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From: Harveen Narulla <harveen></harveen>
Subject: Recruitment by religious groups in schools targeting children and young persons
Date: July 11, 2012 8:38:54 AM GMT+08:00
To: [email protected]
Hi Minister Heng,
The link below is to a blog post by local blogger Lucky Tan, whose blog has a large following in Singapore. The post shines a light on City Harvest Church's (CHC) practice of targeting young school children for recruitment into its congregation.
http://bit.Iy/Nk613P
The blog post features a video of a youth leader at CHC explaining the church's strategy. According to the youth leader, CHC's religious groups have been doing this for 10 years and have penetrated 70% of schools in Singapore, despite knowing that they are not allowed to operate in schools. At 10:30 in the video, he proudly declares: "So as you can see, most of my leaders, full time staff, worshippee [sic], they all came from the school revival. If you reach the school, you can build a church."
You should watch the first few minutes of the video featured on the blog.
While the blog post focuses on CHC, I don't know whether it is safe to conclude it is the only mega church to engage in such practices.
As a parent of 2 young children this targeting of children and young persons in schools concerns me extremely. Ideally my wife and I want our family and community, and the modeling we provide, to have the guiding say over my children's religious choices. At the very least, we do not expect them to be subject to influence in a place we had thought to be a safe space from religions influence. It annoys me as a parent that on top of everything else that occupies us in our child rearing, we now have to worry about protecting our children from this kind of insidious approach by religious institutions reaching into schools. I've engaged with several parents in my circle in the past couple of days to discuss this, and their reaction and concerns mirror mine.
I do hope you do not dodge the issue by simply citing freedom of religious practice. Schools are supposed to be neutral spaces. Apposite to this, the need to keep school spaces free from the long arm of religion is the reason why school children in my community (the Sikh community) cannot get instruction in our religious tenets along with the Punjabi language classes they attend at the language centres on weekends. Not all of us parents in the Sikh community agree with this, but we respect the policy and understand that in such matters a bright line rule is justifiable.
I hope you and others in a position to do so, act to stamp out this unwarranted influencing of children and young persons by mega churches (and indeed by other religious organisations). Please do not ignore this. CHC claims to have penetrated 70% of schools in Singapore. I think it's about time your Ministry acted decisively on this. Not fulfilling your obligation to keep schools as safe spaces means that we parents may have to just teach our children to mistrust other children as we cannot be sure of their motivations in engaging with our children. This is not good for all our children, and not good for Singapore.
Coincidentally I also noted this report on the suspension this week of the NUS Campus Crusade for Christ (NUS CCFC).
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1212761/1/.html
I think they have been in the public eye in February this year as well, for insensitive actions and comments about other religions. It reinforces my view that merely giving a light slap on the wrist to organisations whose core ethos is aggressive proselytization is ineffective and will continue to be so. A gentle response is cold comfort to us parents because it will likely have similar weak and transient effect.
I'm watching with concern for real measures you will initiate to ensure my and other children are suitably protected in schools under your watch.
respectfully,
Harveen Narulla
Mobile: **** ****
Subject: Recruitment by religious groups in schools targeting children and young persons
Date: July 11, 2012 8:38:54 AM GMT+08:00
To: [email protected]
Hi Minister Heng,
The link below is to a blog post by local blogger Lucky Tan, whose blog has a large following in Singapore. The post shines a light on City Harvest Church's (CHC) practice of targeting young school children for recruitment into its congregation.
http://bit.Iy/Nk613P
The blog post features a video of a youth leader at CHC explaining the church's strategy. According to the youth leader, CHC's religious groups have been doing this for 10 years and have penetrated 70% of schools in Singapore, despite knowing that they are not allowed to operate in schools. At 10:30 in the video, he proudly declares: "So as you can see, most of my leaders, full time staff, worshippee [sic], they all came from the school revival. If you reach the school, you can build a church."
You should watch the first few minutes of the video featured on the blog.
While the blog post focuses on CHC, I don't know whether it is safe to conclude it is the only mega church to engage in such practices.
As a parent of 2 young children this targeting of children and young persons in schools concerns me extremely. Ideally my wife and I want our family and community, and the modeling we provide, to have the guiding say over my children's religious choices. At the very least, we do not expect them to be subject to influence in a place we had thought to be a safe space from religions influence. It annoys me as a parent that on top of everything else that occupies us in our child rearing, we now have to worry about protecting our children from this kind of insidious approach by religious institutions reaching into schools. I've engaged with several parents in my circle in the past couple of days to discuss this, and their reaction and concerns mirror mine.
I do hope you do not dodge the issue by simply citing freedom of religious practice. Schools are supposed to be neutral spaces. Apposite to this, the need to keep school spaces free from the long arm of religion is the reason why school children in my community (the Sikh community) cannot get instruction in our religious tenets along with the Punjabi language classes they attend at the language centres on weekends. Not all of us parents in the Sikh community agree with this, but we respect the policy and understand that in such matters a bright line rule is justifiable.
I hope you and others in a position to do so, act to stamp out this unwarranted influencing of children and young persons by mega churches (and indeed by other religious organisations). Please do not ignore this. CHC claims to have penetrated 70% of schools in Singapore. I think it's about time your Ministry acted decisively on this. Not fulfilling your obligation to keep schools as safe spaces means that we parents may have to just teach our children to mistrust other children as we cannot be sure of their motivations in engaging with our children. This is not good for all our children, and not good for Singapore.
Coincidentally I also noted this report on the suspension this week of the NUS Campus Crusade for Christ (NUS CCFC).
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1212761/1/.html
I think they have been in the public eye in February this year as well, for insensitive actions and comments about other religions. It reinforces my view that merely giving a light slap on the wrist to organisations whose core ethos is aggressive proselytization is ineffective and will continue to be so. A gentle response is cold comfort to us parents because it will likely have similar weak and transient effect.
I'm watching with concern for real measures you will initiate to ensure my and other children are suitably protected in schools under your watch.
respectfully,
Harveen Narulla
Mobile: **** ****
