The latest example of egregious Christian intolerance in education comes from England, where a teacher was reported to a counter-terrorism agency and fired after telling a lesbian student, “God loves you.”
Svetlana Powell, a teacher with 17 years of experience, was reportedly dismissed by the T2 Apprenticeship Academy in Bristol in July 2016 after her students engaged her in a discussion about her views on homosexuality. Powell, a Christian, shared that while she believes homosexuality is against God’s will, God loves everyone regardless of what they do or who they are.
A student then announced that she was lesbian, to which Powell turned to her and said, “God loves you.” Two days later, Powell was fired for “gross misconduct.”
But that’s not even the most ridiculous part of this story. After a group of triggered students complained that they’d been “brainwashed and preached to” by Powell, the Academy’s Chief Safeguarding Officer, Sian Prigg, reported Powell as a “radicalisation threat” to the local coordinator for Prevent, the British government’s “counter-terrorism strategy” group.
In other words, Powell was fired because her school’s administrators viewed her Christian beliefs as a terrorism threat.
Powell is currently suing Marr Corporation, the private firm that runs the academy on rolling contracts from the government, with the help of Christian Legal Centre (CLC). According to Powell’s lawyer, Pavel Stroilov, her dismissal stands in stark contrast with the school’s handling of student complaints against another teacher, Andrew Spargo, who has been described as an “outspoken atheist.”
According to an email sent by a Marr Corporation witness and obtained by Stroilov, students complained that Spargo spent most of his time in class “preaching to them on the daily basis about how terrible England is and how many innocent people the government has killed, as well as why Jesus never existed.” Further, on one occasion, Spargo allegedly showed his students a sketch of a naked woman with her legs open and vagina exposed. On another, he allegedly twice told a student to “get the f*** out of my classroom.”
Yet the academy dealt with Spargo “pastorally,” and simply put him on probation for three months. He still teaches at the school.
If that isn’t proof of anti-Christian bias in education, what is?
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