{"id":3261,"date":"2009-11-08T11:07:27","date_gmt":"2009-11-08T19:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=3261"},"modified":"2009-11-08T14:14:52","modified_gmt":"2009-11-08T22:14:52","slug":"is-britain-establishing-protestantism-as-the-state-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/is-britain-establishing-protestantism-as-the-state-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Britain establishing Protestantism as the state religion?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who Is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question<\/a>:<\/p>\n

By many standards, the JFS applicant, identified in court papers as \u201cM,\u201d is Jewish. But not in the eyes of the school, which defines Judaism under the Orthodox definition set out by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Because M\u2019s mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew \u2014 nor was her son. It turned down his application.<\/p>\n

That would have been the end of it. But M\u2019s family sued, saying that the school had discriminated against him. They lost, but the ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeal this summer.<\/p>\n

In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism \u2014 whether one\u2019s mother is Jewish \u2014 was by definition discriminatory<\/strong>. Whether the rationale was \u201cbenign or malignant, theological or supremacist,\u201d the court wrote, \u201cmakes it no less and no more unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n

The case rested on whether the school\u2019s test of Jewishness was based on religion, which would be legal, or on race or ethnicity, which would not. The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M\u2019s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism.<\/strong><\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

It is unclear what effect the ruling, if it is upheld, will have on other religious schools. Some Catholic schools, accustomed to using baptism as a baseline admissions criterion<\/strong>, are worried that they will have to adopt similar practice tests.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

\u201cHow dare they question our beliefs <\/strong>and our Jewishness?\u201d David Lightman, an observant Jewish father whose daughter was also denied a place at the school because it did not recognize her mother\u2019s conversion, told reporters recently. \u201cI find it offensive and very upsetting.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The title is tongue-in-cheek, as the Church of England<\/a>, a Protestant denomination (unless you talk to some obstinate Anglo-Catholics), is the established church of England. My point though is that the British authorities seem to be enforcing a Protestant understanding of religious identity, in fact, a specifically dissenting<\/i> Protestant conception of religious identity, that what you believe & confess is what “counts”.<\/b> This is of course not something which is widely agreed upon, and in fact, implicitly it is probably a minority viewpoint, even in other jurisdictions<\/a> of the United Kingdom. Within Judaism the historical tradition for the past 2,000 years has been upon the necessity of matrilineal descent, or, conversion. Judaism is understood as a nation as well as a religion. The British authorities seem intent on rewriting this understanding, and by doing so are imposing a very sectarian Christian understanding of the nature of religious identity. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s what’s going on.<\/p>\n

And these sorts of issues are why the concept of religious “neutrality” is simply incoherent. By the act of definition and demarcation one is engaging in an act of discrimination and preference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who Is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question: By many standards, the JFS applicant, identified in court papers as \u201cM,\u201d is Jewish. But not in the eyes of the school, which defines Judaism under the Orthodox definition set … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3261"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3264,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions\/3264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}