Christian faith and religious education in schools. Are there neutral schools or not?

I sent the following article to Etelä-Suomen Sanomat magazine. The topic is the neutrality of schools or, in fact, the impossibility of it, because we cannot be completely neutral

Are there neutral schools or not?

ESS reported on school morning openings under the title "Many schools only organize morning openings suitable for everyone" (September 10). This raised the question of whether schools are politically and ideologically neutral spaces or not, as the principal of one school stated in the newspaper. I think it's impossible. If you bow in one direction, you turn your back in the other direction at the same time. That is, if you support some other worldview, you reject another worldview at the same time. Yes, each of us leans in a certain direction, including school principals, teachers, students and their parents. Nobody is neutral.

So what is the current trend in society? There is no doubt about this: the trend over the years has been that more and more people want God and the Christian faith out of society and their lives, including schools. That's the main trend.

But where or through whom did this trend start? The most important factors in Finland have been free thinkers and non-religious opponents of the Christian faith. They consider it a freedom of religion and a right that Christianity should no longer be recognized, taught and mentioned among children in schools or in other contexts. Other things should be treated with acceptance and approval, but not God and Jesus Christ. School principals and others strive to comply with this requirement.

I ask, however, what is so bad about Jesus that he and the teaching about him must be opposed? Isn't Jesus good and perfect, so why do freethinkers and others oppose him? They follow the same model as in the former communist countries. This is hard for me to understand.

I also ask why free thinkers do not interfere with atheistic and religious concepts in schools, such as the big bang, the self-creation of life or the gradual development from the primordial cell? They are religious views, not science-based views. It is impossible that "nothing exploded" and gave birth to the universe, and the self-creation has not been proven. In addition, several well-known paleontologists such as Stephen Jay Gould have admitted that gradual development is not visible in fossils (The Panda's Thumb, 1988, pp. 182,183). I ask, why don't free thinkers interfere with these religious views, which I personally consider to be myths? Why have they allowed these religious views to be allowed in schools while opposing Jesus and the Christian faith?

Jari Iivanainen

The following is another article on the same topic. I also sent that article to the newspaper's public section.

School events and the rejection of the gospel

Again, there was news about how some people were indignant that there was a spiritual part in the school premises for a few minutes (Why was the inauguration ceremony of Vääksy co-educational school spiritual? / ESS 4.5). I wonder about this narrow-mindedness of people towards the gospel. Don't the critics know that literacy, the school system and hospitals have been created in most countries on the basis of the Christian faith? Here in Finland, Mikael Agricola, Finland's reformer and father of literature, printed the first ABC book and the New Testament and parts of other books of the Bible. The people learned to read through them. Oxford and Cambridge were originally founded to teach the Bible. Both cities have plenty of churches and chapels. Similarly, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and hundreds of other universities were founded by revivalist Christians. Even the first universities in India were founded on the same basis. The universities of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay and Serampore are well-known. In addition, there are tens of thousands of schools and hospitals in Africa that were founded by Christians. Nelson Mandela wrote in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom: "In church the affairs of this life were as much taken care of as were the affairs of the future life; it seemed that everything that the Africans accomplished, originated from the missionary work of the church."
   A good question is, why do parents oppose the teaching of the gospel in schools, when it has been the starting point for most schools in the world, including in Finland? Why should we reject all the good that our ancestors valued and on which society was built?
   When Jesus and the gospel about him are opposed in schools - which has been especially supported by freethinkers - was Jesus so bad that it is worth opposing him? Are the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount or the teaching about forgiveness of sins through him such harmful teachings that they should not be mentioned in schools? I personally disagree. I claim that many of the problems in society, crime and the increased malaise of children and young people are due to the fact that Jesus and the teaching about Him have been rejected.
   Now we are following in the same footsteps as happened in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the last century. Is this what people want? For example, euthanasia, which is popular today, was not an invention of the Nazis in Germany but was widely supported in intellectual circles before they came to power. Likewise, the very same practice is now being followed as the early communists represented in the Soviet Union. The communists, known for their anti-God nature, made changes to the legislation in a short time that are well-known today. Abortion was legalized in 1920, divorce was made easier (1926), and marriage registration was not necessary (1926). The courts also accepted homosexual marriages and trans ideology (Sherry Wolf: Sexuality and Socialism, pp. 88-89). In the Soviet Union, this legislation took less than ten years; in Finland, it took more than 50 years. However, in the 1930s, the legislation was changed again in the other direction in the Soviet Union, because the consequences were catastrophic: the birth rate fell, families broke up, the number of fatherless children increased, and crime increased (Matti Joensuu: Avoliitto, avioliitto ja perhe, pp. 85-91)
I think it is worth learning a lesson from this. When God is wanted out of schools and society, there are no good consequences. The experiences of the last century should be taken into account.

Jari Iivanainen