These ‘Network Matters’ pages explore the charitable work of the Sea of Faith Network. In this edition we focus on part of its educational work. See sofn.uk/education.
Rise of the ‘Nones’
The ‘religious’ profile of UK citizens is changing rapidly. According to the 2021 UK census, the share of individuals identifying as having no religion rose significantly from 25.2% in 2011 to 37.2% in 2021. They are the ‘nones’.
Meanwhile, the proportion of Christians fell from 59.3% in 2011 to 46.2% in 2021. This is the first time since the census began that fewer than half the population identified as Christian. The trend has continued, only marginally offset by immigration over the last 20 years, with around 50% of immigrants to the UK identifying as Christian and around 18% as having no religion. In fact, according to Humanist UK’s analysis of the 2024 British Social Attitudes Survey, 61% of adults aged 16 to 34 now identify as having no religion. They are the ‘young nones’.
Taken together with the fact that there have been small increases in the number of people identifying with religions other than Christianity, these changes have brought special challenges for the teaching of Religious Education, not to mention the whole of society.
And that’s why many of us in the Sea of Faith Network and beyond have been asking the question, ‘How are children and young people going to successfully navigate this complex world in which we live?’ Moreover, how are they going to interpret their own experience of life’s diversity and know how to weigh up the multitude of voices and values coming at them from all angles through different forms of media?
Content and Discontent
The Sea of Faith answer has largely taken the form of involvement in two major educational initiatives. Neither of these takes the view that children need to study ‘all the religions’. In the curriculum time available to RE, that would be a plainly ludicrous undertaking; a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. In any event, the unseemly horse-trading that might result from a curriculum divided into percentages of time for each major religion, plus Humanism, is surely to be avoided.
The point is that dividing up the ‘content’ of the RE curriculum amongst the religions (and non-religious worldviews) would be a bit like ignoring the broader purposes of students becoming competent in geographical studies by concentrating only on the study of different countries; 50% on the UK, say, and scrapping over which other countries get how much time to make up the rest.
Nor is the answer, suggested by some (with barely disguised agendas), to study one religion in greater depth as a model for understanding the ‘others’. No prizes for guessing which religion these commentators, okay, Christian theology-based academics, say should be studied. It’s as though the deep study of one political party, let’s say the Conservative and Unionist Party for want of a better example, will give pupils all they need to know about the wide variety of other political beliefs commonly held in this country and abroad. Some might be content with this, but the rest are deeply discontented!
Ignorance
But nor is the solution to do away with RE in state schools altogether, as in countries such as France and the USA. Here is where ignorance can be a very dangerous thing. Not that such countries are completely uncivilised, but just think of generations of adherents of minority (and majority) religious groups growing up without planned exposure to the varieties of religious and non-religious worldviews that make up our world. Is it possible that young people might be more easily recruited into extremist, unchallenged and simplistic views? Yes, it happens here too, but at least our educational system, at its best, offers some critical inoculation against the unthinking ‘my worldview is the right worldview’ prejudices we can all tend towards. And with good RE, students also learn to recognise the many myths and misinformation about religions that contaminate the e-world.
Solarity
All the same, our system does need to be ‘at its best’. All too often, with a crippling dearth of qualified RE teachers and a debilitating lack of curriculum time for RE on the timetable, RE provision is far from ideal.
Readers may know the story of how our first project, ‘Solarity’, was born. Briefly, your correspondent’s experience of a lunchtime Bible Club at a primary school sparked a campaign to offer children something better than hearing how Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and asking those bemused children to colour in a picture. (Not a word of discussion or enquiry about this remarkable event was ever shared).
The Sea of Faith’s Wessex Group took up the idea of providing an alternative out-of-school-hours ‘Religion and Philosophy Club’ for primary- and secondary-age pupils. In 2018, with the support of the trustees and the work of practising teachers, ‘Solarity’ was launched (taking our cue from Cupitt’s ‘Solar Ethics’). This online provision of materials to help teachers and other responsible adults lead children and young people in investigating issues of spiritual, moral, social and cultural import was developed over the next few years and has recently been updated so that all links to stimulus material are working.
At primary level, pupils can begin to investigate and discuss questions such as ‘What makes a true friend?’, ‘How we can have hope in our world?’, ‘What we can learn from a “miracle”?’ and ‘Coping with bereavement’, as well as ‘Is it good to be different?’, among other topics. At secondary level, students investigate and discuss questions such as ‘What is religion and what is a cult?’, ‘Are all religions equal?’, ‘Can atheists learn anything from religion?’, and ‘How spiritual are you?’, as well as learning about Don Cupitt’s ‘Religion of Ordinary Life’ and examining ‘The Power of Words’, ‘Mind, Memory and Justice’, ‘Art and Beauty’ and ‘Harry Potter and God’.
Now, some of you may be thinking these look like good topics for our next SOF regional meetings! Or perhaps there’s something there for our monthly ‘In Conversation’ sessions.
The individual session materials have been downloaded many hundreds of times. The most popular were those offering specifically religious content. The likely explanation is that they were being used in RE lessons rather than for their original purpose: out-of-school-hours clubs. I reasoned that if the need out there was for better online RE materials, then we ought to consider how to provide a proper RE programme, built on sound educational principles, for use in schools. What would such a programme look like if it were built not around the religions themselves, but on what we think students ought to understand through their study of religion and worldviews from 5–18 years? Moreover, what would an RE curriculum consist of if it were consistent with the thrust of Don Cupitt’s oeuvre and subsequent developments within the Sea of Faith Network?
Big Ideas for RE
Imagine a world where the vast majority of people recognise the dangers of generalising from particular examples (and thereby victimising others); where they are skilled in appreciating, interpreting and expressing a wide range of artistic endeavours; where they are deeply committed to leading a good life and helping keep people out of bad ones; where they have a broad awareness of the many varied, sometimes mysterious experiences of life and know how to make some sense of them; where they habitually apply critical thinking to identify the cultural, political and environmental influences on individuals and society; and where they have their own appreciation of, and lightness of touch towards, a ‘big picture’ of the way things are.
Perhaps I have just described members of the Sea of Faith Network! Or perhaps you have your own utopia?
Is such a world desirable, even possible? And if it were, what kind of upbringing, what kind of education, what kind of experience of life, might produce such a world? We cannot hope, of course, to do any more than our small bit, but our honest hope is that those following our ‘Big Ideas for RE’ programme might get a little way towards that ‘better world’.
Our ‘Big Ideas’ are crucial to helping children and young people understand the complex world of religion and belief. They help make sense of a mass of information, are memorable, and transferable to events outside the classroom, both now and in the future. ‘This’, sang Eric Bibb, ‘is the needed time’, and our “Big Ideas” are what young learners need to reach their own understanding of the tangled webs of information and misinformation that abound in our social-media-infested world. Many of the alternatives do not bear much contemplation.
Our Life, Our Worldview
The Network has nearly completed its work on the Big Ideas project, though, in another sense, it never ends. But we are not stopping there. We continue to participate in the public debate on RE and to support high-quality resources for learners.
Most recently, we have provided advice and lesson plans for the next iteration of BBC Bitesize religious education resources for primary school-age children. These consist of short films, presented by young teenagers, introducing their own religion or worldview. The films include non-religious worldviews, such as Humanism and ‘Spiritual but not Religious’, as well as some of the ‘smaller’ traditions, such as Bahá’í and Rastafari. They are great little films, illustrating the diversity within and amongst the traditions represented in the UK today. We’ll be sure to let you know when they are online.
Dave Francis is an educational consultant and former Chair of the Association of RE Inspectors, Advisers and Consultants. He is a regular contributor to Sofia.
