B.B.C. Article
A Good Friday Passion play in Oxford has been cancelled after a council official did not realise it was a religious event.
Organisers of the outdoor performance, due to be held on the Cowley Road, cancelled it after an "intractable situation" with the city council.
The authority's licensing team leader has since apologised and admitted making "a mistake".

(Continues)

"A great deal of work and prayer has been invested. We are so grateful to all who have shared this task with us so willingly and who have worked so hard," it added.

Civil servants are being given lessons on religion amid fears that many have no understanding of Christianity and other faiths.
In a sign of the increasing secularisation of our public services, employees across Whitehall have been urged to attend ‘How should governments “do” God’ seminars.
The events are designed to help officials ensure policies meet the needs of religious people.
Faith groups said it was astonishing that the civil service is so packed with metropolitan atheists that they have to be reminded to take into account the views of millions who are members of a major religion.
The seminars, which have been advertised across government departments, are being arranged by the faith team at the Department of Communities and Local Government.
They are designed to combat the sort of ‘biblical illiteracy’ which saw an Oxford Council official refuse permission for a traditional Good Friday Passion play.

A flyer for the ‘How should governments “do” God?’ seminars, seen by the Mail, urges civil servants to sign up for them in order to ‘tailor your policy making to ensure it is responsive to the needs and perspectives of people of faith’.
It says: ‘The seminar is designed to boost what we are calling “religious literacy” among civil servants. Ministers have stressed the importance of government establishing productive working relationships with faith communities in policy development and implementation, in the UK and overseas.

‘Baroness Warsi, minister for faith and communities, has been clear that she sees it as part of the role of Government to set the conditions to be able to enable people of faith to manifest their religious beliefs openly and contribute to society.
‘This seminar... will focus on the drivers, obstacles to and benefits of departments “doing God” well.’ It adds that the idea is to improve ‘religious literacy’ across Whitehall and in the public sector in general.

I'm With Stupid wrote:I'm confused. Why should the fact that it's a religious event mean it has to be cancelled? It's Easter ffs. You don't get any more religious than that.

Julian Alison, licensing team leader at the city council, said: "At the time of processing the application, I did not appreciate that this was a religious event. I made a mistake and by the time I realised my mistake, the organisers had cancelled the event.