Church of England schools encouraged to avoid singing hymns with strong confessional lyrics
from Premier:
The Church of England has told its schools to avoid singing hymns that include explicit Christian rhetoric to ensure collective worship is “inclusive, invitational and inspiring”.
In a new statement addressing its more than 4,000 schools in England and 200 in Wales, The Church of England is encouraging all its school staff to make sure parents, pupils and teachers feel included, regardless of their faith, when taking part in collective worship.
“Music and liturgies used in worship should reflect the best of traditional and modern Anglican worship, it should connect with the theme and explore the sacred to educate and engage. Music used should reflect the diverse worship experience of the wider Christian community.
“Care should be taken to ensure that pupils and adults do not feel compelled to sing strongly confessional lyrics. There should be no assumption of Christian faith in those present,” the statement reads.
The Church of England argues that in the same way that worship is evolving and “being reimagined” in churches, it should also change and be dynamic in church schools and reflect the local context, pupils’ cultural background and the faiths of the school communities it serves.
“There should be no compulsion to ‘do anything’. Rather, worship should provide the opportunity to engage whilst allowing the freedom of those of different faiths and those who profess no religious faith to be present and to engage with integrity. The metaphor of ‘warm fires and open doors ’ captures this idea,”
Read the document from the Church of England Education Office here:
Inclusive, Invitational, Inspiring: A Statement of Entitlement and Expectation
See also: The Church of England’s purging of school hymns is reckless cultural destruction – New guidance instructing faith schools to abandon overtly religious songs is yet another lunatic assault by the C of E on its own heritage. By Simon Heffer, Telegraph [£]
Editor’s comment: It is interesting that the guidance encourages young people to feel they have the “space to disagree” about anything said in corporate worship. This was exactly the attitude that school chaplain Bernard Randall encouraged the pupils at Trent College to have, after they had been given teaching in assemblies from a very different ideological point of view – and he lost his job for it.
So we can conclude: Church of England schools should be careful not to teach Christian doctrine clearly in assemblies in case it offends people; students are permitted to question and disagree with any mild Christian elements which remain. Meanwhile there can be strong and clear teaching of LGBT ideology in C of E schools, and anyone who questions it will be subject to discipline.
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