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Britain MP: 'Government Investigation into Sunday Schools is Absurd'

CBN

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Stephen Timms, Britain's Labour party parliamentarian, is calling the government's recent proposal to investigate Sunday Schools as "absurd."

The former Chief Secretary to the Treasury said that Ofsted's, or Britain's Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills, an announcement reveals that government officials "see religious faith as essentially a problem."

"They think there might be some bad things going on and people might be incited to do things they ought not to," he said. "This is absurd."

Officials announced in October that they will "set out next steps" for proposals to register and inspect all out-of-school settings.

According to the Christian Institute, the government wants to inspect any setting in England that provides instruction to children for more than six to eight hours in any week.

Colin Hart, director of the Christian Institute, called the proposal as an  "unprecedented attack" on religious freedom.

"The idea of having an Ofsted inspector sitting in on your church youth group or Sunday school to see if you are an extremist is, I have to say, highly offensive," he wrote in a letter last year to then Education Secretary Nicky Morgan.

The Archbishop of Canterbury also weighed in on the proposal saying that the government has a seriously flawed view of extremism that places Christians alongside extreme Muslim groups, The Christian Institute reports.

Earlier this month, Justin Welby criticized ministers and civil servants for "religious illiteracy", and said many assume conservative Christian believers are "a bit bonkers".

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