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SECTION VIII
MATTERS OF NECESSITY (Part One)

PARENTS - SO VERY NECESSARY?

Objectionable Objections

If the parent be a Protestant, he may be disappointed to know - if the Report were fully implemented and accepted. that his State to which he pays perhaps an item or two of tax, deems his religion 'rather intellectualist' (p.150). It Is well the State seems to be trying so hard to avoid prejudice - to judge by the somewhat clamant clamor of the Report (pp. Preface 2; and 75-99, 41, 87, 111, 163, 238).  But if this is not too much, he may then regret the exclusion of his perhaps Biblical Christian son, on conscientious grounds, from the teaching of religion in the schools; as of his younger son from being taught it (indeed, he may invest in a private school since the intention in State Schools may well be to place some of this species of religious material in other subjects than Religious Studies - pp.232ff.).

This being so, and while his neighbour's children are being given the demanded 'enabling experiences' (p.157) with the tax money which perhaps he himself must now duplicate or augment in his private and 'intellectualist' school (where God is not deemed tacit, but rather to retain authentic powers of speech), he does have some reassurance. The picture is not all sombre, After all, the Report actually acknowledges at least the concept of an affront to this parent, implicit in its religious form and formula for teaching.  In fact, it can even use the language relative to such a parent, that a 'very powerful objection' *34 exists.  When it is not merely powerful, but eminently so, then there seems perhaps some hope of improvement ... but no!
The remarkably canny, knowing almost Sadducaic rebuttal,  Report-style - remarkable for a non-authoritarian, non-normative and unprejudiced Report corps - is just this: 'It may be replied that religious education as advocated in this report, is in the child's interests' ... (p.152).

What is the ground for this perception?  It is this: 'It introduces him to another dimension of experience and meaning.'  The unimpressed, and merely reasonable parent perhaps might reply with equal or better brevity:

'So does syphilis. It is different, it too is undesired. It promotes a type of experience, from which the student may indeed learn SOMETHING;  and it, similarly,   as a milieu to meddle with, is alien to my convictions - indeed to my perceptions of prudence,, grounds and reasons, as to my religious beliefs, it is alien.

Syphilis, too, is an affair which can be contracted through undue emphasis on experience, and similar disregard of the overall impact of life, by treating it as a laboratory, instead of a study, at this growing phase. It is like playing chess with your King as chief player.

'Further, it is an offensive, latitudinarian laxity, in collision with logic, vaunting disfaith in relativistic clothes, as a substitute for an objective classification of religion on some scientific basis, such as CLAIM-FRUIT ratio, internal consistency, criteria of logical validity and testability. Indeed, the vaunted immersion method in religions which you advocate,  bears a highly Scriptural analogical relationship, with the syncretistic obstruction of divine claims which your so profitable religious instruction affords.  Let me elaborate: In this very  area, God speaks of adultery in a figure, and this disease symbolises to me also,  a not unrelated, and indeed expressive correlation with the methods you advocate, based on the philosophy you propound and the religion you are so bent on establishing, based on presuppositions, based on nothing.'


Thus the parent might elaborate if the auditor were uninformed; and thus protest, even if there were some knowledge of the issues.

Such an exchange might at least stimulate the Report corps to consider the grounds for their extraordinary assumption of authority. As has been noted before, the Report gives no evidence or any serious attempt at metaphysical concatenation by which it might attempt to begin to justify its counter-Biblical claim.

Feelings, views and desires are present; but logical rigour for this revolutionary transmutation of Victorian religious instruction - perhaps because of their views of logic and religion, is enchantingly elsewhere. As is often the case with  the devotees of the chic in dress, or the dreamy in disposition, it is not applied to the point, only to the externals.

Perhaps it is otherwise detained, this absent reason ... in the sciences! (pp.132-3). It is a shame therefore that so much is attempted with so little logical ground.

This is the more so,  in one way, when we come to examine the predicament or the Biblical Christian parent a little more closely; for the offence so far is as gossamer and as zephyrs,  compared with the tiger-tongued texture and tempest proportions about to arise.

For this experience (the Report is keen on experience for our children, and even provides us with some) to Chapter 10,  pp.111 ff., we must now turn.
 
