Church still not satisfied with school religion classes

A dispute between the Church of Greece and the government, which began last September when new teaching material for religion classes was distributed to schools, is continuing to cause problems in the relationship between the institutions.

The bid to change the content of the lessons so they moved away from the catechism and gave students a better understanding of other religions was one of the reasons that a bitter dispute erupted between the Church and the coali- tion, leading to Nikos Filis stepping down as education minister.

The new textbooks have yet to be printed, leaving teachers to work from photocopies provided by the Ministry. The government has appointed a team of experts to draw up the teaching material for next year. Kathimerini understands that 80 percent of the content will consist of Bible texts. This satisfies one Church demand, but it still opposes religious classes being optional in senior high school.