The Scottish National Party is a broad church, it turns out, but some of its members seem to be finding difficulty in accepting that its breadth of opinion extends to traditional forms of Christianity.

The flashpoint has been the beliefs of Kate Forbes, (pictured) current finance minister and putative successor to Sturgeon, about gay marriage.

Forbes, a member of the Free Church of Scotland, admitted that, had she been a member of the Scottish Parliament, she would have voted against it when the bill to legalise it was passed in 2014.

She says that she respects the outcome of that vote and wrote on Facebook that she "will defend to the hilt the right of everybody in Scotland, particularly minorities, to live and to live without fear or harassment in a pluralistic and tolerant society".

She will, moreover, "uphold the laws that have been won, as a servant of democracy, and seek to enhance the rights of everybody to live in a way which enables them to flourish".

Nevertheless, even a further statement that "I firmly believe in the inherent dignity of each human being — that underpins all ethical and political decisions I make" has not been enough for her growing band of critics and enemies.

They see her brand of evangelical Presbyterianism as outdated, outrageous, and bigoted.

Forbes has lost considerable support in the race to succeed Sturgeon and, like former British Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, may well now find the path to future acts of public service narrow and unforgiving.

I am no supporter of the Scottish Nationalists (or Liberal Democrats), but it is easy to see why the hounding out of such people from public life is a bad thing.

I sincerely hope it does not happen in Australia. In the case of Tony Abbott, perhaps it already did.

The right to offend

The case against Forbes is riddled with hypocrisy and cant, of course.

Her main rival, Humza Yousaf, missed the gay marriage vote himself because of an "unavoidable meeting on a very important topic in relation to a prisoner on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy."

Less charitable minds than mine have wondered why the presence of a then junior Scottish minister was so essential to that dialogue.

Nevertheless, the intensity of the opprobrium heaped on Forbes raises a profound question about the role that professing Christians can play in public life in post-Christian democracies.

Currently this still seems more a British problem than an Australian one, although we all know that Britain's ill winds have had a general tendency to blow our way ever since the First Fleet.

The case for Forbes seems to go something like this: she has a right to her personal moral convictions and her statements have made plain her commitment to separating them from her public duty to uphold the law.

We cannot expect our politicians to hold a majoritarian view on every proposition — and the right to personal opinions about questions of morality and ethics, even unfashionable ones that offend many people, is fundamental to liberal democracy.

The philosopher Kathleen Stock - herself no stranger to controversies surrounding toleration of dissenting views — has suggested that the whole affair, above all, is the product of a new religious investment in victimhood among activists of all stripes which makes them unable to resist a good old search for baddies to shame and shun:

what we have here is a clash of two religions. One of them is full of sanctimonious, swivel-eyed moral scolds, rooting out heresy and trying to indoctrinate everybody into their fantastic way of thinking. The other is a branch of Calvinism.

Stock's article is, at root, an impassioned plea to recognise the ubiquity of differences of opinion and moral frameworks. We all need to grow up so that we are not policing every minor matter of conscience in the manner of a latter-day Holy Office.

Ironically, even the Catholic Church has come out in favour of this position. As its spokesman in Scotland told The Herald newspaper:

There is absolutely an intolerance of certain types of difference. We are less tolerant of people's religious orientations. Some of the things that have been said about religious opinions leave a lot of Catholics and a lot of Christians feeling marginalized.

A political culture which cannot tolerate dissent is a brittle one that can hardly be expected to remain liberal for long.

A clash of cultures

There may be much wisdom in Kathleen Stock's and the Catholic Church's observations and their recasting of Forbes as victim.

Yet, I wonder if such a response is truly adequate, for it plays down reasons why Forbes's detractors might see her — and her particular brand of evangelical Christianity — rather negatively.

For Stock, evangelical Protestants get caught up in these contemporary inquisitions not because they are any better or worse than the rest of us, but because they are easy targets.

Forbes, for instance, "is white, Cambridge-educated, and Christian, and for bonus points a follower of an obscure Calvinist denomination historically associated with such killjoy practices as tying up children's swings on a Sunday."

