Did you read Monday’s Northern Star, with a page 3 article about some ‘research’ that has been conducted into School Scripture?! I was encouraged to see David R had commented on their website. Here’s a letter I sent to the Editor:
I was appalled to read the Northern Star article Scripture Messages: ‘a bit hot’ (NS 24/8). Ms Byrne’s study in this area was purported to be research, and at the Ph D. level at that. The heart of genuine research, however, is to thoroughly investigate the subject at hand. If that had been done, Ms Byrne might have reported about a team of volunteers who freely give of their time to lovingly teach young children the message of hope found in the Bible. Several volunteer teachers from our church are involved in this wonderful service to our children and I regularly witness friendly and grateful responses from children and school teachers towards these hard-working dedicated Scripture teachers. Ms Byrne claims that fear is being instilled in children. It seems rather, that her aim is to raise unfounded fear in the community. It is very easy to collect a couple of anecdotes and instil fear about the supposed horrors of children learning about the love of God! The reality of what really happens in the Scripture classroom has been left unreported by this ‘research’.
Of course, while it’s important to respond to such nonsense in our papers, more important still is that we actually take hold of the wonderful opportunity that SRE provides to present the gospel of Jesus to young people. We need to defend the opportunity but even more we need to take it up. And to those already doing so – we give thanks to God for your love of Jesus and of little ones who need to hear of his love as you carry out this vital ministry.
Its a interesting time in Australia this so called study is only a small ripple compared to whats happening in the state of Victoria . There is political discusion that churchs,christian schools, church charities etc should be employing non christians as it is seen discrimative not to so. This bill is being discused at the moment by a parlimentry group and they are to report back on their decison on this matter.