Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

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1. 

   As someone who produced dozens of nativity plays as a teacher and a Sunday School leader, that title ‘A Gay…

2. 

   The defence of a Christian view never seems to be settled by debate: exchange of facts, reference to historical events.…

3. 

   But …… Rwanda is a safe place: Parliament says so.https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/8/contentsSafety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 S 2 Safety…

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   Religion can survive only on the most unquestionable assumptions. The statements made on Sundays on the BBC as if they…

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   Yes, if I’ve got anything remotely like a phobia, as an ex-fundy, its bibles, churches, tracts etc. I like to…

THE Monty Python team seized the opportunity in 1980 to parody All Things … by giving the world the very scathing All Things Dull and Ugly.

But almost 50 years on, the original hymn, written for children in 1848, remains, according this report, the first song listed on the Church of England’s recommendations for wedding ceremony hymns, and features high on many popular hymn lists for special occasions.

This greatly displeases the former Archbishop Lord Rowan “Dumbledore” Williams, who wants C of E services to feature “more theologically rich songs” that seem to have “fallen out of common memory” as hymns have become less prominent in schools and society.

His comment came in response to a letter to The Times from Lord Lisvane, chairperson of the Royal College of Organists, in which he referred to “All Things” as “saccharine doggerel” and “deeply depressing.”

Lord Williams, who has described the song as “very bland, and, at worst in its full version, rather aggressive,” explains that many people in today’s secular society lack a knowledge of hymns and as a result tend to draw upon those which they sang as children.

The unfortunate effect of that is you have hymns that work at a primary school level.

A good hymn “nourishes the spirit” through storytelling, metaphors and pictures, Williams said, citing Love Divine, All Loves Excelling and Come, O Thou Traveller Unknown, both by Charles Wesley, as good examples. 

Lord Williams has urged schools to include more hymn-singing and encouraged religious education teachers to explore more singing and chanting.

Ironically, his remarks came at at a time when the National Secular Society, which campaigns for an end to compulsory worship in the UK schools, reported that 70 schools have been granted exemptions from the legal requirement to provide Christian worship since 2018.

An investigation by Schools Week revealed that in place of an act of Christian worship, some schools now teach pupils about “looking after the planet” and mindfulness instead. Other schools are replacing Christian worship with multifaith assemblies.

State-funded schools are required by law to hold daily acts of collective worship, which must be “wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character”.

However, under Department for Education guidance, schools may also apply for a “determination”—an exemption from the requirement that collective worship be of a Christian character. Headteachers may apply for a determination if they judge this mandated character of collective worship to be in conflict with the family backgrounds of pupils.

According to figures obtained by Schools Week via freedom of information requests, 23 academies and 46 local authority maintained schools have sought an exemption since 2018.

However, the true number of schools which have applied for an exemption may be much higher, as many councils did not hold the relevant data.

Despite just 26 percent of the public believing that school assemblies should feature religious worship, the Government says it has “no plans to review its policy on collective worship”.

NSS chief executive Stephen Evans, above, said:

Laws mandating worship have no place in a modern education system.

Assemblies can be useful in transmitting shared values and promoting pupils’ spiritual, moral and cultural development, but compelling schools to hold religious worship is neither helpful nor desirable in achieving this aim.

The obligation should be removed from school leaders, who increasingly recognise that imposing Christian worship is totally inappropriate in their religiously diverse and largely nonreligious school communities.

Here, for your delectation, is the Python version:

All things dull and ugly,
All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty,
The Lord God made the lot.
Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom.
He made their horrid wings.

All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.

Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid
Who made the spikey urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did!

All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.

Amen.

I should point out that, havng been laid low for almost three weeks by bronchitis at the same time my husband was hospitalised for five days with the same condition, I started a list of songs I want played at my memorial service—not my funeral as I have opted not to have one.

Top of that list is Todd Snider’s “Conservative Christian, Right Wing, Republican, Straight, White, American Male.”

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