Funnily enough, to the best of my knowledge, meetings of Lanchester Parish Council have never begun with prayers. That said, it is amazing what we manage to forget. Some recent pruning of overgrowth revealed on our land a monument to Diana, Princess of Wales. No one at all, including people who have been on for years and years and years, had the slightest recollection of the thing's ever having been erected. But there were certainly no prayers, nor any suggestion of such, when I first attended a meeting as a mere member of the public sometime around 1994 or 1995, nor has there been any such suggestion at any point since.
The talk today in the more wishful thinking corners of cyberspace is that the Government will legislate to give councils the power to hold prayers if they want to. Dream on. The last time that the Conservative Party was in office, it legalised abortion up to birth, legalised destructive experimentation on embryonic human beings, made divorce legally easier than release from a car hire contract, abolished most of the restrictions protecting lowly shop workers from having to work seven-day weeks, tried to abolish them all, attempted to abolish the restrictions in relation to 25th December, had to be stopped by a Labour-led alliance of peers from removing Christian collective worship and Religious Education from state schools (do "free" schools have to have them?), and devastated the economic base of paternal authority in secure, high-waged, high-skilled, high-status employment.
Since praying in council chambers has graciously been kept legal, local churches should make it their business to hold prayer meetings in or immediately outside them before every council meeting, with councillors expressly invited to attend.
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"had to be stopped by a Labour-led alliance of peers from removing Christian collective worship and Religious Education from state schools (do "free" schools have to have them?)"
ReplyDeleteyes they do, both of them
What, both "free" schools? Where's the other one, then?
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall that a cross-party alliance in the Lords had to insist on that, too. It wasn't in the original Bill.
Ho ho. No, both daily worship and RE. And no, it was always in the original funding agreements.
ReplyDeleteYour polemics would have more force if you checked our ate occasionally
Christian worship and Christian RE? Private schools don't have to have those things, and that is what these are, except at public expense.
ReplyDeleteIt is notable that the more conventional ones nevertheless do have them. And, unlike in much of state sector, they really do.
Anyway, all that I did was ask a question.