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London (CNSNews.com) - Charging that the human rights of teenagers are being violated, lawmakers and humanists are calling for religious education to be scaled back in British schools.

Christianity is the official state religion in the United Kingdom, and students in most public schools are required to take religious education classes and participate in acts of collective worship.

"Such acts must be predominantly Christian in nature over the course of the year and might include opportunities for prayer and mediation, or assemblies with a religious theme. Schools with a majority of students who are of other faiths can apply for an exception to this rule.

Government surveys have found that a number of schools in England have neglected daily worship, but the requirement remains a sore point for many humanists.

Francis Farrell, an expert on religious education at Edge Hill University in northwest England, said religious education classes usually deal with the study of Christianity and at least two other world religions in a given year.

Parents are allowed to keep their children out of religious education and daily worship, and since 2006, pupils in their final year of school also have been allowed to choose not to participate in worship.

Last month, a parliamentary human rights committee issued a report recommending that students below the age of 16 also be allowed to opt out of religious education classes and daily worship as long as they have "sufficient maturity, intelligence and understanding."

The lawmakers said forcing a student to engage in these activities was "incompatible" with the child's freedom of thought, conscience and belief. It also violated the European Convention on Human Rights, the report said.

The National Secular Society says it is often approached by parents "outraged" that their children were "effectively forced to worship."

Executive director Keith Porteous Wood said in a statement the society would consider legal action if the government continued to make children to act against their values.

"This would not be tolerated in any other context," he said. "We will look out for a suitable case of a pupil mature enough to make their own decision and consider challenging the government on the issue."

A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said there were no plans to change the current rules and declined to comment on any possible lawsuit.

The report by the parliamentary committee came shortly after Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, warned that Britain was in danger of becoming a "God-free zone."

In a lecture in London, Murphy-O'Connor said atheists were wrong in claiming that unreason lay behind a belief in God.

For believers, he said, faith was the flowering of reason.

"One of the things which I challenge is the desire to separate Christianity from rational inquiry," he said. "Many of our 'new atheists' seem unable to cope with the notion of an intelligent, reflective Christian faith."

In another development, the British Humanist Association (BHA) recently secured two places on a 30-member advisory committee that will meet over the next 18 months and eventually recommend to the government changes to religious education guidelines.

Membership in the committee is drawn from a wide range of faiths and groups involved in religious education.

Andrew Copson, the BHA's director of education and public affairs, said existing guidelines placed an undue emphasis on Christianity and was "seriously out of step" with what he said was contemporary best practice in teaching about religions and non-religious beliefs.

With church attendance in Britain dramatically dropping in the last decade, it was ridiculous that most children spend more time in religious observance than their parents, he said.