Do we (Americans, Canadians, British) live in Christian countries or not?! Here's another example of the absurdities we descend to to avoid offending those who do not believe. [We used to call them pagans or heathens. ed.]
The online edition of BBC News reports that an English schoolteacher who has the special assignment of tutoring children too sick to attend classes has been dismissed from her job. The reason? She was so bold as to offer to pray for one of her pupils!
Olive Jones, a teacher with 20 years of experience, found one girl too sick to study, and tried to comfort her by offering to pray for her health. When she learned that the family was not religious, she dropped the subject—but not in time to avoid a formal complaint that prompted her dismissal.
A spokesman for North Somerset Council said Miss Jones hadn't been dismissed, merely suspended. Said Miss Jones, "I am amazed that a country with such a strong Christian tradition has become a country where it is hard to speak about your faith."
While I don't agree with the firing, I do have to point out that America, at least, is not a Christian country. There is no reference to Christianity in any of our founding documents, and that was a specific decision on the part of the founders ... one which they made against some measure of public protest at the time. Britain & Canada, of course, were founded in monarchy (as was America, of course, prior to our revolution), who believed that their monarchs were divinely appointed rulers, which is why the King of England was able to run his own church and persecute those who didn't follow his precepts...
ReplyDeleteSo the long and short of it is, separation of church and state is beneficial to both the church and the state...
But the teacher certainly shouldn't have been suspended over expressing her faith. (Now had she been a science teacher teaching that the earth was 6,000 years old, that would warrant a dismissal...)
But the Founding Fathers did include references to "God" in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, right?
ReplyDeleteAnd we all know "One nation under God..." and "In God we trust..."
Perhaps it never occurred to the Founding Fathers that there was a god other than the Christian God.