New GCSE to cover Druids, Rastafarians and Moonies

A new Religious Studies GCSE has received criticism after it was discovered that it would cover the rituals and teachings of various religious sects and atheism, whilst teaching on the Bible and other holy books would be reduced substantially.

Students will be able to study the teachings of Druids, Rastafarians and the Unification Church, a group known more commonly as the “Moonies” after its founder Sun Myung Moon, who claims to be the Messiah.

The Unification Church is considered by many to be a cult and has been accused of brainwashing and breaking up families. It is also well known for carrying out mass weddings between couples who often barely know each other.

The new GCSE syllabus will be trialled in schools from September by the OCR exam board. Students will have to choose to study two out of six religious movements in a paper worth 25 per cent of marks.

Other belief systems which can be studied are those of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baha’i, Atheist, Humanists and Falun Gong practitioners.

The GCSE is entitled “Religion and Belief in Today’s World” and will also look at issues of human rights, gender equality, genetically modified crops, cloning, the internet, Marxism and multiculturalism.

Colin Hart of the Christian Institute said the idea risked creating a “multi-faith mish mash”.

“It's total curriculum overload… I don't think young people can cope with study of religious movements in addition to six world faiths. It is bewildering how they are going to be able to study all these things.”

'The problem is the sheer number of topics within RE now. How are teachers going to do all these things and how are children going to comprehend them? Teaching about a faith is like teaching a language, it's as complex.”

He also said, “It's outrageous that atheism is included. It is a study of religion, not atheism.'


OCR however defended the move saying it would, “Challenge students to think about the role of religion in modern Britain and in the worldwide community,” reports the Daily Mail.

Religious Studies is currently one of the most popular GCSEs. Last year 171,000 students took it as a full subject, whilst 260,000 did a short course in religious studies.