The Rise Of Far Right Christian Fundamentalism In British Schools

Back on June 9th of this year and then again on the following day, GOS UK noted the troubling rise in influence that extreme religious groups were beginning to have over the education of British schoolchildren, noting that at least two members of a five person review team belonged to or were affiliated with religious groups that protested against LGBTQI+ groups and abortion and wanted to promote education centered around god.

We also noted that the the UN Child Rights Committee (CRC) produced a report that was damning towards the current educational standards and teaching for British schoolchildren, highlighting the influence of religion in education, stating that the UK should "Repeal legal provisions for compulsory attendance in collective worship."and that the UK should establish “statutory guidance to ensure the right of all children, including children under 16 years of age, to withdraw from religious classes without parental consent”.

Instead of taking the findings of this report onboard, the UK Government appears to be doubling down on its promotion of religious fundamentalism in education by listening to extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalists within it’s own Party.

A report published today in The New European gives an insight into the people behind this ever-growing movement. A movement which is preceded by, and partly funded by, American christian fundamentalist groups that have grown to such power and influence that they now have a member who’s currently second in line to the US Presidency.

In the UK, they are led by Tory MP’s Miriam Cate and Danny Kruger who lead the so-called New Conservatives, which is a political front for their slightly older group, the New Social Covenant Unit.

Cates has introduced a Bill to Parliament that describes current sex education in UK schools as ‘sexually inappropriate’, a description that the National Union Of Headteachers has labelled ‘politically motivated’.

Serving as advisors on her Bill were the extreme right-wing group the Family Education Trust who The New European investigative team reveal “…oppose LGBT marriage, reject compulsory sex education and […] shares RSE-related misinformation online”. They were formed in 1971 under the name ‘Responsible Society’, later ‘Family And Youth Concern’ and now operate under their current name of the Family Education Trust. In their various incarnations they have opposed divorce, children born out of wedlock, abortion, sex before marriage, cohabitation and pornography and have blamed HIV/AIDS on ‘the permissive society’, stating that abstinence is the only morally acceptable form of sex education for schools.

Their advisory board is replete with extreme Christians who oppose all forms of sex education and regularly tweet and post opposition to gay marriage, LGBT issues and who all have links to other hard right Christian extremist groups and link to US based abstinence-religious sites such as ‘Love Matters’ and ‘Abstinence Clearing House’, both of which are either dead or only accessible from a US-based VPN.

Cates and her Bill are also influenced and supported by numerous Conservative religious ‘youth groups’ which have materialised over the last couple of years. As reported by Vice, these groups include “an anti-BLM, anti-Islam, anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, anti-green youth group” called ‘Orthodox Conservatives’ who were formed from the UK arm of Turning Point USA, a group who created “a ‘Professor Watchlist’ of academics that it claimed taught ‘leftist propaganda’ and ‘discriminated against conservative students’.”. Orthodox Conservatives are regularly seen on GB News and heard on Talk Radio. Their group advisory board includes Sir John Hayes, a Conservative MP who is also a member of the so-called ‘Common Sense Group’ as is Ethan Thoburn who works for Tory MP Andrew Rosindell. Their chief advisor, reports Vice, is Ben Harris-Quinney, chairman of the Tory Bow Group think-tank and ex-Conservative councillor, who was expelled from the Tory party and who “…claims he was asked by a party candidate to leave for being a ‘racist and a homophobe’”.

These groups all rail against what they call ‘Cultural Marxism’, which is a far-right antisemitic dog-whistle gaining popularity in the UK and USA amongst the alt-right that warns of a fake Jewish conspiracy to create a New Order/Illuminati style ‘One World’ government.

These then are the groups that are both behind and inform the views of Cates and Kruger. A far-right christian extremism that, under the guise of caring about family values, seeks to advance its agenda into the lives of our children via their education. This despite the mountain of evidence that shows that frank and thorough sex education “leads to a reduction in sexual violence, fewer teen births and enables children to recognise and report inappropriate sexual contact. Likewise, an article in the Times Educational Supplement highlights the misinformation at the very heart of Cates’ campaign, explaining that all teaching materials are already made available to parents on a majority of schools’ websites.” and that the policy of abstinence that they are so desperate to push shows “there is no evidence that having total control over your children’s sexual exploration has any effect whatsoever on teenage pregnancy rates.”

GOS UK are of the opinion that this is an attempt, based on bad science and blatant misinformation, to prolong and expand on the exposure children are mandated by law to have to Christianity in schools and that continued exposure to this sort of religious misinformation must stop.

Follow the link to the GOS website for all references in this article.