I watched Rod Liddle’s programme, The New Fundamentalists, on Channel 4 last night. It seemed a very weak programme to me. Liddle’s journalism begged the question, a logical fallacy in which you assume what you wish to prove. Well, he assumed that evangelical Christians are a major danger to British society and then set out to prove it.

The foci of this rather disjointed film were: evangelical attitudes to sexuality, including abstinence from sex outside marriage (which is also a Bah?’? teaching) and homosexuality (also a Bah?’? teaching). He tried to portray these attitudes and behaviours as dangerous perversions and interviewed a group leader from the Silver Ring Thing, which bills itself as a ‘high tech, high energy’ programme for young people to persuade them to pledge sexual abstinence until they marry. The group leader and the young girl who had made the pledge both came over as rather naive, but Liddle assumed that sexual ‘freedom’ (aka permissiveness) is the norm and decried the belief that sexual abstinence was the best way to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (stds).

The received liberal view is that the most effective way to prevent the spread of stds is to use condoms. It seems that the SRT people don’t talk about condoms and that there’s a fairly high lapse rate by kids who’ve made their pledge. Amongst those, allegedly, there’s a higher level of stds than amongst the condom-using population of young people. I have to say I don’t know the science on this - and clearly barrier methods, such as condoms, are going to be the most effective means of preventing spread of stds amongst the sexually active. However, this does not explain why abstinence is, allegedly, less effective. It would seem to depend on whether young people can stick to abstinence at the time of their lives when the hormones are flooding through their bodies and they are at the peak of their sexual drive. There’s no doubt that this is very challenging for most young people and it is very important that they are supported (in a non-guilt-trip way) by their families and their peers. Clearly it is easier to be abstinent if you live in an abstinent culture.

Liddle interviewed Colin Dye, senior minister at the Kensington Temple, a large Elim Pentecostal church in London. Dye was very clear about the church’s teaching on homosexuality. Once again, Liddle ridiculed this, assuming that active homosexuality is OK. He also interviewed a gay man who had been through a counselling programme with Living Waters ministries, ‘an in-depth, Christ-centred program for people seeking healing in areas of sexual and relational brokenness’. The man, who was interviewed under conditions of anonymity, said he had tried to follow the programme but had decided he was still gay. Liddle asserted that the Living Waters programme teaches that people become homosexual because of the way they are brought up and implied that homosexuality is innate and a fixed characteristic. If so, the science is not with him. Sexual formation is a complex area of human character and behaviour; it certainly isn’t just nature OR nurture, but very likely a bit of each.

The Bah?’? teachings on homosexuality are summed up in this extract from the Bah?’? world website:

Bah??? law limits permissible sexual relations to those between a man and a woman in marriage. Believers are expected to abstain from sex outside matrimony. Bah???s do not, however, attempt to impose their moral standards on those who have not accepted the Revelation of Bah??u?ll?h. While requiring uprightness in all matters of morality, whether sexual or otherwise, the Bah??? teachings also take account of human frailty and call for tolerance and understanding in regard to human failings. In this context, to regard homosexuals with prejudice would be contrary to the spirit of the Bah??? teachings.

The Bah?’? Network on Aids, Sexuality, Addictions and Abuse (BNASAA) is a useful resource on Bah?’? attitudes and teachings on sexuality.

Liddle also visited an evangelical Christian street programme to rescue drug addicts. He had to admit that it was very successful (when I was counselling alcohol abusers in Shetland, I was familiar with research that showed that the most effective way to combat an addiction is religious conversion). He was reduced to criticizing the music that this particular outfit played on the street to attract people.

A large part of the programme was given over to an investigation of the Emmanuel Schools Foundation in the north east of England. These schools were established and funded by a wealthy evangelical Christian businessman, Sir Peter Vardy. The foundation’s website says this:

The EMMANUEL Schools Foundation exists to promote the highest possible standards within comprehensive secondary education through provision based upon Christian principles.

The Foundation is based in the North-east of England and its schools operate within areas of socio-economic deprivation. The schools are non-fee-paying and work with the Department for Education and Skills and their local communities in their pursuit of ‘personal best’ achievement for all students.

