Alan Judd advises the Government on the vetting of free schools. In an article for the Daily Telegraph – in part, a response to a scare story about creationism in the class room – he makes it clear that applying for free school status is an extremely demanding process:
On the particular issue of faith schools, he makes another good point:
Well, quite. I’m sure that we can all agree – wait a second, what was that about evangelical Christians!? Just look at the context: in a list of religions gone wrong, the adjective ‘evangelical’ is used in same way as ‘totalitarian’ and ‘segregationist’ i.e. to indicate extremism. While there is something undoubtedly extreme about totalitarian or segregationist variants of any belief system, evangelical Christianity is represented in this country by mainstream denominations likes the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians and large parts of the Church of England.
In an unpublished letter to the Telegraph (but published on the Cranmer blog), Steve Clifford of the Evangelical Alliance protests:
It is possible that Alan Judd meant ‘evangelical’ in some non-specific colloquial sense rather than to identify a major branch of the Christian faith, but shouldn’t a government advisor on faith-related matters should choose his terms more carefully?
If a major branch of any other religion had been equated with extremism – whether inadvertently or otherwise – there would have been no end of fuss. However, when it comes to Christians – and, in particular, evangelical Christians – rather less care and attention is paid.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the media. When, for instance, did you last see an evangelical Christian portrayed sympathetically in a TV drama – rather than as a self-regarding ass / horrendous bigot / murdering lunatic?
Perhaps the BBC’s diversity unit could look into the matter?