When a young person successfully completes their eleven years of compulsory school religious education, what will there be in their knowledge and understanding of the world and themselves that will be worthy of praise? Will they be able better to navigate the multiple religious, philosophical and cultural streams that lie around and before them? What experiences and thoughts will they have encountered that make them more curious about life and, perhaps more importantly, motivate them to imagine and contribute to the creation of a better world for all?
From the end of the 19th century and for the most of the 20th, the goals of religious education in British schools were explicitly connected with Christian morality. The subject was called ‘Religious Instruction’ and legally bound (as it still, anachronistically, is) with the school’s duty to provide a daily act of collective worship. Together, Religious Instruction and Collective Worship comprised ‘Religious Education’, and it wasn’t until 1988 that ‘Religious Education’ was identified as a separate subject that had to be included in the basic school curriculum.
Through the 1970s and 80s it became increasingly obvious that the religious demographic of the country was changing and that assumptions about the nature of Christian religious instruction in schools had to be challenged. The subject has been through many iterations. In different school settings I have experienced Religious Instruction, Religious Knowledge, Religious Education, Religious Studies and even ‘Divinity’. When I became Head of RE at Frome Community College, I changed the name to ‘Religion and Philosophy’ and since then I have advocated a change to ‘Sophology’ – the search for and study of purported wisdom.
I liked the latter term for several reasons, not least because it suggested that pupils undertaking the subject might gain in wisdom from a study of the world’s treasury of belief, practice and experience. The word contains a harmonious combination of Greek words; the female ‘Sophia’ and the male ‘Logos’, thus inferring that wisdom can be found in experience, including, or perhaps especially, in women’s experience, as well as in deep, analytic thought. Nevertheless, the idea has been much mocked, particularly by those who noticed the rather obvious similarity to ‘Sophistry’ and the ‘Sofology’ of the furniture adverts.
I have now become a supporter of the suggestion to rename the subject ‘Religion and Worldviews’. The term has been attracting a growing consensus within the RE world since it was first posited by Dr Joyce Miller, a member of the Commission on Religious Education (CoRE) that recommended it in its 2018 Report, ‘Religion and Worldviews: the way forward’. The more I think about it the more I like it.
First, it doesn’t abandon the word ‘religion’. Although the very word is ‘toxic’ to many people, it seems important to me that there is something powerful in the human and public world represented by the word ‘religion’; something that is not only worthy of study, but actually vital for individual, social and political well-being. The second word in the title is ‘and’. This too is important. The conjunction implies that something quite different is coming; complementary perhaps, but not the same. Which brings us to the third word in the new title: ‘worldviews’. The plural form is used and is vital. The singular form ‘worldview’ would contain too much overlap with ‘religion’, but the plural signifies that many different forms of worldview may be studied. Thus, both religious and non-religious, institutional and personal worldviews are included. We are free at last!
No longer is the subject formerly known as RE limited to the consideration of a single religion, or even ‘six major faiths in Great Britain’. Nor is the subject confined just to what ‘recognised religions’ are saying or have said. Our starting point is no longer what the powerful elites within certain religions would like our children to know; rather, we select from the human treasury of experience in order to illuminate, for children and young people today, the key concerns of religions and philosophies throughout the ages. Here is the opportunity to build a new academic discipline, based on the traditions of religious studies begun in the 1960s and 70s by Ninian Smart and others, that will incorporate as much wisdom from the human world as may be squeezed into the curriculum and aim to facilitate a broad and deep understanding of what really matters.
What then should we teach our children about religion and worldviews? Don Cupitt offers this definition: ‘Religion, I suggest, is the complex of ideas and practices by means of which we try to reconcile ourselves to, and make the best of, life in general and our own lives in particular. Religion is about coming to terms with life and learning how to live and how to die.’ So here we have something worthy of study: the ways in which we deal with what life throws at us. How do we cope? How do we make sense of our experience? And more, how do we make the best of it all?
Then there is the magic of story. Why do some stories become so successful that they take over the world? The most successful stories don’t have to be ‘true’; they don’t even have to be easily understood. Was Jonah really swallowed by a great fish? What does it mean? Does it matter? When you look at the context of such stories, much is revealed about the people who follow the traditions in which they are set. So too are the many artistic and creative ways in which religious beliefs, practices and values are communicated. As well as stories about meaning and value, there are paintings, music, film, drama, architecture, symbols and symbolic actions. Icons and iconoclasm – another great topic for study within Religion and Worldviews.
It is clear that where society and religion intersect – sometimes clashing, sometimes indistinguishable from each other – there lies another area of enquiry for RW. Here, there are fascinating questions of influence and power to be considered. Throughout history and most obviously in today’s world, understanding the relationship between ‘secular’ and ‘spiritual’ power is crucial in any attempt to resolve so many of the conflicts that feature in the news.
Will such worldviews as may be called ‘Christian’ be part of the new subject of RW? Yes, of course. But how many ‘Christianities’ are there? In the context of RW, children will come to see that there are many versions of Christianity, both institutional and personal; they will understand that there may be aspects of Christianity with which most adherents can agree, but that there are many things about which they don’t. Other ‘major religions’ and philosophies of life will continue to be taught in RW, as will smaller scale worldviews and even aspects of widespread political and individualist philosophies, but the central aims will not revolve around a narrow and often simply descriptive understanding of a single worldview. Rather, the depth of learning that pupils will gain will be of religion itself, and of its many associated questions, experiences and impacts. It will, in short, encourage a new depth of understanding of humanity and of what may count as ‘wise’ in the world today.
Dave Francis is an education consultant, a trustee of the SOF Network and editor of the ‘Solarity’ materials for Young People’s Philosophy and Religion Clubs: www.solarity.org.uk