 

Professional  Complexions

 

In this field, the Report devotes time to the changes in professional ethics, as to trend, becoming manifest in these times.  No longer is it felt sure a teacher will acquiesce in some distant dispassion from his subject, for he may feel integrity demands a straight answer to a straight question from a student -  and reasons therewith.  If this involves religion, so be it.  The Report expresses concern lest some parents be unduly alarmed, and lest some teachers frankly proselytize.  Though deprecating the latter, and not returning at any length to the point of teachers expressly giving answers in good faith because of integrity and NOT in order to proselytize: the Report addresses itself to what is to be done.

In short, already (pp.111-112),  the Report treats somewhat cavalierly a vital and quite well-articulated point, which is very modish with teachers.  It is one which gives parents enormous grounds for justified concerns, and which in no way relates to 'playing the game':  a moral which is inapplicable to their own presentation of a certain sort of conscientious teacher.

Now whatever the demerits of the Report, mere tongue tied incoherence is not often one of them.  There are times when the facility of utterance indeed, and as here, seems to surpass the logical endurance.  The defect rather is in the direction of failing to be aware of vital considerations in the field; or being aware, failing to reason thoroughly on them in a maze of quotations and tendentious utterances which somehow tend to lend on to something which they seem to regard as a conclusion.

This, in any logical sense, of course, it is not.  It rather resembles a pulse-taking, a wind ascertainment, an airport stocking,  one taking account of eddy and current and responding by assuming the contour appropriate to the wind, The only 'truth' thus attained is, in some vague sense, the direction of the wind; and perhaps - though this is more doubtful - an index to  its velocity.

Even at that, however, the wind is not to be confused with truth; and Voltaire, in this case rightly, did not have an overweening confidence in the direction of noses, or rather their number (we could add, perhaps, even the table at which they sat) as a means of ascertaining truth.  The argument from numbers has a resemblance to force rather than truth.

Relative to authority alone,  it bears on the same consideration, differently expressed. Aristocracy, nobility, commissars, communities: their number of power, or even their willingness to use it, does not constitute reality, except as to their wishes. More stringent tests must meet logical precision.

One example of this sort of directed digression, in the Report, must suffice as an extension of our finding relative to thoroughness (or lack of it) conceptually, and here in terms of adequate progress in argument.
On pp. 14lff.,  questions of educating in religion are raised. We hear from Peters and of his problems with certain disagreements some had with him; we hear from another 'authority',  Dearden, who declaims a point or two (p.142) which will have a resemblance of one kind or other to Peters.

AS IF this were duly based argument, it continues to say (p.142): ' "Education",  then, is not a morally neutral term...' We then hear what 'must' be done as if there had been some demonstration.  This is completed,  you could almost say consummated, by the advice that activities are educational if they contribute to the development of "desirable" states of mind and so on, as normal in this Report proclivity.

From non-neutrality we then proceed to moral assumptions (insights?).  We elsewhere considered the evolving utopias endemic to the Report and the assumption language employed, including this case the glaringly obvious question:   Desirable to whom? and if to him, or to her, then we may ask, what, except as an exercise in psychic preference, of this?

Are these educational functionaries asking some student or parent what schools is desired, or prescribing what they will get! Desirable by what absolutising of 'desire'? Just how do we proceed from the descriptive to the prescriptive?: from either statistics or academic voices, however sonorous, merely expressing their deemings, to truth?  In that way lies ponderous pomp, academic ceremony and perhaps popular 'reading' of the 'voice of the people' - perhaps a little in the style of Marx*35 in theory.

That theorist's commissars became so GOOD AT IT, that in their Black Sea holiday dachas they could all but infallibly vie with the pope for supremacy of knowledge; they could interpret the people, and know the way it all had to go, even if there was no necessity that did not require the KGB in massive numbers, and executions in far greater numbers than before, as Solzhenitsyn has most conspicuously pointed out, as an historian. His Gulag Archipelago is a wonderful expression of what is desirable, in the minds of those who know these things, and export them into the moral department, even when it is not there, or as here, when it is 'appropriate', though without even logical standing in the milieu of ideas concerned, other than an ethical preference.

As to the Marxist 'bash' at 'interpreting' descriptive data in prescriptive terms,  it is noticed that the people did not cease to want, to the point of death, in vast numbers, to escape this haven, supposedly heaven, but minus drawing power.

