The posture of victimhood

Unsurprisingly, Lydia Playfoot, the 16-year-old English schoolgirl who took her school to court after she was banned from wearing a 'purity ring' at school, has lost her case. The High Court ruled that Millais School in West Sussex had not violated the girl's human rights by preventing her from wearing a ring, even one symbolising her commitment to chastity until marriage. The verdict is sensible enough: school dress codes are surely best left to schools rather than fought out in the law courts. But the fact that the case did require judicial arbitration says a lot about contemporary society's confusion over both free expression and sexual morality.

It does perhaps seem odd that the school refused to tolerate such an innocuous piece of jewellery, but it is even more bizarre that rather than accepting the decision with good grace - turning the other cheek, you might say - Lydia and her family chose to turn the affair into a national media circus, even claiming that this was an example of the persecution of Christians. First of all, 'the silver ring thing' is hardly a tenet of the Christian faith, but rather a recent innovation of the American evangelical movement. Second, and more importantly, in turning this into an issue of self-expression and martyrdom, the Playfoots actually detracted from the moral purpose supposedly so close to their hearts.

Just as we hear more about the victimisation and demonisation of Muslims than we do about the virtues of Islam, we now hear more about the 'persecution' of Christians than the persecution of Christ and the moral message associated with it. We do hear a lot about the spiritual emptiness and moral decadence of contemporary secular society, but much less about what religion has to offer as an alternative. Instead, whenever things come to a head, religious groups are all too ready to adopt the all-too-secular strategies of crying victimisation and going to court. Indeed, when asked about her belief in chastity, Lydia highlighted the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy rather than invoke Biblical morality or spiritual concerns. Even this libertarian atheist can think of more profound reasons than those to be wary of sexual licence.

If Christians and other religious communities have a moral critique to make of secular society, they would do better to spit it out and let us all debate the matter, rather than hiding behind made-up religious symbols and the posture of victimhood.

Dolan Cummings

'Which witch?' or, The trials and tribulations of the world of work

Harry Potter has again made an appearance in the world known to fans as the world of 'muggles', or to the rest of us, 'reality'. It was reported on Friday that a South London teaching assistant, Sariya Allen, is taking her former school to an employment tribunal. Allen recently quit her job over a kerfuffle with her school after refusing to listen to a child read from a Harry Potter book. She is now launching an appeal against the decision, on religious discrimination grounds. Cries to ban the potty Potter generally come from the Christian community (this case being no exception, as Allen is a Pentecostal Christian) with the arguments usually focusing on protecting children against the evil and biblically-banned 'glorification' of witchcraft. Not this time. Reacting against the book in the way Allen did was not motivated by fears of the 'damage' it might cause to the impressionable mind of the youngster involved. Rather, it was a straight-forward refusal from an adult to engage in an activity supposedly at odds with her religion (erm… reading?). Allen was not damning the book under the guise of child protection, but was candidly 'protecting' herself.

But at whose cost? A child keen on the ever-popular Potter series is no rare, and indeed no bad, thing. Refusing to allow children to engage with imaginative material on the grounds that it might affect their ability to make meaningful and honest decisions about the world is bad enough, but (implicitly) conceding that youngsters may eventually do so if they please, but that adults cannot shows an alarming lack of confidence in an adult's ability to distinguish fact from fiction. More importantly, Allen’s reaction against the alleged ‘religious discrimination’ practiced by the school administration demonstrates an inability to distinguish between one’s responsibilities as a teacher and any responsibility one may feel as a member of a religious community or as a ‘person of faith’.

Interestingly, many children's books are set in magical universes and involve portrayals of witchcraft, most obviously CS Lewis' Narnia series, championed by many Christian institutions for its redemptive Christian message. Apparently this is permissible because the wicked white witch Jardis is killed – yes, murdered in cold blood by the Christ-like talking lion Aslan and his upper-class London friends. As for JK Rowling's Harry Potter, the books do not so much champion witchcraft as demonstrate that there are universal values which can be adhered to by people irrespective of religious conviction, such as friendship, honesty and bravery, which can help people to live decent and fulfilling lives. And to point out again: it is a work of fiction. Perhaps we should be asking, which witch is the one worth wailing about? - Potter, Aslan, or Allen herself?

Sarah Boyes