As we report this week (p6), funding bids for the £11m grant from many faith-based youth groups - Christian, Jewish and Muslim - have failed to get past even the first application stage.
This appears at odds with the government's claim that it values the contribution of the faith-based sector to youth work. If it's a signal that it is beginning to treat with suspicion youth groups with faith as a factor in their make-up, then that's a worrying concern. Suspicion is wholly justified where a group's driving purpose is to preach and convert, but not where groups regard recruiting young people to their faith as no more than a potential by-product of their activities. Preaching is not a charge typically made, for example, of the Methodist Association of Youth Clubs, one of the major groups denied funding.
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