{"id":1928,"date":"2009-01-15T00:04:19","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T04:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=1928"},"modified":"2009-01-15T00:04:19","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T04:04:19","slug":"faith-and-doubt-in-the-land-of-my-fathers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/faith-and-doubt-in-the-land-of-my-fathers\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith and Doubt in the Land of My Fathers"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Telegraph <\/a><\/p>\n

The Welsh Assembly has just announced that it intends to allow sixth-formers to withdraw themselves from daily collective worship if they so wish. This would bring Wales into line with England, which relaxed the rules for older pupils in 2007.<\/p>\n

Dr Geraint Tudur, general secretary of the Union of Welsh Independent Chapels, responds by saying that the Assembly was throwing “1,500 years of Welsh Christianity to the winds.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I spent my schooldays in the Welsh education system and was subject to morning assembly – ostensibly Christian worship – and RI, Religious Instruction. By the time I reached the sixth form I had decided I was an atheist and refused to participate in the morning assemblies: the headmaster informed me that, by law, he was obliged to demand my attendance. I’ve forgotten how this was resolved; I may have attended and contented myself with disrupting the proceedings by making rude noises from the rear – pun intended.<\/p>\n

What I do remember is that it was transparently apparent that almost none of the teachers wanted to be at morning assemblies either. The RI lessons were conducted by a well-meaning but weak Anglican clergyman whose weakness was mercilessly exploited by the class of sadistic teenage schoolboys.<\/p>\n

What did have a lasting effect on me were two teachers who actually believed something with enough intensity that they felt they had to share it with their pupils. One was a math teacher who instilled in me sufficient curiosity to convince me to read Satre and Camus and the other was the chemistry teacher, an evangelical Christian, with whom I argued vigorously, but who made me think.<\/p>\n

If this legislation comes into force, the shame would be not that a nominal morning exercise that almost no-one believes in is no longer mandatory, but what could come next: teachers no longer being allowed to stimulate nascent faith by discussing their own beliefs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Telegraph The Welsh Assembly has just announced that it intends to allow sixth-formers to withdraw themselves from daily collective worship if they so wish. This would bring Wales into line with England, which relaxed the rules for older … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}