You can't teach ethics without referring to Christianity

Jim Wallace
Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby

9 April 2010

With our nation having just played host to a big atheist convention trumpeting the intellectual superiority of unbelief, many may well be wondering why we still bother gazetting an extended long weekend to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

For future generations this perplexity will grow if the NSW Government, dancing to the tune of intolerant secularists, has its way in our schools.

For more than 100 years, Scripture classes in schools have provided an avenue for children to learn about the Bible, the person of Jesus and the ethic that has underpinned societies such as Australia's.

This is entirely appropriate. No serious historian – regardless of whether or not they are religious — doubts the formative influence of Christianity, its ethics and values on the legal, cultural and political development of Western civilisation. Indeed it is the Judeo-Christian ethic that sets the way we live apart from the way other cultures live.

Now there will always be some parents who conscientiously object to their children being taught the Bible. This is their right.

And it was supposedly with these students in mind that former premier Nathan Rees announced late last year the introduction of "ethics" classes in primary schools.

Reeling from a number of high profile ministerial ethics scandals itself, it was reported that the ethics classes to be rolled out for kids were a chance for the government to show its moral compass still pointed north.

At the time it was made clear that these new, supposedly religion-free, ethics classes would not compete with traditional Scripture classes.

However, with the pilot trial due to start next term in 10 public primary schools, it has emerged they are being pitched with the obvious aim to draw students away from Scripture classes, despite the Government's assurances they would not.

Sounds like a serious ethical issue has arisen even before the first class is taught.

The trial ethics curriculum is produced by the St James Ethics Centre and the aim is to "provide a secular complement for the discussion of the ethical dimension of students' lives".

This by definition excludes the discussion of Christian values, which underpin so much of Australia's ethical framework.

It will be interesting to see how values such as loving one's neighbour, self-sacrifice, helping the poor etcetera are dealt with when the Bible stories that have shaped our understanding of these concepts for hundreds of years are excluded from the discussion.

It seems the ethics of the Bible and of the person of Jesus are now deemed so inconsequential that the Government must fund its own ethics curriculum and use its resources to draw students away from Scripture classes, which have been taught by dedicated volunteers for decades.

If it is so important for the Government to provide secular ethics classes and promote them to all students – not just the small minority of conscientious objectors – then all students should have the opportunity to attend but not at the expense of the existing Scripture classes.

While secularism sounds good, no one should think that its values come from a vacuum.

The idea of loving one's neighbour as oneself – or do unto others as you would have them do unto you – is religious. More accurately, it is Christian.

Secularism is certainly not neutral and those who wish to expunge Christian values from our schools and public institutions should more fully explain the worldview from which their alternative values derive.

In the mean time, if we are going to continue to recognise and celebrate our Judeo-Christian heritage, the state government should not dilute the influence of Scripture classes because they are the one opportunity in life the majority of young people have to understand what it is all about.

Jim Wallace is the managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby.