Although of course the practices go back further, compulsory Christian RE and collective worship in state schools date only from the 1944 Butler Act's vision of a renewed Christian society for which it was widely held that the War was being fought. How did that turn out?
But if these things are a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, then not only would that have come as news to Winston Churchill and to David Maxwell Fyfe, but to this day you would need the best of British luck if you felt like telling it to the Germans.
As Wales has been since 1920, what is now Northern Ireland has been constitutionally secular since 1871, creating the space for an Ulster Plantation from the ends of the Earth by those who held, either that the King had lately apostatised by praying with the Pope, by being a Green, by indulging Islam, or by all of the foregoing, or that the Revolution of 1688 had betrayed the Solemn League and Covenant.
I can probably guess but what do you think of the idea that starting the day with hymns, prayers and Bible readings was important for bonding and identity?
ReplyDeleteAs the people who say that mean it, it is both demonstrably false in practice, and theologically worthless in principle.
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