The fact, moreover, that Forbes is a woman also makes her even easier to vilify: "so much easier to project intolerance and unkindness upon her, relative to the presumed baseline for her sex".

There is irony here too in this particular defence of Forbes by the feminist philosopher, for Forbes herself came out against women's ordination in 2014, criticising "feminist-power arguments".

Nevertheless, the relevance of a politician's religious or philosophical beliefs to their suitability for office is what matters, as Stock identifies.

Should others be expected to respect their beliefs simply because those beliefs are grounded in religious traditions?

A critical thought experiment for many gay people who object to politicians who see homosexuality as sinful is this.

Imagine that Forbes was commenting not on gay marriage but on the legality of gay sex itself. Would anyone find it acceptable if she declared that she respects fellow lawmakers' decisions to have legalised gay sex but that she nevertheless personally believes gay men should still be prosecuted for buggery and be sent to prison if convicted?

To many of Forbes's critics, no categorical difference exists between these two examples.

She, in effect, asks to be allowed to hold a private view that other people's consensual acts are wrong, or that they should be denied rights the state accords everyone else in society, while also implying that her willingness not to try to impose her view on everyone is based only on a current consensus.

Even if the above is not quite Forbes's position — and, no doubt, it is easy to mischaracterise it — one can see readily enough why those she deems sinful might worry that she could favour using the state to enact any number of other social and moral restrictions which her brand of Calvinist Christianity endorses.

Where would the human rights be in that?

Politicians who allow themselves to be caught up in such a nexus at the very least reap what they sow.

They can hardly expect those whom they judge negatively to trust them or respect their judgment in the specific matter or in general.

Why evangelical Christians get a harder time

In fact, the basic issue in the Forbes case is not then simply a clash of religions — Christian versus post-Christian — as Stock would have it, but also a problem which Karl Popper identified long ago in The Open Society and its Enemies.

A tolerant, liberal society simply has to guard vigilantly, endlessly against potential threats to its liberal order: it cannot tolerate "intolerance".

Practising Christians may not seem like the likeliest or even gravest threat at present, but "intolerance" is notoriously hard to identify or even define.

The thought experiment presented above sets out how those whose rights have only recently been recognised might still see Christian demands to be privately excluded from aspects of the liberal settlement as posing a threat to them.

As an historian of Christianity I note, however, a certain irony about the way this discourse has developed in recent years.

Evangelical Protestantisms are now bearing much of the brunt of criticism, which seems odd because, traditionally, such Protestantisms were much less eager to impose their moral strictures on wider society than more expansive, proselytising forms of Christianity such as Roman Catholicism.

The original Calvinists believed themselves an "elect" who would be saved when the rest of us are damned.

Their performance of moral purity and righteousness was not so much to show others what to do by example but a sign that they had been chosen. They did not believe that all of us will be saved, nor that human agency can change what God has predestined.

This element to evangelical Protestant thinking may nevertheless partially explain why members of such churches are currently being caught up in these controversies more intensely than even the Catholic Church.

Catholic hypocrisy on sexual ethics is widely acknowledged. And a recent case from the United States, where a priest may have refused communion to an 81-year-old woman because she wore a rainbow facemask, reminds us that examples of intolerance and tensions over sexual ethics are everywhere.

One might also point to the threats to withhold communion from President Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi over their stances on abortion.

But then, as Pope Francis recently reiterated, Catholic teaching remains that homosexual acts are sinful but also that sins are ubiquitous and can be redeemed.

It is precisely because we are all sinning all the time that we all must atone for our sins as part of building our relationship with God.

Many gay people still find such philosophical-theological formulations objectionable because they do not accept that homosexual acts are in any way wrong, and because the Catholic discourse is stigmatising and propagates gay shame.

Nevertheless, psychologically they can be easier to compute in a post-Christian society which demands unbounded kindness to those it sees as victims than encounters with Protestants who imply that the rest of us are destined for Hell.

Such worldviews upset at a highly visceral level and this may go some way to explaining the strength of reaction against so apparently mild-mannered and good-natured a person as Kate Forbes.

