Common prayer with a spiritual theme that would inspire those who participate in it has always in the past characterised the start of the school day for every British pupil. Today, however, the tradition has become so démodé that the religious leaders of the most important Christian denominations in the UK have asked the Minister for Education Ian Johnson to intervene to rescue it. In a joint letter the representatives of the Anglican, Catholic, Methodist and Baptist Churches explain that secondary schools limit the spiritual and moral growth of their pupils by failing to organise daily acts of prayer. According to the Christian leaders, headmasters/mistresses and teachers need better preparation to permit them to organise common prayer, which is a right of pupils according to British legislation. By law schools must guarantee daily acts of prayer that are “wholly or in good part Christian in nature”. While primary schools usually respect the law, many state secondary schools no longer do so. According to the Anglican bishop of Portsmouth Kenneth Stevenson, who chairs the ecumenical committee for education, “the schools that invest in common prayer are impressed by the impact it has on the rest of school activities and on the attitude of students”.
