News in the 'Metro'?

I am not usually very impressed with the quantity or quality of the news to be extracted from the average copy of the free 'Metro', a fact which does not reflect well on the state of our printed media - either on the supply or the demand side.

But this morning, an item from yesterday's edition did catch my eye. It seems that a parson somewhere near Manchester has declined to baptise a child on the grounds that the parents were not married. Not that they were not married in the right sort of church, just that they were not married at all. Now while I have been an atheist all my life, I do have pretensions to tolerance and generally speaking, I think it should be up to a church to decide who is eligible for which of its rites. They are not a high street shop where, it seems, that the law does insist on equal treatment for all, without regard to colour, creed or anything else - although in this last case I also think that both sides in any dispute ought to show a bit of common sense and avoid gratuitous or unecessary provocation.

However, leaving aside the religious affiliation of the parents, in the present case they seem to be saying that of the three primary schools within reasonable reach, two are faith schools requiring baptism into the Christian faith. In theory, they might just as well have required reception into the Muslim faith, or the Hindu faith, whatever reception might mean in those cases.

And this, if true, would to my mind be wrong. Provision of schools should largely be a matter for the state and schools funded by the state, should not, by and large, be faith schools. Most people are not faithful and there should not be areas in the country which are dominated by faith schools. There should be no requirement or pressure to go through the form but not the substance of a baptism, a proceeding which discredits both parties.

But whether the parental claim is true or not is unclear. Google reveals half a dozen or more primary schools in the area in question (Dukinfield, near Manchester), only two of which look to be faith schools, both Christian, one RC.

None of these issues were explored by Dominic Yeatman in the Metro. That was left as an exercise for the reader.