The Atheist Blogger

The British broadsheet newspaper The Telegraph has been caught in a despicable attempt to blacken the name of a new atheist student organisation of which I am a proud member. The article in question, titled “Atheists target UK schools” is only made more misleading by its subheading, which reads “Atheists are targeting schools in a campaign designed to challenge Christian societies, collective worship and religious education.” Of course, neither of these is an accurate description of what the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (AHS) is campaigning for. The AHS is a student organisation aimed at universities and colleges, not schools, and nothing the AHS is campaigning for includes challenging religious education or collective worship.

The Telegraph articles states:

The federation aims to encourage students to lobby their schools and local authorities over what is taught in RE lessons and to call for daily acts of collective worship to be scrapped. It wants the societies to hold talks and educational events to persuade students not to believe in God.

What the AHS actually wants to do is encourage interfaith discussion through a variety of events, focusing on both scientific and religious education, as well as supporting charity work. The aims of the current initiative are outlined in brief here:

• To teach students how to debate and create dialogue between school faith groups.
• Provide the school with fun and educational events and activities, including two student-led courses: ‘Perspectives’ in which a speaker from a faith group gives a talk followed by Q&A, and our ‘One Life’ course, which considers moral and ethical issues without god. Many events will also support the scientific curriculum.
• Encourage charity volunteering.
• Give students the experience of running a group and managing events.
• Show students that it’s ok not to believe in god and encourage critical thinking.
• Bring out issues concerning religious privilege in schools such as collective worship and incomplete or biased religious education.

The Telegraph article, perhaps one of the most blatant examples in recent years of “lying for Jesus” goes on to quote Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute on the matter of this supposed atheistic child indoctrination.

Atheists are becoming increasingly militant in their desperate attempts to stamp out faith. It is deeply worrying that they now want to use children to attack the Christian ethos of their schools. Many parents will also be anxious at the thought of militant atheists targeting their children. – Simon Calvert, Christian Institute

Of course the AHS is using children to counter Christianity, but the children in question are well into their late teens and early twenties, old enough to think for themselves one might have concluded. The implication present in both the Telegraph article and in Simon Calvert’s quotation is that the AHS are targeting children of primary and secondary school age, and this is a completely fallacious assertion. Recently, the AHS has been approached by several 6th form students who wish to form atheist groups at their respective colleges, and as a result 16-18 year olds from across the UK have been invited to a conference at Warwick University on 21st June. The aim of this is to help students set up societies at their colleges, and to support them.

As far as I am aware, the only organisation who are involving the younger generations of children is Camp Quest, which is a summer camp for the children of nonbelievers. This can hardly be called atheistic indoctrination though, since the children who go there all choose to participate, and the parents of those children are well aware of the activities that the camp includes.

In response to the article, AHS Press Officer Chloë Clifford-Frith had this to say:

The AHS is disappointed that the paper chose to twist information as far as possible to create a negative, sensationalist message out of a positive development for educational provision in schools.

The AHS does not and would never seek to challenge religious education in the manner that article goes on to suggest. The AHS strongly believes in the importance of a balanced, impartial and full religious education and would support the introduction of a national RE curriculum to ensure standards are met.

To find out more about the Warwick University conference on 21st June, please contact press@ahsstudents.org.uk or visit ahsstudents.org.uk.