• Miles Pattenden is Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at the Australian Catholic University and a Visiting Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge.
• First published by ABC. Republished with permission of the author.

Anthony Albanese is a Catholic.

Down the Eastern seaboard, the three state premiers, Dominic Perrottet (NSW), Daniel Andrews (Victoria) and Peter Malinauskas (SA) are Catholics.

There are many other high-profile Catholics at ministerial level and as opposition leaders.

Others, like Queensland Premier, Anastacia Palaszczuk attended a Catholic school.

Given that Catholics make up only a fifth to a quarter of the Australian population, they seem to be overrepresented right now.

That could change quickly.

But federal politics has had a run of Catholic or Catholic-educated leaders, including Liberal prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott, Nationals Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, and Labor Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.

Just to list their names makes it blindingly obvious that they are men (almost all men) with very different values.

They are not only spread across the political parties, but within the parties, they occupy very different places on the ideological spectrum.

Turnbull and Abbott are prime examples of deeply different values on matters like climate change and same-sex marriage, within one party.

If you look a little deeper, it is also clear that their adherence to orthodox, institutional Catholicism varies too.

That should not be surprising given the decline of Catholic church adherence in the wider community.

As only 10 per cent of Catholics are regular church attenders, it would be surprising if attendance by Catholic politicians was much different.

As more Catholics depart from official church proclamations, it would surprise if some Catholic politicians didn't too; but when it happens in the public eye, as it did recently over the Thorburn affair with Daniel Andrews and Archbishop Peter Comensoli, it is newsworthy.

All these facts together make for an interesting relationship between church leaders, who have many different political interests to pursue with government and political leaders of the same faith.

They can try to utilise the relationship during campaigns and policy debates, or they can be embarrassed by them if they appear to be neglecting church teaching.

It also raises questions for the political leaders themselves, whose faith can give them the inside running with church leaders and with some Catholic voters during election campaigns.

During the recent federal election campaign, for instance, there was plenty of mutual cosying up between Catholic church leaders and the then Labor Opposition.

Their faith can also be an embarrassment for political leaders at times when they would prefer not to be too aligned with the official church, for example when the latter is in disrepute over institutional responses to child sexual abuse or central to tricky policy debates such as education funding.

The relationship is becoming more complicated in recent times. Continue reading

But this year, when Vice President Joe Biden was denied Communion at a Catholic church in South Carolina for roughly the same reasons, coverage barely lasted a week.

According to experts, the practice — at least as a political statement if not a theological one — may be played out.

"The challenge of Catholics who campaign for policies that violate fundamental Catholic teaching is real, but not new, nor confined to abortion," John Carr, director of Georgetown University's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, said in an email.

"Refusing communion for public positions was widely discussed and rejected by almost all bishops and pastors years ago."

Indeed, denying Communion may have lost some of its shock value in today's political climate, where avoiding Eucharistic rejection has become a normalized part of campaigns for many Catholic politicians.

In a world where U.S. Catholics have long accepted ideological divides on abortion — and where many Catholic officials decline to discuss the topic of Communion refusal — the once deeply controversial practice appears to be more theological curiosity than campaign killer.

The latest chapter in a long-simmering Catholic Communion controversy began last month when the Rev. Robert Morey at St. Anthony Catholic Church in Florence, South Carolina, rebuked Biden, a Catholic.

"Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching," Morey said in a statement sent to Religion News Service.

"As a priest, it is my responsibility to minister to those souls entrusted to my care, and I must do so even in the most difficult situations."

When Biden was asked about the incident by MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell on Oct. 29, he declined to discuss it.

"That's just my personal life and I am not going to get into that at all," Biden said. His campaign also did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Morey's actions were the latest iteration of a debate that dates back to at least Kerry's 2004 White House bid, when then-Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis and others threatened to deny Communion to the then-Massachusetts senator because of his support for abortion rights.

The mere possibility caused a media stir: Reporters packed the back pews of churches Kerry visited to take Communion, a trend some referred to as "Wafer Watch" — a reference to wafers used in many Catholic Communion services.

A former advance staffer from the Kerry campaign who asked to remain anonymous told RNS that vetting churches ahead of Kerry's visits became standard practice at the time.

