Down Under Goes Around the Bend

It emerged last fortnight that Queensland’s Department of Education wants to ban primary school students from talking about Jesus. Kate Jones, the relevant minister, hastily insisted that ‘no one is telling a child what they can and can’t say in the playground,’ and that current education policy remains as it has been ‘for more than 20 years’, but her department’s recent review of religious instruction in schools speaks for itself:
The Department expects schools to take appropriate action if aware that students participating in RI [Religious Instruction] are evangelising to students who do not participate in their RI class, given this could adversely affect the school’s ability to provide a safe, supportive and inclusive environment for all students. 
In the report, an example of inappropriate evangelistic action is (get this) praying for your fellow students. According to the Australian, earlier reviews cite further examples like ‘sharing Christmas cards that refer to Jesus’s birth,’ and ‘creating Christmas tree decorations to give away’. God knows what ‘appropriate action’ is supposed to be handed down to students who pray irresponsibly. A firm talking to? Expulsion? If ‘inclusivity’ is the orthodoxy of the day, should we perhaps reinstate the old punishment for heresy and bring back burning?

My favorite part of the article:

  The report gets even weirder when it recommends that biblical instructors refrain from mentioning anything too ‘violent’ that takes place in the Bible. This is an enormous ask. I don’t know if anybody writing the report has ever noticed, but Christians tend to wear these little gold ‘t’ shaped thingies on chains around their necks. If somebody from Queensland’s Department of Education and Training were to open a Bible, they might discover that the itty bitty aforementioned intersections of vertical and horizontal lines symbolically represent that time the Messiah was nailed to a cross until his lungs collapsed and he died. Violence is at the very heart of the Christian story. You may as well ask maths teachers to do their lessons without reference to numbers.