http://www.bradfordchristianschool.com
and
www.bradfordchristianschool.com/petition.php
Where it says
Bradford Christian School is seeking to apply for funding from the Free Schools Initiative.
This means that we will become a state funded school which will not be under local authority control.
Most importantly, we will seek to safeguard our values as we proceed with the application
If you would like to show your support for this, please sign the petition form below
It's website is fairly bland. There is no mention of its links to CST. It is however inspected by Bridge Schools Inspectorate - so is clearly part of them.
clearly
What it says about science is about as bland as it is possible to get!! As is the whole website - squeeky clean, no mention of the usual toxic brands like CST or overt mentions of origins.
However I checked thru their news and was surprised to find they had staged The Crucible in 2010 - which my oldest daughter did for drama and English at gcse so I'm guessing they had very little choice about studying it. However it struck me as an odd choice and there was a special speech before it was staged. So I checked that article out and hurrah. They gave a little talk beforehand on why they were staging it and several interesting points came out. I've left out the ones about the holy spirit or the real McCarthy themes of the play and just stuck to the relevantish bits. But the whole lot is there to read under NEWS on their website.
There are many valuable lessons to be learned from studying this play and I would like to outline just a few...............
Modern application
The play is able to help us more finely tune our senses when it comes to modern day witch hunts. The Puritans behaved the way that they did because of fear. Their fear arose from the very real prospect that, having gone through the pain of the reformation, sin would once again enslave their town until such time as they would be under the rule of it either by secularism or, worse still, a return to Catholic Popery. The Puritans are to be highly commended by us Christians for seeking to live their lives according to the Bible; it was an experiment that was both to help them and harm them. While Godliness leads to contentment, in this case it lead to fear which in turn lead to the need to rid the town of anything suspected to be ungodly. The play was written during the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s in which the House of Un-American Activities hauled people (including Miller himself) in front of them demanding that they admit their allegiance to the communist party and name names or risk public disgrace.
Secular interpretations of The Crucible equate the witch hunts of Salem with forms of religious extremism today, which is the most obvious interpretation. In an interview for The Royal Shakespeare Company, Dominic Cooke, director of the 2006 production in Stratford, answers the question Why did you want to direct The Crucible? with the following quote:
“I wanted to direct The Crucible because it seems, sadly, a play very much for our times. With Bush and Blair generating hysteria over terrorism and the frightening rise of Christian Fundamentalism in the US, there are real parallels between the world of Miller's play and our own times.” He is later quoted as saying,
“Similarly, our post 9/11 world is characterised by politicians, in the US especially, exploiting public fear to get away with destroying civil liberties and also blaming minorities, for example gay people, for corrupting American values. It seems society's need to find scapegoats and go on witch-hunts hasn't gone away. We live in very fearful times and Miller shows how dangerous it is to make decisions when guided by fear.”
It is interesting to note the centre pages of the programme which I have reproduced here. On one side you can see the danger of Islamic extremism equated with what this director would interpret as Christian extremism on the other side. It is interesting to note the contradiction in what Cooke says. Cooke is quick to condemn those who are “finding scapegoats” through condemning practices such as homosexuality, a practice which is incidentally not new but has been classically condemned by Christians for millennia. He then, however, gives his reasons for producing the play as a commentary of the times we live in due to the “frightening rise” of religious fundamentalism. Can you see the irony of producing a play about religious fear out of leftist fear of where our current climate may end up if we give in to fear? In other words, secularists are no more immune to the dangers of human nature than the religious thus making the application of Miller's play wider than to groups regarded as religious bigots.
Turning this around we can see modern day witch hunts in numerous ways. It seems that sometimes tabloid newspapers almost exist to create witch hunts. When Jade Goody was accused of racism in 2007, the media launched a campaign to blacken her name and condemn anyone who may stand up with her.
Another example could be said to be the fear that surrounds scientists who subscribe to a creationist view of the universe. Men and women have been demonsied and lost their jobs because of their beliefs about creationism. The underlying feeling of those who oppose this rise is fear that we will be dragged into a theocracy much like the popular myth of Medieval suppression of knowledge and progress.
In this play this evening then you will see a town divided by sin, you may see a sarcastic edge which is inherent in the text. Yet teaching the Crucible to our students can deepen their understanding of current criticism of Christianity, how witch hunts are still very real and most importantly, how, if we do not take care of our spiritual walk, our sinful nature can come rushing to the surface of our lives and choke the reality of the Holy Spirit living inside of us.
Enjoy the show.
Not as conclusive as Sheffield, but clearly creationist. And it has links to sobbing Sylvs merry CST and is inspected by Bridge Schools so will have to teach the Arthur Jones way or fail.
