Gozen Soydag lost her job at a Catholic school for expressing her Christian beliefs. Had she been a Muslim, would they have sacked her?”, asks Celia Walden for the Telegraph. Here’s an extract:
How many of us check out our children’s teachers online? How many of us know anything about their personal beliefs? I know I don’t, but I should probably start. Imagine the horrors you might uncover on social media alone. These people moulding our sons and daughters’ malleable minds: what if they turned out to be one of the warped souls who celebrated October 7? What if they had a soft spot for Bashar al-Assad? What if – whisper it – they promoted a traditional Christian view of marriage?
Gozen Soydag, 37, did exactly that. She did the unthinkable, the unconscionable. Across her various Instagram accounts (and despite her boss’s warnings to keep social media accounts private) the former pastoral manager from Enfield unashamedly flaunted her Christian beliefs, repeatedly telling her 30,000 followers about the importance of the traditional nuclear family, insisting that cohabitation before marriage is wrong and on one occasion even saying that wives should “submit to their husbands as to the Lord”.
Soydag was dismissed after senior staff allegedly deemed the content “misogynistic” and she has now launched legal action against the London school for wrongful dismissal, harassment, discrimination and breaches of her human rights on the grounds of her Christian beliefs. Oh, and the name of the school? St Anne’s Catholic High School for Girls.
As always with ongoing legal cases I would never presume to know all the facts and the school has yet to comment, but on the surface this appears to be yet another cowardly capitulation to our reigning (secular) orthodoxy. Another apparent instance of Christian views being up there with the most abhorrent, the most offensive. Take off that crucifix! Ban the Lord’s Prayer from our cinema screens! And please no Christmas trees in city centres! What are you thinking?
That we’re talking about a Catholic school involved in this case does take a national trend we’ve grown to accept to another level. And Soydag stresses that this is a school with “Bible verses and crosses in every room”. Yet should we really be surprised by its alleged reaction? Rather than rise up with pride against these sustained attacks, the Catholic Church sits there cowering and apologetic, it seems, for being so deeply “off-message”. So of course some Catholic institutions will follow suit.
To be clear, there are teachings in the Bible that I wouldn’t want my daughter following to the letter and the idea she should “submit to” her husband “as to the Lord” is probably one of them – even if I do think we might want to be a little less literal minded some 2,000 years on. Even if I despair of the pedestrian minds who see the word “submit” and go straight to “marital abuse promoter”. Also, if we’re being plodding and pedantic, it’s worth pointing out that the second part of the Ephesians 5:22-33 quote urges husbands to “love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” and consider yourselves “one flesh”.
But this isn’t about whether we agree with the traditional Christian view of marriage or not. It’s not even about whether we consider Soydag’s personal views tobe archaic or creepy, because as I understand it, there is no suggestion that these views infiltrated the classroom. If it turns out in the tribunal – which began yesterday – that they did, then I would absolutely have a problem with that. I don’t want teachers telling children how to conduct their relationships any more than I want them telling children they were born in the wrong bodies.
No, this is about whether this particular teacher deserved to be sacked reportedly for having views that, despite being in perfect keeping with the school’s surface ethos, did not in fact fit with its real agenda – with the religion it had apparently decided to adhere to instead, with “inclusive culture”. Had Soydag been a Muslim, would they really have sacked her? Had she made a mildly anti-Semitic comment on Instagram or unleashed a foul-mouthed tirade on social media at any of the accepted villains of the day (from meat eaters to Trump), would the school even have reprimanded her?
Worth reading in full.
