So Michael Gove thinks it’s OK to accept £375,000 from an evangelical Christian movement to send a free Bible to every school in the UK. This is so astonishingly daft on so many levels it’s difficult to know where to start. Here are five.
- What possible impact could one copy have on each school?
- How would we react if an Islamist group were to pay for a copy of the Quran to be sent to each school?
- How does this sit with our aspirations for great inter-faith networks?
- Families from non Christian faiths give their children their holy books. Why don’t Christian families do the same?
- Why not encourage downloading or tablet forms and save the massive use of paper?
The most tragic one is a sixth. The atheist Richard Dawkins has backed the plan on the basis that it will give readers the awareness – as he believes, not me – that the Bible advocated murder, slavery and theft and realising this, people will then turn towards atheism as a result.
Oh dear Mr Gove. So the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.
As a member of a minority faith I do hate this condescending attitude of bible-pushers. A zealot of any hue is bound to cause upset.
Michael Gove certainly knows how to come up with “eye-catching initiatives”. Whether it’s sending out Bibles, buying a yacht for the Queen or letting people set up their own schools, he’s got an impresario’s gift for keeping us interested. He holds our attention with the £370,000 he’s spending on gilded scriptures. It distracts from what’s happening with unloved billions elsewhere.