Not business of schools to seek converts

The Bay of Plenty Times published the following on Saturday, 17 February 2007.

It has been well said that the scripture of one age becomes the literature of the next. In that sense the Bible has its place in twenty-first century education alongside the tales of the Greek and Roman gods, whose names we give to the planets, and next to the sagas of the old Norse gods, who give their names to the days of the week. However it would make as much sense to teach the Bible as history, as suggested by Bill Capamagian (Bay Times 28 December 2006), as it would to teach the Iliad or the Odyssey as history.
If Bill read some of these old myths he would learn that Mithra, Adonis and Osiris were just three examples of demi-gods who died and rose from the dead. Far from making Christianity “unique among religions” the death and resurrection of Rabbi Yeshua were par for the course.
It is not the business of schools to seek to convert their pupils to any particular religion. Mainstream New Zealand clearly adopted that principle when establishing the state education system in 1877. Bill Capamagian repeatedly fails to explain why some Christians should be above the law.