Archbishop attacks ‘downgrade’ of religious education
As Pope Benedict delivers his traditional message in Rome calling for peace, the Archbishop of Canterbury uses his last Easter sermon to attack what he calls a move to downgrade religious education.
Dr Rowan Williams, in his last Easter sermon before he retires, said it was the “worst possible moment” to lower the status of the subject. He claimed many young people took religion seriously, and weren’t as hostile to faith as society might expect.
He also argued a number of youngsters appreciate the role it plays in shaping and sustaining human existence and are keen to learn about it.
“There is plenty to suggest that younger people, while still statistically deeply unlikely to be churchgoers, don’t have the hostility to faith that one might expect, but at least share some sense that there is something here to take seriously – when they have a chance to learn about it,” he said.
“It is about the worst possible moment to downgrade the status and professional excellence of religious education in secondary schools – but that’s another sermon.”
Dr Williams, who will resign as Archbishop of Canterbury at the end of the year to take up a post at Cambridge University, also told followers the ultimate test of the Christian religion is not whether it is useful, beneficial or helpful to the human race but whether or not its central claim – the resurrection of Jesus Christ – actually happened.
“Easter makes a claim not just about a potentially illuminating set of human activities but about an event in history and its relation to the action of God,” he said.
“Very simply, in the words of this morning’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we are told that ‘God raised Jesus to life’.”
He said any understanding of the significance of the resurrection which fell short of this truth would be to misunderstand it.
Dr Williams added: “We are not told that Jesus ‘survived death’; we are not told that the story of the empty tomb is a beautiful imaginative creation that offers inspiration to all sorts of people; we are not told that the message of Jesus lives on. We are told that God did something.”
The religious leader also touched on the conflict in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Pope Benedict delivered his traditional Easter message in Rome’s St Peter’s Square – calling for peace around the world.
The Pope urged Syria to accept international calls to end the bloodshed. And he told the hundred thousand strong crowd that the joy of Easter might comfort Christian communities which were suffering because of their faith.