The Bishop of Wales, Barry Morgan wants compulsory worship to continue in British schools:

A law allowing 16-year-olds to opt out of prayers in assembly devalues and marginalises religion in schools, Dr Barry Morgan, the Archbishop of Wales, has warned.

Dr Morgan warned that by degrading the status of faith, schools risked becoming obsessed with “personal attainment”.

He said that group prayer offered pupils a rare opportunity for “recognition, affirmation and celebration of shared values” and should be encouraged.

“Collective worship has been branded as something that young people grow out of by the age of 16, at precisely the time when it might be the best way of feeding both their minds and their hearts as they start to explore the responsibilities and consequences of adult life,” Dr Morgan said.

“I am concerned that this is the thin end of the wedge and could be just the start of a process that devalues and ultimately marginalises the provision of collective worship in schools”.

His warning came after Wales joined England by passing a law allowing pupils aged 16 and over to withdraw from collective worship without parental consent.

This comes from the same Barry Morgan who was all for compelling those in his church who disagree with women’s ordination to submit to the authority of a woman bishop – even if it went against their consciences. Liberal Anglican bishops peddle diversity to all and sundry, employing compulsion when necessary.

Barry Morgan is also in favour of gay bishops: when Gene Robinson was not invited to Lambeth, Barry- in a fit of pique –hosted his own meeting of liberal Anglicans with Gene as a guest.

Given this context, what does he mean by rare opportunity for “recognition, affirmation and celebration of shared values”? He means what any pseudo-Christian Anglican bishop would mean: we must indoctrinate the young with the western liberal elitist dogma of diversity, inclusion and relativism so that they grow up like us.

I went through high school in Wales when attending “morning assembly” was compulsory. The predominant effect of watching bored teachers, who evidently did not believe in what they were doing, go through the motions every day was to engender in me a revulsion to Christianity: as far as I was concerned Christianity was an exercise in hypocrisy and tedium. Interestingly, a couple of teachers who partially reversed this effect were a chemistry teacher who was an evangelical Christian – and a prim fusspot – and a math teacher who quietly subverted the establishment efforts to Christianise the school population. The former was not afraid to engage in debates with students about his faith and the latter – who called himself a “seeker” – tried to make us think about the consequences our beliefs.

I wonder whether Barry Morgan would object to students absenting themselves from his form of bogus Christian worship to attend a Bible study run by Evangelical Christians.