The person said it was often a "delicate process" that involved in-person conversations with local priests.

It's an open question whether denying Communion was ever popular among American prelates.

According to The New York Times, a 2004 survey of Catholic bishops found that of the 154 who responded to the poll, 135 said they did not agree with denying anyone the Eucharist.

Even so, the threat of denying the holy host to politicians persisted. In 2013, Burke — then a cardinal and head of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court at the Vatican — declared that Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-California, should be denied Communion because of her abortion stance.

And in June of this year, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois called on local churches to deny Communion to lawmakers who had voted for statutory protection for abortion rights in the state.

Asked if Paprocki would also call on churches to deny Communion to Biden, diocesan spokesman Andrew Hansen said that "if we do learn that (Biden) plans on visiting, we will address the question of Holy Communion at that time."

Recent years have seen the spectre of denying Communion extended to conservatives as well, this time over the issue of immigration, not abortion.

In 2018, Bishop Edward Weisenburger of Tucson, Arizona, suggested "canonical penalties" — which would include denying Communion — for Catholics who participated in the Trump administration's policy of separating immigrant families along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Tricia Bruce, a sociologist of religion at University of Notre Dame's Center for the Study of Religion and Society, said the back-and-forth over the Eucharist highlights latent political and theological polarization among U.S. Catholics.

"It's an issue that's been under the surface for decades," she said.

"Catholics grappling with what does it mean to be Catholic, what does it mean to be a good Catholic, and what does it mean to be a Catholic operating within a public sphere that is not Catholic?"

Bruce pointed to the slate of opinions that emerged in the days after Biden's Communion refusal, with Catholics from all corners of the political and theological perspective offering different and often contradictory takes on the issue.

James Salt, a longtime liberal Catholic activist who said that in 2004 he helped organized Catholic theologians to denounce threats of denying Communion, called Morey's decision "misguided and tragic."

James Martin, a Jesuit priest and consultant for the Vatican's Dicastery for Communication, expressed frustration with the idea of denying Communion in general.

"Denying Communion to politicians, whether Democrat or Republican, is a bad idea and even worse pastoral practice," he told RNS.

Bishops also weighed in, with Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York telling Fox News that he wouldn't judge the decision to deny Communion to Biden but wouldn't do it himself. Similarly, Biden's home diocese in Wilmington, Delaware, issued a statement saying that area Bishop W. Francis Malooly "has consistently refrained from politicizing the Eucharist, and will continue to do so."

Bruce noted the range of opinions matched the divide among lay Catholics on abortion: According to a 2018 Public Religion Research Institute poll, 48% of U.S. Catholics support making abortion legal in most or all cases, compared to 46% who say the opposite.

Bruce said the Communion controversy faces a different abortion debate than it did in 2004.

She cited her own forthcoming survey-based research on abortion that included many Catholics, many of whom she said "have a different rank order" when it comes to their moral and political priorities for being a good Catholic.

"The terms of the (abortion) debate that we used before to talk about this issue are not the same terms of the debate that people use now," she said.

"I don't think it's this clear line that is faith-based driven by evangelicals and Catholics about whether or not what is inside a woman's womb is a baby or not."

She also pointed to generational change among younger Americans — especially millennials and members of Gen Z — who she said showcase "a real distaste" for the "close linkage between religion and politics."

Indeed, clerics and politicians alike now appear hesitant to wade into the Communion debate.

The presidential campaigns of former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and former U.S. Rep. John Delaney — both of whom are Catholic and support abortion rights — declined to remark on the matter.

So did the Diocese of Charleston, of which Morey's church is a part; the diocese declined to respond to questions such as whether priests would also deny Communion to someone for participating in the Trump administration's child separation policy.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was similarly mum, as were all Catholic dioceses in the early primary state of Nevada.

Representatives from the Diocese of Des Moines, Iowa, and the Diocese of Manchester — which encompasses the state of New Hampshire — noted that their regions do not have a policy on denying Communion.

