The Secular Education Network in New Zealand is campaigning to get any teaching of the Bible banned from all schools in New Zealand.
The campaign was launched by the Association of Rationalists and Humanists (NZARH) which believes there are too many cases where those running a school try to force their own beliefs on their students through religious observance. The Association said the primary motivation of the ‘Keep Religion Out Of Schools’ campaign was to support parents who approached it with their experiences and concerns. “Parents who are not religious are pressured into allowing religious indoctrination in order not to stigmatise their children.”
The CEO of The Churches Education Commission (CEC) which oversees the Bible in Schools programme, Simon Greening, said the curriculum that was taught from had been approved by school boards and had gone through an extensive process to ensure it was of a high quality and fitted well within the NZ Curriculum Framework established by the Ministry of Education.
In an email to Challenge Weekly David Hines, religious liaison for the Secular Education Network, “claimed” the campaign also had support from a number of Christians, who see Bible in Schools as something that is unfair to other religious groups. “I myself am a Christian lay preacher, so I was asked to find the views of people from other religions,” said Mr Hines.
Some of the issues raised by the network were that: parents could opt their children out of Bible in Schools which caused discrimination against the opted-out children; several Bible in Schools organisations, including the main group, the CEC, link their Bible stories with the themes from the school’s secular ‘values’ programme, giving a bias to the programme and that the programme in all its forms failed to recognise the diversity of New Zealand’s multi-cultural society. The Network also pointed out that it did not oppose teaching about religion, but that it should be done on a secular basis as part of the school curriculum. This is already happening in state primary schools.
However, CEC’s CEO Simon Greening insisted that the Bible in Schools programmes were not discriminatory in nature, and schools could provide education about other religions should they choose. “Christianity should be taught because it is a core belief system which forms part of our heritage and history as a country,” said Mr Greening. “All teachers of Bible in Schools are expected to abide by the CEC code of expectations. We educate children about Bible-based values in a Christian context — we are not there to ‘convert’ children to Christianity or to evangelise in any way or form.”   
—by Lavinia Ngatoko and Michael Hamilton