PARENTS AND RELIGIOUS TEACHING.
LTO THE EDITOR OF THE "8PE0TATOR:1
SIR,—It seems now to be taken for granted by many that the parents of children in elementary schools wish to have a voice in the religious instruction of their children. May I give my experience ? It is of ancient date, but probably the parent in 1906 is very like the parent in 1870. In that year I became vicar of a parish in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in which the Dissenters far outnumbered the Church people. I found that in the National schools more than half the children were Baptists, that more than half the remainder were Wesleyans, that the Church Catechism was taught to all indiscriminately, and that the Baptist child unblushingly said that his name was given him in his baptism, &c. This seemed to me immoral. I therefore had a tea-party—always a sure way of attracting people in the West Riding—to which the parents of all the children in the day-schools were invited, and I begged the Baptist parents to withdraw their children from religious instruction when the lesson was from the Church Catechism. Not a single child was withdrawn. I shrank from making any distinction myself between child and child, and did what I suppose I had no legal right to do,—I stopped the teaching of the Catechism in the day-school, and taught the Holy Scriptures only, and took care that the Church Catechism was taught effectively in the Sunday-school.—I am, Sir, &c.,
D. K.
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