News – Atheists target schools

ET staff writer
ET staff writer
01 June, 2009 1 min read

Atheists target schools

An atheist group is planning to recruit school children to teach them how to damage religious activity in schools.

Children will be encouraged to undermine the role of Christian assemblies and the way religious education is taught. They will also be trained to lobby local authorities about these issues.

The National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (AHS) will launch the recruitment drive in the summer. It will coincide with an atheist summer camp for kids. The move has the backing of prominent atheists Richard Dawkins and A. C. Grayling.

The AHS is also actively working on university campuses. The group claims to be aware of 25 atheist societies at colleges – up from 7 a year ago.

Chloë Clifford-Frith is press officer of the AHS. She is concerned that Christian Unions in schools and universities are teaching young people about creation and saying homosexuality is wrong. She said: ‘We want to point out how silly some of these beliefs are and hope that these groups will help to do that’.

The Christian Institute’s Simon Calvert responded: ‘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’.

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