Time was when religious education in Scotland was very firmly based on the Bible and the Shorter Catechism. There was widespread acceptance that God has spoken to mankind, that the Bible is the record of the revelation He has given, and that the Shorter Catechism is an accurate summary of the teachings of the Bible. Any other foundation for communicating religious ideas to children would have been, for most Scots at the time, unthinkable.
This has all changed. And the change is highlighted by a recent 40-page official report by Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools in Scotland, which, while it approves of Christianity being “accorded appropriate emphasis as the main religious tradition in Scotland”, does not give it any unique status. This, I am sure, is typical of most professedly Christian countries. The USA, however, goes the length of prohibiting all forms of religious teaching and observance in its public schools because of a spurious interpretation of the constitution, an interpretation which is only possible because the founding fathers of the nation repudiated the establishment principle — the doctrine that the state has a duty to promote the true religion by all means which are proper for it to use. So we have the absurd situation of a headteacher in Mississippi being suspended for a whole year because he allowed a pupil to read a prayer over the school’s public address system. This is the result of decisions of the Supreme Court in the early 1960s, when it held that prayer in public schools contravenes the constitution.
But why is religious education today in its present sad condition? Sadly, the Church itself must bear a large measure of the responsibility. Churchmen who are committed to multi-faith religion must be equally committed to modern syllabuses. And churchmen who do not accept the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures cannot complain when their errors are taken to the logical conclusion. There were always some people in society who were prepared to question the authority of the Bible. But it was when, well over a hundred years ago, this way of thinking gained a place within the Church that it became really dangerous. If ministers doubted, first of all the accuracy of small parts of Scripture, and later the authority of the whole of Scripture, it is not surprising that the bulk of their congregations followed. Unconverted lay people were in no position to hold on to what was worthwhile in religion when their leaders were so desperate to throw it all overboard.
Where the Church went, society at large followed. And the schools, as part of society, took the same road, until all religions must now be accepted as having the same authority. No religion has any more right than another to be regarded as true. So every religion, Christianity included, inevitably comes to be regarded as having little practical value. Truth in religion is thus nowhere to be found, and authority has disappeared with it. So, instead of teaching the truth of Scriptural Christianity, the official line being promoted by the state today is that all religions are equal, which is only possible if one accepts that there is no ultimate authority in religion. Genuine Christianity is therefore ruled out of court, because true Christianity — the Christianity of the Bible — proclaims its own uniqueness, as it condemns all other religions as not only unhelpful and misleading, but positively dangerous and sinful.
Doubtless that is a statement which to most ears sounds like the most extreme intolerance. And one of the official aims in teaching pupils about other religions is to bring them to “acquire tolerance and respect for others”. This, of course, is to confuse respect for others with an acceptance of their beliefs as being equally as valid as my own. However, it is the same Bible that teaches me the doctrines of Christianity that teaches me also to love my neighbour as myself. But for me to tell my neighbour that it does not matter what he believes is certainly not to demonstrate my love to him, when there is an absolute difference between truth and error in religion. The fact is that if my neighbour cannot be sure that his religion is true it is quite unable to support him in times of trouble; more especially it cannot support him as he stares into what must be for him the unknown uncertainties of the afterlife.
One of the aims laid down in the official guidelines is that pupils would “recognise religion as an important expression of human experience”. No one can argue with that proposition as it stands. But there is little doubt that there lies behind it the idea that religion is nothing more than an expression of human experience, that there is no possibility of a revelation from outside human experience. So the individual pupil is encouraged, after “personal search, discovery and critical evaluation”, to develop his “own beliefs, attitudes, moral values and practices.” Which is to ignore the uncomfortable fact that fallen man has a disordered understanding and a corrupt will, so that without divine intervention he cannot, and he does not want to, accept from the heart those religious beliefs which are true, and indeed are revealed for his good. He does not accept the truth because he cannot, and will not, from the heart accept the authority of God. Because he has a fallen nature he is in no position by the use of his unaided reason to construct a reliable set of religious beliefs and values; he cannot even with safety pick and choose among those which are already on offer; he can only be safe if he will submit to that set of religious beliefs and values given in the Scriptures by divine revelation.
