The following headline appeared in the ‘Belfast Newsletter’ of Saturday, 22nd November 2025.
Paul Givan: Supreme Court ruling on RE is complex and cannot be ignored … but I want to offer reassurance that under my leadership, Christian faith will continue to shape education in Northern Ireland
The article is by Paul Givan, current Minister of Education in the Stormont ‘power-sharing executive’.
Whether in ignorance or a mere deceitful political ‘spin’, what Mr Givan proclaims is just not true! Sadly, such has become the ‘gullibility’ of the Ulster Protestant that, if the DUP were to issue these prevaricated press statements printed on a concrete brick, they would still be swallowed!
He states that ‘Christian faith will continue to shape education in Northern Ireland’ under his leadership.
In truth, that which is taught as ‘the Christian faith’ in schools today is not what the Bible teaches, and has not been for a long, long time!
It undoubtedly is what is proclaimed as ‘Christianity’ in the majority of pulpits today and from there, it migrated into the classrooms decades ago.
What it is in truth
What it really is, is a religious ‘hodgepodge’, born out of the combined blind folly of ‘ecumenical’ and ‘modernistic theological’ education advisors from both the camp which purports to be Protestant and the Romanist camp.
Mr Given states: ‘On Wednesday the UK Supreme Court delivered what has been described as “probably the single most important legal decision, certainly in the last century” concerning religious education and collective worship in Northern Ireland. This ruling has significant implications for our schools, and I want to address it clearly and decisively.
I know there will be many from a faith background who are anxious about the potential consequences of this judgment.’
This is not factually true. The UK Supreme Court decision is merely a development and a consolidation of that process of undermining the Bible in the classrooms of Ulster which began many years ago. The introduction to the classroom has been the MOST IMPORTANT DECISION affecting children since the Protestant Reformation!
The truth of the Gospel was surreptitiously removed from the classroom and supplanted by a meaningless jumble of words and phrases which are echoes of Bible terminology but utterly failing to convey the message of Christ, which may be summed up in His words, recorded in John 3:36.
“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.”
Indeed, such terms, as here are used by the Saviour, were forbidden to be used by teachers as instructed many years ago in a Stranmillis College document for trainee teachers.
That matter was part of the changes being brought in to the training of teachers for the State Schools and the document was examined in ‘The Burning Bush’, some forty years ago!
In January 1988, I authored an article in ’The Burning Bush’, entitled:
‘ECUMENICAL FIFTH COLUMN IN THE CLASSROOM’
I sub-titled that that article:
A Stranmillis document shows Rome’s involvement in the training of State School Teachers.
The document detailed the plan, part of the then Government’s ecumenically inspired policy, called ‘Education fort Mutual Understanding’, or EMU for short. The scheme was launched by Brian Mawhinney, who had become a junior minister in the Northern Ireland Office in 1986. Mawhinney was a backslidden former member of a ‘Brethren Assembly’, who joined the apostate Church of England.
The Stranmillis document set out some six areas in which there was to be a striving to harmonise the curriculum of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic training college with that of Stranmillis.
It cannot be imagined for one moment that St. Mary’s College, under the control of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, would alter or diminish one iota of Roman Catholic dogma in order to harmonise with Stranmillis College!
On the other hand, Stranmillis, which was basically the training college of Protestant state school teachers, was ’non-denominational’ and therefore owing no allegiance to any Protestant creed or confession.
Harmonising must invariably mean Stranmillis ‘shifting’. Whatever harmonising took place had the approval of the Roman Catholic hierarchy while Stranmillis, being ’non-denominational’, could embrace just about anything.
The State School classrooms indicate that is just what happened! There is nothing Biblical or Protestant about the State School system!
As I have already stated, the process began in the pulpits and naturally crept into the classrooms. This UK Supreme Court decision is, in truth, but the natural and inevitable outcome of what the false teachers of Ecumenism launched many years ago.
I can recall my ‘R E classes’ in secondary school many years ago. They considered of ‘blindly reciting’ one or two Psalms and also the Lord’s Prayer’. There was no explaining of what was being looked at from the Bible and that was because the teacher himself had no understanding of the Gospel!
It was case of the “blind leading the blind!” (Matthew 15:14).
Today’s religious curriculum in Northern Ireland state schools is produced, we are informed, by ‘religious advisors’ and the Department of Education. That is a stated fact on the internet for all to read!
The Role of religious advisors and the Department of Education.
Curriculum development: The Department of Education and the four major Christian churches in Northern Ireland define the core syllabus for religious education.
What is taught in reality by the FOUR MAJOR CHRISTIAN CHURCHES is what is taught in the state school. I say ‘in reality’ for the official standards and creeds of the three, so called ‘Protestant’ denominations, are very far removed from what is actually believed and proclaimed in the pulpits of these ‘sham Christian’ denominations.
Prove!
I surely don’t need to justify that statement to my readers! Any who doubt what I say should merely consider what is stated in the ‘Thirty Nine Articles’ of Anglicanism, the ‘Westminster Standards’ of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and ‘John Wesley’s sermons and Methodist doctrine’.
It will be found that the message of the ecumenical churches and the standards they profess to follow are actually not within a ‘beagle’s gowl’ of each other!
The article states: ‘Paul Givan says he will not allow those who wish to drive out the Christian ethos from our schools to succeed.’
As ever, the DUP is out of touch with reality and blinded by their own notions of effectiveness!
When, oh when, will Ulster Protestants realise that the DUP died and was buried, way back in 2007, when it entered a political ‘marriage’ with the terrorist-supporting Sinn Fein party?
Being wedded to that evil organisation, it can but be contaminated by its satanic ethos!
Are Christian parents going to go on closing their eyes to the threat that the state school is to their children? Will they never consider the terrible price they will pay for placing their children under the lies and falsehoods of the modern classroom?
The lament of David on hearing of the death of his ‘heathen-influenced’ son, Absalom, comes to mind.
“And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” 2 Samuel 18:33.
Weeping and a readiness to do the right thing came too late on that occasion!
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
24th November 2025