But as to truth?  Past political expediency and chicanery, as the case may be, or any combination, there is no way of relating such items to such substance.  "Ought" does not "arise" from "is" - oven if there were far more finesse in establishing "what is" than is here shown.

The Report wanders on, quotation-wise, from opining to opining,  and 'deals' with questions of indoctrination, and of course eventually ambles to the 'conclusion' regarding this, which their preliminary premises - those  of underlying unity and social authenticity and tolerance (except towards 'the absolute') - would conduce too, even without quotations.

That is to be the presuppositional tenor of teaching! Now if there in academic integrity in the Report procedure here, it is not at all obvious to the present writer; though of course this does not detract from whatever conscious good intentions the Report might incorporate.  Good intentions however, as Mill strenuously declaimed (*38 to follow)  are not enough,  when in this style,  both literary and logical,  our State may be revolutionised in the construction, content and methods of its official religious instruction.
 

 

Collating Churches Clerics and Clubs

 

One more preliminary before we uncover the plight of parents, Report-wise, remains.  On pp. 79-809 we find that the Report Religion is not satisfied with the mere 'underlying-unity' concept, for 'religion' as a presuppositional preliminary to the business of teaching. More must be added. Thus there is also the mode of integration.  They are unhappy with the idea of a 'loose amalgam of tepid ndividuals holding minimal generalized views' in religion even though they be duty bound to the unity and the inner logics and the consistencies'.

Accordingly they resolve that the duly critically examined, duly technically informed, the duly presuppositionally pre-integrated religions (as to their putative underlying religious continuum) are to continue to exist even in Church settings - indeed Church may educatetoo! This is given explicit sanction.

For such a boon, what is the cost?  It Is this. The Churches, as to them - 'their role must include the development of viable communities dedicated to those views of men enshrined in their own beliefs and doctrines' (emphasis added).

 It passes coolly - but the operative words are 'viable, and 'role'. Thus it would appear that the movement to 'unity' sweeps along the path of tolerance (except of the intolerable absolutes), empathy end syncretised correlation without undue loss of conviction.  The Report's understanding is that Churches must know their place in this educational bonanza. Surely this is as if god, telling his subjects how to proceed within the relativistic humanism which excludes him a priori, and greater arrogance of presumption, it would be hard even to conceive, before the very end of our Age, of which this therefore would seem a very fitting, if not noble, initial contribution; like the trumpets for a king, though this is a reverse waltz.

The tension or is of great interest. On the one hand, the objective is specified - 'to unify an a more fundamental way the differences that appear on the surface' (p.167);  the way Is clear - to deal with matters of logic and contradiction in the symbolic or synthetic way already specified; and now the non-result in given.  It must not release mere tepid half-beliefs.  Presuppositions and methods are merely part of the direction to mortality; results are also to be compounded in the dense amalgam of the dentists, which require much of the oral cavity of man.

No, the old convictions (filtered as shown) are to be desired, so long, indeed, as the thing is socially cohesive, indeed  'viable' as a component of society: why it is then that areas of diversity are not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, at a choice level, they are better than partly prized-out, yet imperfectly synthesised segments.

This understanding is reinforced by the reference to clergymen who may be programmed as follows: 'As a Christian minister the chaplain is expected to represent what is best in the nation's religious tradition' (p.270). This shows the implicit inclusivism and endemic integrationism - already shown to be correlative to the symbolism and dynamic irrationalism moving on Kantian base. The best, appropriate, fitting and acceptable is determined by the secularism (or would-be secularists); it is then required of clergymen who should keep their particular faiths, within the apt and appropriate framework laid down by the secularists, and then operate within the State. Caesar could not do it better. Religion is imagined, and determined; then symbols are chastely opted for as means; and then religions are given this discreet go-ahead, to move in this newly defined way. Nebuchadnezzar was more direct with his bowing down to the self-determined statue, but not more apt to replace God with his inane antics.

But let us return to the 20th version.

