BOURNEMOUTH’S top town centre clergyman has issued a call for schools and churches to “live the Lord’s Prayer rather than mumble it”.

The Rev Ian Terry has written a booklet called Living the Lord’s Prayer, Turning the School Upside Down.

The town centre rector argues for a whole-school focus on the Lord’s Prayer, preferably in partnership with the local church.

Dr Terry, who was diocesan director of education for Hereford, has been a schools inspector and is governor of three schools in Bournemouth, as well as visiting fellow in the sociology of religion at Bournemouth University.

His booklet argues for “contemplation and social action, imaginatively inter-woven, underpinning the whole life of each school”, according to publisher Grove Books.

The publisher said: “If schools and churches really live the Lord’s Prayer, rather than mumble it, then their lives will be transformed.

“At a time when spirituality and faith in schools are under threat from those with a secularist agenda, who would dumb-down all faith commitment in the name of political correctness, the author offers a timely consideration of the significance of the Lord’s Prayer in schools.”

Dr Terry writes about the conversations he had with secondary pupils in a Christian Academy in Nottingham about the Lord’s Prayer. The publisher said the students drew on the prayer in their daily lives “but also used sharp common sense and critical reasoning to debunk the toxic myths about a distant and angry God”.

He says the use of the Lord’s Prayer in schools can give students hope for transforming the world. Dr Terry also argues for personal commitment and quotes Pope Benedict XVI’s inaugural mass.

“If we let Christ into our lives we lose nothing , absolutely nothing of what makes life free , beautiful and good. Do not be afraid of Christ. He takes nothing away, and he gives us everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return.”

Living the Lord’s Prayer, Turning the School Upside-Down, Grove Education Series eD 23, is published by Grove Books in Cambridge, priced £3.95, and available from bookshops or from grovebooks.co.uk