Church still not satisfied with school religion classes

A dispute between the Church of Greece and the government, which began last September when new teaching material for religion classes was distributed to schools, is continuing to cause problems in the relationship between the institutions.

The bid to change the content of the lessons so they moved away from the catechism and gave students a better understanding of other religions was one of the reasons that a bitter dispute broke out between the Greek Orthodox Church and the coalition, leading to Nikos Filis being removed from his post as education minister.

The new textbooks have yet to be printed, leaving teachers to work from photocopies provide by the Education Ministry. The government has appointed a team of experts to draw up the teaching material for next year. Kathimerini understands that 80 percent of the content will consist of texts from the Bible.

This satisfies one of the Church’s demands but it still objects the idea of religious classes being optional in senior high school.