First, we learn there IS a 'religious tradition' in the 'nation'. We are not here busy being fussily pluralistic.  We do not seem to be paying undue attention to the Commonwealth's constitution on religious matters. (Yet should not the term 'nation' allow for this! The requirement excluding the Commonwealth from any matters tending to establish any religion are surely adverse to these matters acting as if to establish Report Religion. It is impossible to conceive that this is constitutional: this however is less important than this: that it is self-contradictory, not a good beginning for the replacement of absolutes by new absolutes, absolutely inflamed with their own sound to the point they are telling churches some of their theology by presuppositions imported with no obvious import licence, from the realm of the imagination, neither in any apparent way, pure OR simple.).

There is not, we observe, a question of religious traditions: say, the Roman and the Protestant; the Baptist and the Presbyterian, the Unitarian and the Moral Agnostic.  Now there is a tradition - indeed 'the tradition'. This is invented from some unknown source with full credentials from an unknown authority, somewhere lurking, it would almost seem, in the symbols of nothingness which divulge contradictory things with oomph and authority.

What then ? Somehow, the chameleon cleric has to strike the patterns even though it be a tartan, notorious for its impact on that little, adaptive beast who in his contortions to cover  such a complex pattern, can suffer. And this titanic tartan, it is one, as we have demonstrated, involving the most marauding of clashes, offensive to the eye, discordant to the ear, derisible to the mind. The very depths of Christianity for one, are depth charged from above, from the world of imagination, which is appropriate. This too we have seen; as also this, that neither is Muhammad at rest in such coercion of his absolutes.

Second, by some intuition - could It POSSIBLY be by the reading of the 'ethical' standards of the Report and its moral imperatives? it seems not unlikely in view of what the Churches 'must' do - the clergyman or his mentors and tutors from the secular arm, it appears,  is to divine what is 'best'.

Now the poor fellow is not to take what is HIS OWN - too tribalistic, he is to be as one with all the others in a setting where only (secular?) angels may tread,  lest integration of man and religions should receive a set-back.  Having performed these unlikely tasks,  this unhappy clerical take-over victim is actually to 'represent' it... the thing, 'tradition').  Voilà! it is done. Already the one religion can have its representative representing 'what is best'.

Oh it may be with this or that non-absolutist quaintness, bless its heart.  The important point, it seems, is that communally in the 'authentic community'*36 indeed - he is there*37. Surely the church now serves the State as its directable attendant, sacrificing, surely, not more than its God, to the relativities of the unknowables, so that this gospel of the unthinkable is now in vogue and in place. No false prophet could do it better (II Peter 2:1, Jude).

How unacceptable, by the same token (utterance, rather like that of the Delphic oracle, has established it - perhaps it is already the looked for 'religious word', that essentially unified substratum of meaning which is felt to be discernible, prospectively at least, in the words of this or that religion - p.96).

Yet how quite alarmingly alien would be religious elements which do not ... understand!  Thus things known as 'Voluntary Religious Groups',  these could continue their work at lunch times or outside school hours as long as these are 'open' groups, and do not act as a divisive force within the life of the school.  You see here how communal authenticity replaces ideological purity; how a ruling religion conditions applicants for a place, even in voluntary time; and how twentieth century commands emanate from the Report Religion with indeed the 'categorical imperative' type of force so dear to eighteenth century Kant in his Critique of Practical Reason. The two patterns continue constantly in parallel.

For the Report, whatever betokens objective non-unifiability (actual fulfilment of unification is not immediately essential); whatever insists on uniqueness in a sense other than quaintness or particularity merely; whatever diverges, in the transcendent sense of being alone the inscripturated word of God, to the exclusion of all else: that is horrendous.  Without doubt, such a region categorically compromises the repetitively apparent presuppositional structure which underlies, and indeed drives the Report. Even Alice, in or out of Wonderland, could scarcely do better simply in the way of assuming things, assimilating things and learning to live with them, whatever, if anything, they could ever ... mean.
 
 

A Feeling for 'Freedom'

 

The parents as such, however, are less prone to this. The burdens for some, the responsiblities for all, of not merely teaching children, but having them, can make of imaginative pretensions something rather more substantial than a sunbeam. It is so easy in the midst of meditations to forget... but concrete parents are quickly chilled, if need be, back to responsibility. This is more especially so when they happen - does not Orwell's 1984 really show it, in conjunction with Huxley's Brave New World and C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength - when they happen NOT TO AGREE. The 'thought-police' in 1984 were SO concerned to remove divisive influence, invidious, mischievous and perhaps, worst of all impractical ones. The Report uses the term 'viable' in the affirmative mode, and we have noted the usage.