And Cardinal Blase Cupich — a close ally of Pope Francis who heads up the Archdiocese of Chicago — said only that "the long-standing position of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is that it is the responsibility of the local bishop to exercise his own prudential judgment in deciding how and when to apply Catholic teachings in their dealings with public officials."

These days, Carr argued, denying Communion plays poorly in the pews, with the press and possibly at the ballot box.

"It is bad Eucharistic theology, bad pastoral practice and bad politics," he said.

• Jack Jenkins is a national reporter for RNS based in Washington, covering U.S. Catholics and the intersection of religion and politics.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

Over the course of his decades-long career, the Catholic former Vice President has said that the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade went too far, but has now pledged to enshrine its full effects in federal law.

He has been for, then against, bans of taxpayer funding for abortion and against, then for extreme practices like partial birth abortion.

Biden was denied Communion on Sunday, at St. Anthony Catholic Church in Florence, South Carolina, pastor Fr. Robert Morey denied Biden Holy Communion as the Catholic presidential candidate was campaigning nearby that weekend and had attended Sunday Mass.

"Sadly, this past Sunday, I had to refuse Holy Communion to former Vice President Joe Biden," Fr. Morey explained in a statement sent to CNA.

"Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other and the Church. Our actions should reflect that," he stated.

"Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching," he said.

The Catholic Church teaches that life begins at the moment of conception and that every act of abortion is the willful taking of innocent human life.

In the 2008 "Meet the Press" interview, Biden was asked "as a Roman Catholic" when he thought life began.

He said that he was "prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception," but added that to impose that belief upon others through the application of law would be "inappropriate in a pluralistic society."

"There is a debate in our church, as Cardinal Egan would acknowledge, that's existed.

"Back in ‘Summa Theologia,' when Thomas Aquinas wrote ‘Summa Theologia,' he said there was no-it didn't occur until quickening, 40 days after conception.

"How am I going out and tell you, if you or anyone else that you must insist upon my view that is based on a matter of faith?

"And that's the reason I haven't," Biden said.

In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Pope St. John Paul II warned of a political mentality where "the original and inalienable right to life is questioned or denied on the basis of a parliamentary vote or the will of one part of the people-even if it is the majority."

"This is the sinister result of a relativism which reigns unopposed: the ‘right' ceases to be such, because it is no longer firmly founded on the inviolable dignity of the person, but is made subject to the will of the stronger part," he wrote.

"To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others."

Biden, a Democrat, originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972 representing the state of Delaware.

He served in that role until 2009, when he was elected Vice President as the running mate of President Barack Obama.

In Biden's 36 years in the Senate and eight years as Vice President to President Barack Obama, he has reversed himself a number of times on the issue of abortion. Continue reading

"The course of history is directed by the choices we make and our choices grow out of the ideas, the beliefs, the values, the dreams of the people.

It is not so much the powerful leaders that determine our destiny as the much more powerful influence of the combined voice of the people themselves."

The choices Americans make now about faith in public life will help to determine our course.

With hate crimes and hostility toward certain faiths soaring, Americans have to decide whether we will tolerate this state of affairs or act to change it.

If we truly believe all are created with equal dignity and worth, the answer is clear: Every human being deserves safety, security and religious liberty. And an attack on any faith must be treated as an attack against our own.

Especially under current circumstances, there should be no more tolerance for violent rhetoric or fearmongering by candidates or government officials.

To be sure, government cannot stop every hate crime or heal all of our divisions.

But leaders have a solemn obligation to do everything in their power to keep us safe and bring us together.

Let us reaffirm George Washington's words, written to the congregation of Touro Synagogue, that the United States of America should give "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance."

These are among the values embodied in the First Amendment's religion clauses, which serve as co-guarantors of religious liberty.

In the face of efforts to dismantle or diminish it, Americans should register their support for a robust understanding of the establishment clause, one that applies to both the federal government and the governments of all 50 states.

In an America that is rapidly becoming more diverse, it is perhaps more important than ever that the government maintain neutrality toward religion, neither promoting nor denigrating faith, nor preferring one or more religions over others.

Strong support is also needed for robust protections for religious exercise, including appropriate religious exemptions.

