9:00am Friday 27th November 2009
My children have received a letter from their school asking them to fill shoeboxes with gifts for “Samaritan’s Operation Christmas Child”.
Parents may be surprised to learn that this is nothing at all to with the listening organisation The Samaritans, but is rather Samaritan's Purse, an American organisation called Evangelical Alliance.
From the Evangelical Alliance point of view, the shoebox is primarily a promotional tool.
According to the Guardian: “A booklet of Bible stories is sent with the boxes to some countries, including a pledge that children are asked to sign to ‘become God’s child today’, attend church, read the Bible and convince friends to do the same.”
In other words, it is a gift with strings attached, and part of an attempt to convert children in developing countries to a fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity and away from the beliefs of their parents.
Few people would have an issue with The Samaritans.
But asking children unwittingly to support the Evangelical Alliance is rather more contentious. Personally I find it difficult to understand how a school which is supposedly committed to diversity could even consider supporting Samaritan’s Purse.
Dave Purnell, Northfield Road, Ringwood
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