Victorian anti-scripture-in-schools campaigners ‘Fairness in Religion in Schools’ (FIRIS) have attacked the NSW Ethics class campaigners.

The Ethics programme, promoted by the St James Ethics Centre as an alternative to Special Religious Education is described as “glacially slow” and a “non-solution” in recent posts on the FIRIS website. Special Religious Education is the name given to the voluntary classes run by Christians in NSW schools. It’s called Christian Religious Education (CRE) in FIRIS’ home state of Victoria

Under a picture of Simon Longstaff, head of the St James Ethics Centre on the FIRIS website runs a caption “Simon Longstaff’s effort to put “ethics as a complement to scripture” finds itself now marketed with plain packaging and images of tumours to prevent kids from taking it up”.

They mean that selling the Ethics class is as hard as selling cigarettes in plain packaging. In FIRIS’ view, the Ethics class system introduced in NSW won’t provide a robust alternative to SRE/CRE because recruiting volunteer teachers is just too hard. “99% of schools are no better off than they were 10 years ago, nor will they be for a long long time.”

Many Christians would agree with FIRIS at this point. Recruiting volunteer teachers is a major weakness of Ethics. Conversely, one of the strengths of the Christian courses is that they mobilise tens of thousands of volunteers. This makes the point that Christianity is no bureaucracy, it is a movement of people seeking to do good in their community.

FIRIS would rather SRE/CRE was not in the curriculum. “The fact is that the path taken in NSW was taken not because it was right, but because it was seen as politically possible. It is politically possible to not have SRE – and people who think SRE should stop need to shake off the Stockholm Syndrome that grips the NSW policy on this.”

But a second best would be to get teachers to drive the Ethics course

“What I’d like to know is given the people of NSW have won the “right” to allow their children an alternative to church instruction – why can’t teachers employed by the schools provide this alternative?”

This pessimistic view underlines the capacity of the atheist lobby to mobilise their followers. It also reveals a readiness to enlist the organs of the state in promoting its point of view.

Those who appreciate irony will recognise that this mimics the criticism that atheists raise about scripture – by holding lessons at school we intrude into the public space. Using teachers would do the same for them, not only capturing the authority figures children relate to in the classroom but taking state money to pay for it.