Like many jeremiahs Ken Salt (Bay Times 14 September) laments the passing of an imaginary golden age. He goes on to lay the blame for today’s problems in schools at the feet of atheists. He offers no causal connection between atheism and these problems. For him it is self-evident that those who believe in his god are good, and those who do not are, not only wrong, but wicked. Finally he comes to his point – he has something to sell – a plug for Christianity in schools, presumably state schools since most private schools are religious in nature.
When New Zealand’s state schools were established as secular in 1877, this was in no small part due to the fact that the various denominations of Christians could not agree to teach one particular brand of Christianity. Ken Salt should come clean and tell us which brand he has in mind. Is it the liberal Christianity that acknowledges the limitations of the Bible, that tolerates other worldviews, that welcomes gays into the clergy, that accepts the fact of evolution? Or is it the fundamentalist kind that takes the Bible literally, that teaches creationism, that vilifies gays, atheists and anyone else who dares to have a different philosophy of life?
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