as the whole fabric of our education system over many decades.
While it is not the role of a state to coerce individual citizens to adhere to particular beliefs, the state can never be neutral as regards values.
The Coronation Oath is an explicit denial of the secularity of the United Kingdom; and confirms the establishment of the Protestant Reformed Christian religion in general, and of the Church of England and the Church of Scotland in particular, and still defines the UK as constitutionally a Christian country. These constitutional arrangements remain in force.
Biblical Christianity maintains the true basis for tolerance, democracy and human dignity; and it is therefore vital that we maintain the teaching of the Christian faith in our schools.
While state schools may not compel religious belief, no state can be neutral in terms of morality or religion. Given the UK’s constitutional arrangements, there is a privileging of Christianity. There is also state provision for schools with a Christian ethos and emphasis on Christianity in assemblies and religious education, while ensuring opt-outs for those of other faiths and none. To change our constitutional arrangements establishing the Protestant Reformed faith, could result in the State positively endorsing either a secular humanistic philosophy (which results in atheism), or a “multifaith philosophy”, both which would rob our nation of any true moral compass, dignity, tolerance or self-respect. The UK has been (and continues to a significant extent to be) culturally shaped by Christianity.
Currently, almost half the UK population claim a Christian allegiance (cf. the National Census 2021 in which 46.2% of all people in England and Wales stated their religion as Christian). However, in Northern Ireland 79.7% of the population identified as Christian.
This ruling of the Supreme Court fails to take on board the Christian nature and identity of the vast majority of the citizens of Northern Ireland, and furthermore fails to understand why it is that tolerance and respect are important. Christian values and morals are about recognition of humanity as something essential to the common good, and in the building of society. Christianity has been crucial in the foundation and ethos of our schools in the past, and must continue to be so. The result of abandoning the Christian ethos and teaching in our schools would be to fall over the moral precipice into a moral quagmire that would be to the detriment of all of our children and to society in general. The teaching of Christianity that has shaped our educational system over the decades is not a means of excluding other religions and cultures, but rather provides a framework of tolerance and respect for all religions while promoting the Constitutional religion of our nation as that which is rooted in the Word of God and which has shaped our nation down through the centuries.