Abstract Three distinctive coalitions are distinguished in the field of moral education in Britain and comparable countries. The first of these, the ‘civil religion’ of government school systems during the late nineteenth and most of the twentieth century has been undermined since the late 1960s by antinomianism, the second coalition. One result has been an increasing flight in the United States and Australia of Protestant Fundamentalists, part of the third coalition, from government schools. During the same period large numbers of Muslim families have entered Britain and Australia, and have found the antinomian tendencies of government schools much more alien to their value than the earlier civil religion would have been. The danger of widespread alienation from Western societies of Islamic and indeed of Protestant Fundamentalists will be reduced by a two‐pronged policy of restoring the moral fibre of government school systems and of making schools based on their own moral beliefs more available to Islamic, Protestant Fundamentalist, and other minority parents.