In this milieu it is that parents are prospectively to subsist; and as far as their parental authenticity relative to communal authenticity is concerned, it is a matter of subsistence level indeed ...  or somewhat below. Now our immediate interest remains the extraction of the implicits, although the subjects stir intrinsic concern. Thus intended practice as well as theory can point presupposition within the Report.

In the usual roving manner, the Report consults this and that opinion, dictum before summing up what it wants to say. On J.S. Mill*38 it is particularly amazing. The way in which it humbles this freedom-affirming gentleman, this champion of individual authenticity at this level - admittedly in his absence, and by a type of discriminating use of imagination - makes our Alice look too sober.

The method is of interest.  On p.117, we find that there is a school of thought espousing the 'rights of a parent'.  Mill is soon in focus ... or more accurately, out of focus, but in view.  Mill would not have the government to be seeking transcendence in theory or practice over the poor individual.  'Hence the English practice of aid of voluntary schools'.  Now however we are asked to ponder if Mill really ever considered the poignant case of the parent 'unable to send his child to an alternative school'.  He could not,  it seems, think of anything to the point as a resolution of the adverse educational impact, except an alternative school; since authority was unlikely to bend or blend in the State School - presumably by way of more modern style accommodation.

The implication seems to be that Mill,  assuming high extant authority in State Schools - perhaps something as elevated as that implicit in the Report we are considering - did not investigate the propensity of the said schools to adapt.  If he had,  we find on p.118,  he would doubtless have blessed the practice of not insisting that students be forced to partake of religious instruction in order to gain acceptance in the State School.  Unfortunately, this rather simple point is not put like that.  Instead, we have to ponder Mill not thinking in terms of relevant freedom, of anything but alternative schools because of State authority in its schools. However, in fact, if the authority made them so immovable, one might as well envisage Mill for just that reason wanting to consider what might happen without the alternative,  all the more.  After all, if the authority was so unbending, the options for that event would figure the more intensely in significance. Yet all this is hypothesis.

By the time all this is unravelled,  and we are advised that it would be  'hard to believe that he would have disagreed...',  we are left somehow with a sort of rather euphonious impression that all is, then fairly well.  Mill seems to be agreeing with something ostensibly hard to resist, being put putatively to himself, though he be absent, by the interrogation of the  Report.  We are NOT left with the impression that Mill is not at all interested in the loss of liberty; just that he would presumably not object to its conferment.  The negative feeling, the sense of his having modified a stand, is strong.  His clear ringing voice in principle against a (high-taxing) State forcing religion of a novel variety into students (whose parents' capacity to educate otherwise is reduced by areas of State financial involvement) does not seem to sound.

We must not extrapolate one way, and ignore the other - if we are to extrapolate at all. However the Report, in its wisdom,  has done precisely this.

The whole point - however, is that Mill is invoked and the resultant thrust is minimised in the flow of reading in the multi-quotational basis leading on to articulation of what the Report desires.

Now from this acutely minimised area of individual liberty, with Mill being forced to appear to agree with something seeming 'progressive', against the practical trend of which he in fact inveighed with the most exalted and strenuous language, we proceed to the other side, aptly prepared for by these atmospherics.

It is of course not at all indicated here  that this procedure is designed for the purpose; it is noted that it fits: no more.  It is without doubt a most serious injury to Mill's articulation, as will be shown*38.

From the singular to the societal, now let us proceed.  Freedom is fallen, on and  to the grounds shown, for many.  (Cf.  Isaiah 59:9-I5).  What for the State will now arise?
 
 

 END-NOTES

*34
Objection

Although this particular phrase is located in an area which has had some relation to secularity, there is no limit on the application, provided the conditions noted are met.  Objections to 'religion', as defined by the Report, may come from any quarter; and Christ's attitude to religions not focussing Himself as the sole entry to the Father, Biblically, have been documented at length (supra).

