Christian School in Sweden Ordered to Stop Children's Prayer Over Meals, Teaching Bible Lessons
A town in Sweden has taken the nation's secularism to a new high after forbidding children at a Christian preschool from praying during mealtimes, saying "amen" and hearing Bible lessons.
During an inspection visit to the school in Umeå municipality, supervisors from the district told school officials to stop doing religion-based activities in class, saying these are contrary to the nation's Education Act, Breitbart reported.
The officials reminded the administrator of the Salvation Army-run kindergarten that the law forbids the inclusion of "confessional elements" in all schools, even Christian schools, during class hours.
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Moreover, the school children must always have the choice of whether or not to participate in any religious activity, the officials said, adding that the school did not give their students enough opportunity to opt out of saying grace at mealtimes.
Britt Marie Mårtensson, the preschool's administrator, told SVT that she did not think saying grace at mealtimes at the kindergarten would come under the umbrella of "education."
"As a confessional activity, we knew we could no longer have prayer time while children are at their desks where they learn, so we thought we would add grace as a nice feature during mealtimes," she explained.
Since they have been told to stop such activities, instead of saying grace, the children now sing a song that gives thanks at mealtimes.
"It's sad because grace is a tradition, but the rhyme is also nice and it allows the kids to choose to whom and what they want to give thanks," Mårtensson said.
The teachers at the kindergarten have also been prohibited from holding any more "Bible Snacktimes," an activity in which children and teachers talk about stories in the Bible.
The Swedish government recently said it is considering including "gender expression and identity" into its existing hate crime legislation following the Canadian Senate's passage of a law against the use of wrong gender pronouns where violators may face hate crime charges, CP earlier reported.
Sweden's hate crime legislation currently includes speech aimed at individuals based on their sexual orientation, race and religious belief.
"We want to distance ourselves from the concept of race, which of course lacks any scientific evidence that we can divide mankind into races," Sweden Justice Minister Morgan Johansson said.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister of Sweden made headlines worldwide recently when he vowed to force all priests working for the Church of Sweden to perform same-sex marriages regardless of their personal view.
"No priest in the Swedish Church can refuse to marry same-sex couples" regardless of the priest's view on the matter, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said in a recent interview with the Church of Sweden's newspaper Kyrkans Tidning.
Lofven also supports a motion to only allow priests who agree with same-sex marriage the opportunity to be ordained, according to Breitbart.
