One of the ladies in my group of local mother friends recently expressed horror that her five-year-old daughter had been taught a Bible story at their local non-denominational primary school. She said she was appalled that the school would teach children about God and read them stories from Genesis. Said friend, after lodging her complaints with the school, went straight onto Amazon and bought her daughter a book about evolution.

This reaction is clearly mad – even atheists understand that Christianity is part of our country’s identity and that teaching children the odd Bible story is, at the very least, providing them with a cultural reference.