By valuing every individual, regardless of ability, and by welcoming those of all Faiths and of none, the schools place the Person of Christ and His example at the centre of their inspiration as they mould a curriculum appropriate for students of the 21st century.

Liddle’s argument against the schools centred on two things: they are state schools run by Christians who allegedly push Christianity down the children’s throats; and they teach creationism alongside evolutionary theory, both of which they allegedly portray as faith positions. He also objected to the strictness of the discipline in the schools and filmed a meeting of parents of children at the Doncaster academy who were, apparently, furious at the way the school treated their children. Allegedly the children are not allowed to leave the classroom to go to the toilet and this has led to humiliation and embarrassment for girls who are having periods and cannot change their sanitary towels.

Liddle’s main weapon against creationism was incredulity. ‘You believe that the world was created in six days,’ he challenged the Principal. ‘You can’t really believe that?’ The Principal affirmed that he did believe it, it was in the Bible and he believed what the Bible said. However, that was his personal belief. It was not something the school thrust upon the children.

Now, I agree that it is worrying that people in the 21st century can believe that the world was created in six days, that creationism is dignified in some places as a ’science’, when it patently is not. But holding such a belief surely cannot disqualify a person from having a senior position in a school, if he or she is properly qualified and competent as a teacher or administrator.

I’m afraid Liddle showed himself up very badly. Repeated incredulity does not make a logical argument, nor does it make for good journalism. It is certainly not a way of getting at the truth.

As far as the discipline in the schools was concerned, one group of parents and children said they liked it. It seems pretty clear that the schools are very popular. There were Muslim pupils to be seen in the classes, which looked orderly, well run and conducive to learning. The Principle said that there had been a higher than average rate of exclusions in the first year, but his aim was to bring the exclusion rate to below average very quickly. Liddle and some of the disaffected parents in Doncaster claimed that the schools’ good results were boosted by excluding the less able and thus operating a hidden selection policy. This was denied by the school.

There’s no doubt that discipline is essential to learning. The programme gave no context to the stories of those who had been excluded - for example, one boy in Doncaster allegedly for smoking off the school premises and out of school hours. We did not hear the other side of the story - and there’s almost always another side to every such story.

In my view, Liddle did not make his case. The Emmanuel Foundation schools looked very good. I think there is a concern about state schools being run on evangelical Christian principles if there is no alternative school for children to attend. This is certainly a point that the British Humanist Association would make. And it would be deeply concerning if children were being taught that Darwinian evolution is a ‘faith position’ and that creationism is equally valid. I am not convinced, however, that this is the case. The schools are certainly not being run by ‘an extreme religious sect’, as the Channel 4 website claims.

Liddle made his own position quite clear. He is ‘a sort of’ Christian, part of the liberal Anglican church that values doubt above the kind of Biblical certainties that the evangelicals hold to (and which are part of their attraction to many). He admitted that this liberal wing of the Church is declining, while the evangelical wing is growing and is full of confidence. Now, I am a Bah?’?, not a Christian (but I believe that Jesus is a Manifestation of God, indeed the Son of God, understood in an inclusive way). I am certainly no evangelical. I sway between doubt and faith all the time, but I do not see how one can make doubt the centre of a faith. Bah?’u'll?h speaks of certitude - a deep-seated soul-knowledge that is not a form of bigotry; we may achieve certitude, but we always have to acknowledge that there are many more meanings to the Word of God than we can ever be aware of. No matter how long we explore the Word, we will never come to the end of its meanings. This is the greatest protection against fundamentalism in the Bah?’? Faith.

There is value in the liberal position, but liberalism (and I’m not referring to the policies of the Liberal Democrats, by the way) has become closed and dogmatic in its own ways and blinds its adherents, such as Rod Liddle, to the possibility that liberalism may have seriously damaged the moral fabric of society.

Whether the rise of fundamentalist Christianity is a threat to the rest of us is a moot point. I would certainly not like to live in a society ruled by the precepts and prescriptions of Christian Voice and their Director, Stephen Green, who was shown picketing a theatre in Plymouth that was staging Jerry Springer the Opera. I’ve no doubt that Rod Liddle could have gone after far more threatening, but less well known, fundamentalist Christian groups than the happy people of the Kensington Temple or the foundation that runs the Emmanuel Foundation schools in the north east of England.

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