Whether this 'religious form of knowledge' be deemed too religious, this way or that, in the objection of the parents, objections that are assessed as 'very powerful',  the negative responses are acknowledged to exist. Whether, again, a 'religious form of knowledge' as designated and generalised by the Report, be deemed unreal or 'meaningless' ( p.152), for this reason or that; and further, be objected to or denounced, the result is the same to the point. A 'very vigorous' objection to its purveyal by parents who do not hold to it, is dismissed... knowledgeably ( presuppositionally) .

Again, whether the State implements this state of affair all at once, or as intended in the Report, more gradually; whether it has school in their 'authentic' community Implement it by their corporate desire, locally and severally, or jointly and cohesively - it intends the former procedure; and whether it allows some variability in procedure to schools which desire it- the resultant is once again, the same to the extent that parents are faced with the social monarchy of this all but limitless religious connotation.  It is THIS facet with which we are concerned at this point - not the social technology or psychological procedure.

We are in short here concerned not with the speed but the sequence of the first recommendation of p.285: 'That religious instruction in State schools be progressively replaced by the kind of religious education delineated in the body of this Report; or of p.259: 'the replacement of religious instruction by the type of religious education described in this Report... '  - specific allowance being made for current regulations 'during the necessary transitional period' (italics added in each case - Digest of Report p.I9).

Not the possible variations taken with due respect to the guidelines, and taken with the involvement of Education Department professional officers who are to have the 'responsibility for the design and conduct of the religious education in all schools' (italics added) :  this is not our current concern. It is rather
with the kind of guidelines,  their central thrust, the central mind which is seen in them: It is the kind of religious arrogation, the kind of intemperance and imposition.

Rather then, is it this!  In the end, if so be, 'when religious education along the lines recorded in the Report has been satisfactorily established In the schools...' ( point 20 of recommendations cited above): there lies the Issue of our present concern.

Yet if it were in but one school, the principle violated is none the less. One murder or maybe, to take the analogy of force in another State sphere: it is one in principle. If it is tolerated (as David's virtual murder of Uriah, NOT as a State law matter, but a private act), enabled in but one case, nobility is lost, folly is received in from outlawry. Yet if it be in one case, the principles violated are not unmolested; the situation is fundamentally changed (as the case of Lady Macbeth so well dramatised from the merely inward level).

Here however it is not one; it is all.
 

*35
Marx

This antipodean on Hegel's developmental globe ( cf. pp. 12, 24, 25, 51, 104-105 supra) scarcely helps the latter's systematic defects, touched already,  by having quite justly in his reductionism the obligation to read the mind of mindless matter with a mind that matter made.

To tell man, again, to what they should put their minds by the grace of a mind made by mindless matter, this you cannot ... logically do, unless of course you wish to abandon your reductionism.

Truth is not served by consulting the efflorescences of the meaningless.  Nor is any path prescribed by description. ( An import of intrinsically valid morals into Marxism can be accomplished only by overthrowing its system itself.)

The case is paralleled, without identity, by the ascertainment of the minds of gods keeping their 'divine' minds to themselves - either by their imagined will to that effect, or through their inability to do otherwise, or through their containment in regrettable 'otherness' ( so bothersome, having gods in chains).  This leaves the communication gap a gross enlargement of the so-called generation gap, in a philosophically innovated  maze of contrary symbols and contradictory directives. That some who make such postulates manage to overpower the alleged inability or unreachability in order to tell us truth 'like it is' is a testimony to the inventiveness of man, and his power to let imagination rove where logic is debarred by a sort of legislated and very operative apartheid. As in such cases, so in this one, though it is legislated by the inventor of the 'system', it is not really ... considered. Such self-contradiction advances the number of books, but is irrelevant to truth except as an index to the results of voiding it.

For more extensive background for this type of concept - see p. 36b Section III; for the Altizer parallel,  and the initial references in this footnote; see also infra in the Appendix under Miracles and in our Section X  METAPHYSICS,  pp.89 ff..
 
 

*36
Community

This is the thing to be pursued while 'the search for truth' ensues (Report p.238).
 

*37 There
 

An interesting parallel occurred in a setting distinct, but bearing analogy, in the U.S..  That situation is at least evocative of thought.