Instead, the government is promoting that favourite tenet of natural religion: that men and women, youngsters included, are able by the use of their unaided reason to develop their own religious attitudes. The establishment principle has thus been turned on its head, for the duty of the state towards religion is not only to ensure that religious education is given in schools, but also that what is taught should be pure and true — in other words, Scriptural. One of the ways in which the folly of the last century United Presbyterians was seen — when they turned voluntaries and gave up the establishment principle — was that some of them even opposed the teaching of religion in schools.
No doubt they would find the present situation perfectly satisfactory. While religion is taught in our schools, no religion is to be seen as better, or nearer the truth, than another. “It is also important”, the inspectors declare, “that the pupils are given opportunities to think for themselves and make up their own minds about the religious and moral issues that arise from their studies. Planning (by teachers) has to ensure that the pupils’ own opinions are explored and discussed, otherwise they are unlikely to see the meaning and relevance of religion or morality for real life.” Far be it from me to suggest that the ideal situation is one where pupils do not think seriously about religious and moral issues. Without a doubt everyone should be persuaded in their own mind of what they believe.
What I am concerned about is that the study of religion needs a sure foundation, and man’s unaided reason is a completely inadequate foundation. If someone intends to travel to a country which he has never previously visited he would almost certainly wish to learn something about it first, not from the unaided exercise of his own mind, but from someone who has been there before him. And if we wish to know what is beyond the grave it is from the God of eternity that we need to learn about it, not from the speculations of some sinful human mind — whether it be our own or someone else’s. We should therefore be profoundly thankful that this great God has made known in the Scriptures a safe way through life, a way which leads to a blessed eternity — and that way is His own Son, Christ Jesus, the only Saviour of sinners. This is the sort of knowledge which is inaccessible apart from a submissive attitude to the Bible. Sin, we must remember, has brought a prejudice into the operation of the human mind, a prejudice which operates against the truth. In other words, unaided human reason can be relied on to accept false teaching of some kind.
What I have said so far has not touched the question of what form of Christianity is being taught. Even were it accepted that other religions are false, there is still the matter of the endless varieties of false Christianity. So Roman Catholicism is presented as being just as valid as Protestantism, but it is a Protestantism that is fundamentally flawed because the full authority of Scripture is not presented. And it is doubtful if the possibility of accepting the full authority of Scripture is ever to be presented as anything other than a relic of more primitive times.
The inspectors’ report refers to one of the stranger trends in recent educational thinking: the implicit approach to religious education, advocated by some councils for the early stages of school. The idea is that there should be no use of what are called explicitly religious phenomena (for example, belief in God and Bible stories). Instead “the rich variety of experiences which help young children develop awareness and sensitivity in personal and social relationships, together with a developing sense of awe and wonder at the beauties and mysteries of the natural world” must first be explored before the children are ready to listen to even the simplest of Bible stories. But to parents who have made the least effort to teach their own pre-school children any of the basic religious truths, such an idea must seem the most ludicrous nonsense. It is surely perfectly plain that children, even without saving grace, can grasp in their own limited way the fact, for instance that there is a God. The inspectors’ report, it has to be said, does seriously question the implicit approach. And the 5-14 guidelines do recommend the use of explicitly religious material at the early stages, including, however, not only Bible stories, but stories from the Qu’ran (perhaps more recognisable as the Koran) and the Guru Granth Sahib (a Sikh holy book).
We are left with a serious and fundamental question, Who today would have the commitment to teach a satisfactory syllabus of religious education? It is a question which has no easy answer, although there are some teachers who do teach religious education with an eye to the authority of Scripture. But it is clear that those teachers who are the exceptions are not keeping to the spirit of the syllabus guidelines. So much the worse for the guidelines! Schools which do not teach religions other than Christianity have been the subject of unfavourable comment by inspectors in their reports on these particular schools. And, in the report already referred to, the inspectors state their view that “there is scope for extending this coverage” (of other world religions) in many schools.
It should be obvious that a system which has as its one fixed assumption the idea that no religion can claim absolute truth is highly dangerous. Thankfully Scotland is not altogether without true religion, but the sad fact is that religion, even where it is true to the Scriptures, has little power. But the God, who in His kindness has given that revelation of absolute truth which we know as the Bible, is a God who is still willing to listen to prayer. “The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (Jas 5: 16), is a statement which is as true today as it ever was. When prayer of that kind is answered, our schools will go back to using the Bible and the Shorter Catechism, and we will rest safe in the knowledge that our children are being given a sure foundation for their religious beliefs and values. May there then be much prayer of that kind in Scotland and throughout the world!