Exempting or accommodating religious individuals and institutions from laws and policies that conflict with their consciences is a time-­honored American tradition, one that plays a key role in recognizing human dignity and protecting inalienable rights.

This same tradition, however, has also taken seriously the burdens that religious exemptions place on individuals who do not benefit from them, and coexisted with robust protections for other human and civil rights.

It has also acknowledged distinctions between the commercial and nonprofit spheres.

Making lasting progress on issues like these will require renewed efforts to bring diverse Americans of good faith together to listen to one another and seek common ground.

That will not resolve all of our differences, but it will make our conversations and our country better.

In the recent past, presidents have called on Americans of vastly different political and theological stripes to seek common ground, and those efforts have borne fruit.

Such initiatives have produced consensus guidance on current law regarding religious expression in public schools and the federal workplace.

Another initiative produced consensus recommendations for strengthening the partnerships the government forms with faith-­based and other community organizations to serve people in need.

This common­-ground tradition needs to be revived.

Another piece of common­-ground work should be rebuilding the U.S. refugee admissions and resettlement system.

Refugees are individuals who are fleeing persecution, including persecution for their faith or beliefs.

Every year, the president, in consultation with Congress, sets the ceiling for the number of refugees who can be admitted to our country.

Once refugees undergo a rigorous series of security checks, they are resettled by nongovernmental groups, including many faith-based groups.

Until a few years ago, the refugee admissions and resettlement programs had been treasured and strengthened by presidents of both parties.

Participating in a robust, global system of refugee resettlement has helped the United States to make good on its promise to protect human rights and to prevent crises and conflicts around the world.

Since 2017, however, the resettlement program has been dismantled, and the ceiling for refugees has been driven to a historic low.

Leaders from across the political and religious spectrum have called for the refugee admissions and resettlement programs to be restored, noting that the United States can be both secure and compassionate.

Restoration of the refugee resettlement program should be part of a larger plan for renewed cooperation between government and a wide range of religious and humanitarian leaders.

The Constitution permits governmental and willing religious leaders to work together to promote the common good. Common sense requires it.

To conquer scourges like the Ebola and Zika viruses, end global poverty, promote racial justice, advance maternal and child health, counter violent extremism, make peace around the world and slow the climate change that threatens especially the poorest among us, government should collaborate with civil society organizations, including interested religious organizations.

Such collaboration ought to be prioritized and always conducted in a manner consistent with the Constitution.

• Melissa Rogers served as special assistant to President Barack Obama and as executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (2013-2017). She is now a visiting professor at Wake Forest University's School of Divinity. This article is adapted from her new book, "Faith in American Public Life."
• First published in RNS. Reprinted with permission.

The Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life has also called for the number of Church of England bishops in the House of Lords to be reduced.

The report, titled "Living with Difference", calls for a major overhaul of aspects of public life to reflect the realities of an increasingly multicultural and secular Britain.

The commission, led by former high court judge, Baronness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, spent two years in public consultation before issuing its report.

She called the report a "new settlement for religion and belief in the UK".

The commission's patrons include a former archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Rowan Williams, and its members are drawn from all major religions in the UK, as well as academia and the British Humanist Association.

The report states that society "needs customs, symbols and ceremonies which give public expression to how it sees itself".

It says that those responsible for such events, including the coronation, should "ensure that the pluralist character of modern society is reflected".

The last coronation, of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, was an explicitly Christian ceremony in Westminster Abbey.

It involved the monarch swearing to uphold Protestantism and protect the Church of England and its bishops and clergy.

The commission's report also recommended that schools not be able to select children on the basis of faith.

And it called for an abolition of a legal requirement for schools to provide daily acts of worship of a Christian character.

But the commission wants religious education - as distinct from religious instruction - to be a compulsory subject taught from a nationally determined curriculum.

The report also recommended that the UK Ministry of Justice should study the workings of religious tribunals and courts, such as Muslim sharia and Jewish Beth Din courts.

This is in order to disseminate best practice and promote gender equality.

Sources

• The Guardian
• The Guardian
• The Observer
• Image: Radio Times