A family having built up large holdings - in an increasingly, suburbanised area, came to be in the position where it all but controlled the real estate of a new suburb. Extensive high-class facilities encouraged its growing reputation as a haven for the élite.  Then a prominent member of this family offered to a Church land - quite a lot of it - if thet Church would find so much money in so much time to ensure a prestigious Church 'plant'.

To an outsider, at least, aware that the family member concerned made no pretence of being a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, it appeared that the important thing was that the Church be there (the Americans are a very religious people). It filled a gap, completed a culture.

Just so, for the Report Religion, as a deed of ... gift to society, the Chaplain is there -  and again in that cult or sect or whatever the Report Religion be deemed to be, he is to represent what is best, (oh yes, religiously) in what may be the best of communities which, Church or no Church, knows (for the Report actually  speaks of it) what is best in religion. (How otherwise could anyone represent it, repeatedly?)
 

*38

J.S. Mill

This matter deserves a wider attention, and while we shall not interrupt our progress to incorporate it; yet the extent to which the Report minimises the proper impact of Mill whilst actually seeming to discuss his contribution, relative to its subject,  is methodologically or at least procedurally instructive (cf.   pp.83-85 re mode of presentation).

Further, indeed the actual contribution readily gained from Mill in astonishing.  In several statements he seems almost to anticipate the Report, and to condemn it in advance, in language both choice and apt.  This is not entirely strange as Mill,  in his preface to his work, 'On Liberty' is tracing out what he deems certain developments in the field of liberty, and he proceeds to adumbrate new ones.  Thus he states on p.20 of the World's Classics edition of 1971, of his 1659 works:
 


We move to the setting carefully traced out, of Chapter 10 of the Report,  establishing to its own satisfaction a certain swaying of powers for society, and a subsequent chapter taking up the tale in order to apply such dashings of individual liberty against the rocks of Statism,  to the topic of religious instruction in its more evocative singularity and particularity (an interesting procedure).  There these words of Mill, just cited, in their singular and apposite contrast, seem almost like a comment of the current reviewer of the Russell Report.

It must be stressed that this statement is wholly devoid of irony: the contemporaneity of Mill's criticism, made so long ago,  has an extraordinary tendency to categorise the Report, in terms of something near to prevision. The suppressive and invasive process which Mill notes with acute abhorrence, doubtless, has often seemed to want to fulfil itself; and it is only now that the headiness of the undertaking seems to be so impending. The Report has put legs to Mill's just apprehensions, against which he sounded so stringent an alarm. Yet it has been long in stretching its legs, prior to the run; nor have its warm-up exercises failed to exhibit themselves in other nations, such as Russia, in the State's desires, or designs.

Take for example the Report quotation made at our para 2 of our p. 85, in Section IX,  as a stimulus out of  season, relative to  the above statement of Mill:

Take, again, the Report's insistence in its exordium in Chapter 10,  awaiting religious application, regarding parent's:  may the parent withdraw a child from a rejected educationial work? the question is asked. What is its reply?

'It cannot, as already suggested, be a prior right in respect of which all considerations of the rights of the other parties to the educational enterprise are by definition irrelevant. The answer might be that it in an ultimate or residual right of last resort, which can be exercised by the parent when all considerations of the rights of the other parties have been examined; or it might be that it is a conditional right... '(p.125).

The reader will notice that while this involves children, it devolves on parents. What does Mill say here (as a reviewer ...) ?:
 


What however would Mill say if he read pp. 277 ff. of the Report and considered the implications as set forth for example an our own pp.83-5, those relating to withdrawal from a religious program selected and implemented by the State? for here in seen the possibility of State actions eventually in effect annulling this right of withdrawal.  True, it would relate intimately to the quotation just made; but he might enunciate a few more propositions and since the Report has invoked his name, we had better hear what he did say; not merely what he might have said.

On p.19 of the volume for Mill, which has been cited,  we read:
 


Such a response might well be made on the reading of the Report's prescribed, theoretically precognitive involvements of the children in the 'sacred ceremonies' of many religions with a view to establishing forms and norms of approach; as much as by the observation of the frustrated parent watching whilst the social behemoth gobbles his child with the 'secular' and 'established' teeth of anti-metaphysical experiential 'authentic community'. (The behemoth would, after all, like a society of this type, incorporate a lot of parts, and when many were in unison, they could act rather like teeth in tearing out the 'immature' attitudes which need conditioning - cf.  Report 133,  para 2, p. 168 final paragraph.) Certainly, it is as if Mill were speaking of this very Report; but of course he is at work on one of its grandfathers, Comte.

