The Institute of Educational Policy published a 22-page report on the teaching of religion in schools in Greece.
Specifically, as reported by protothema.gr, the report states that the religious education must include, with clarity and completeness, the doctrines, moral values and traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ, without cultivating doubts as to the elements that constitute the Orthodox Christian faith, nor to be confused with the teaching of other religions and denomination, without this infringing on the inviolable religious freedom, as it concerns exclusively the Orthodox Christian students and not the non-Orthodox, the people of another faith or atheists.
It also states that “the non-Orthodox, people of different faith, agnostics or atheists have the right to be exempted from religious education without any negative consequences, as long as their parents make a reliable statement that they do not wish, for reasons of religious conscience without further explanation on their religious beliefs.” For the exemption from the religious education course, the Commission advocates:
The statement that the student is “not a Christian Orthodox” in order to be exempted from the religious education course cannot be valid because it is contrary to Article 13 of the Greek Constitution which guarantees freedom of religious conscience and freedom of religion as a constitutional principle and as an individual right; to Article 9 of the ECHR, as it contradicts the negative religious freedom of students and their parents; and to Article 5, which establishes the fundamental principle of the necessity of the processing of personal data. It would, therefore, suffice to make a general reference to reasons for religious conscience and not for belief or non-belief in a particular doctrine.
It emphasises that “the state has no right to compel individuals to disclose their beliefs about spiritual matters or to verify their religious beliefs, nor, in general, to interfere in any way in their individual consciousness.” It is also inadmissible to turn religious education in school into “a dogmatic confession of faith or rather to catechism.”
