Is compulsory RE to be defended?

I agree with Mr John B. Cullen (March 19), and 1 would urge your readers not to subscribe to a campaign in defence of the religious clauses of the 1944 Education Act without very careful study and reflection.
These clauses are not sacrosanct, even though the Government has now denied in the Commons an intention to amend them "at present".
In today's plural society, where many people are no longer religious believers and many more are nominal believers, it is by no means self-evident that compulsory religious education and compulsory worship in schools, subject to rights of withchawal, are the best policy.
This policy has in fact been widely criticised for some time past not only by Humanists but by believers of every denomination. The British Council of Churches' Education Committee, in disagreement with the Festival of Light and the Order of Christian Unity, recently decided that compulsory religious education should eventually be ended.
The editorial of Learning for Living, the journal of the Christian Education Movement (Spring, 1976), was sympathetic to amendment of the clauses. The Association of Christian Teachers is more conservative but favours some change.
A relevant report by the Religious Education Council is expected shortly. In 1970 a Social Morality council working party of religious (including Catholic) and Humanist educational leaders found the clauses out-dated. In a word, there are open minds among many thoughtful and experienced people.
Reasonable debate on this issue risks being embittered by the kind of emotional and angry campaign for which Mr Sheill (March 12) and his Pro Fide supporter, Mr Rogers (March 19) seem to be calling. Nor can such a campaign be made respectable by an appeal to ecumenism.
The aim of the latter is not to enforce common Christian rights but to unite in service to non
Christians. One does not serve people by treating them as enemies: still less by misrepresenting their intentions.
The Pro Fide statements that Mr Edge's draft Bill seeks "the revision of the 1944 Education Act in such a way that Christianity could' no longer be taught, legally, in any school, non-denominational or denominational", and that "the very existence of all Catholic schools is endangered" by it, is so grotesquely wide of the mark that one wonders if Mr Rogers has read the document concerned.
He must certainly have mis-read the motives of its authors.
Edward Oliver Secretary General, The Social Morality Council. 17 York House, London, W8.
A campaign has been launched to "Save Religious Education" in schools. This is necessary because a Labour MP, Mr Geoffrey Edge, MP, has announced his intention of introducing into Parliament a Bill which will deny children their statutory right to be taught about the Christian religion upon which our culture and ethics are founded.
The giving of religious education to the young is arguably more important than it has ever been. Dedicated and vociferous minority groups are determined to abolish school worship and replace religion with an alien atheistic philosophy. The removal of the clauses in the 1944 Education Act which provide for religious education would undermine the moral conduct of the nation.
At the same time, a report, published by the Governmentbacked National Council for Educational Research, recommends that "nonreligious life styles" like Communism, and possibly Fascism and the counter-culture "must be included in their own right" in religious education lessons.
We, in this campaign, have decided not and would welcome the help of any of your readers who would be prepared to sign the Petition we have launched.
Mary Whitehouse
On behalf of the Committee of the Save Religious Education
Campaign