But what might Mill respond on reading (Report p.280): 'The Committee holds that the program it recommends is one that should be welcomed by all parents as it seeks only to make children better able to understand and assess religion as a major continuing influence in human society..."

What indeed might he say if he first read in the Report that:

After reflecting on the difference between - say compulsory transmission in a required educational milleu, of ideational concepts (oh yes,  and of ideological commitments - ah, and this by indirection as well as direction, and with the very young by experience as an emphasis ... and so on) and indoctrination; and glancing at the parental plight,  Mill might rejoin :  But ...
 


 


Moreover Mill might resume to the point, and does actually stated (op.cit. p.9):
 


It is an if, facing the writing term of the Report in full awareness of its sad fulfilment of his discernment of the socially absolutist trend, Mill (op.cit. p.9) warned:

'Ridiculous' the Report corps might, exclaim. We WANT development.'

'Yes,'  Mill might reply, 'but NOT that deemed so immature and tribalistic as to be out of conformity with your ways... THAT you aver, is altogether too "destructive''.' There are, says Mill, the matter of "OTHER MEANS" by which society may act to IMPOSE its OWN IDEAS and PRACTICES as RULES OF CONDUCT on those who dissent from them. Are not teaching episodes MEANS? are not excursions to 'sacred ceremonies' WAYS? is not the entire coup of attitudinally peremptory assumptions on the base of which principal and teacher, divulger and taught, are to act, RULES? is not the requirement about remaining in class, CONDUCT? is not the whole thing being CONDUCTED in a manner which, just as Mill says, is an investment in a "social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression" ?

'But,' might cry the Report supporters,  it is "in the child's interests"; it is for his good.'  To this remarkable piece of penetration, Mill  (as in his theme pp.13-14 op.cit.)
might reply on behalf of some parents, at this level, in his 1859 words:

'His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.  He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.'

Rather then coerce by conceptual inculcation,  Mill would seek to preserve some resultant in which a better was left.  In the opinion of the individual parent concerned, than an implemented if unexpressed creed (yet one readily expressible as such, for the Report religion, and in fact provided in this paper).  This creedal basis is  not so difficult to find in that distinguished work, the Report  which is our subject, moving, if it should be possible, whatever, and however uplifted may be the actual motivation,  into the child's life, and even in utter danger of    'penetrating more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself'.

This, it  IS not putatively, not hypothetically, but actually and statedly Mill's concern.

Where the State takes up to 1/3 of one's income quite graciously, quite readily, unlike the situation in Mill's time, it has ALREADY amplified its TYRANNY IF it also provides education from these vast resources of taxation, of an intrusive and directive character, rigid in presuppositions and blasphemous in understanding, as has been shown extensively, for example, towards Biblical Christian theism, as to other religious positions.

Let us focus on tax. It is not a question of the need for it, and its extent, which is our current relevant thought. It is simply the FACT and EXTENT of it in our current nation.

Taxing so as to make the result detrimental to economic power to acquire any alternative education, with summary execution of the very soul of individuality, spiritual reticence, faith and reverence for the known God, or indeed for the gods of various religions, this is the liability to be faced, in terms of the Report. Its presumption that religion is all largely symbolic may be a REASON for what otherwise would look like some of the worst oppressions of the inquisition, refined and without physical torture, but obdurate and subtle in inculcation; and they are incremented by this enormous deprivation of objective approach, whilst aggravated, if they should occur, by the economic increase of State control.

The suave  and relativisitic 'certainties' of what are, as has been shown, proposals teeming with irrationalities and self-contradictions in what, without acknowledgment, is the construction of an alternative religion, based simply on preference, do not alter their actual impact. These things rather increase the character of the intrusion. Moreover, as to the Report,  'secular' aspirations merely emphasise the full extent of its presumption, for the secular, lacking objective moral authority, other than statistical or other indications of facts, is an intruder per se in anything claiming moral reality, objective obligation, worship and grounds for it.