Judging by this report in the Sunday Telegraph, religious education in the UK is not what it was in my day (I am the proud holder of a Divinity O level: grade 6). Terry Sanderson, the vice-president of the National Secular Society, is, apparently, unconcerned. He’s quoted as saying that ignorance over the basics of Christianity is “not the least bit surprising. There’s no doubt that children at school are not interested in this topic and we think it is scandalous that it is forced on them”. He couldn’t be more wrong. Children can, in the end, draw their own conclusions as to what to believe, but if they are not taught at least the essentials of the Bible’s narrative, large chunks of western culture will remain inaccessible to them.

And that’s something that would be truly ’scandalous’.