High Tension
A lot of vexed religious issues around at the moment. There is the Vardy foundation which wants ‘to take over seven comprehensives and turn them into Christian Academies promoting Old Testament views of the world’s creation. This includes the claim that it was made in six days, 10,000 years ago.’ There is the never-ending stampede of both political parties in the US to outdo each other in god-bothering. There is the prospect of Shari’a in Ontario (and the campaign against it). There is a group forming to ‘defend’ the hijab. And there is the Begum case, which is under discussion at Crooked Timber.
So, one way and another, there is a lot of debate and discussion of this question of special rights for religion and religious believers, especially in matters of education. One thing that doesn’t seem to get discussed much, no doubt because of the very reluctance to challenge religion head-on that I’m talking about here, is that there is (surely) an inherent tension between education and religion. At least, depending on how one defines both terms. But surely education that really is education is not supposed to teach counterfactuals. Nobody wants schools teaching that the French Revolution happened in the 14th century and the Black Death happened in 1927. A lot of education is not as straightforwardly factual as that, of course; not as answerable with a yes or no, true or false. But still – schools usually distinguish between fiction and the other thing; they don’t teach Jane Eyre as a biography. So where does that leave religion? Religion can of course be taught as a subject without asserting anything about supernatural entities – but religion as religion can’t. In short, it seems to me there is a radical tension between schools’ responsibility to refrain from teaching falsehoods, and religions’ commitments to their version of the truth. This is no doubt why religions want special rights, but it’s also why they shouldn’t have them.
I’m not sure that people ought to be getting too vexed about the thing here in the UK.
As I keep saying, we really are a terribly secular country.
I sat through religious education classes at school (as did everybody else). The Bible was taught as fact. But nobody believed a word of it. Or rather nobody was sufficiently interested to worry about whether it was true or not. R.E. was considered the kind of lesson that required one to practise one skills at making paper aeroplanes, etc (and then throwing them at the teacher, if at all possible).
As you know, I think religious people are mainly maniacs, but here in the UK, except for a few fools like Vardy, everybody thinks the same.
The US ID stuff, etc., is by order of magnitudes much more worrying than the odd religious school in the UK.
“As you know, I think religious people are mainly maniacs,”
Jerry, our Prime Minister is a religious person and he seems to be supporting the Vardy schools. I find this a little unsettling. I agree that we are a secular country, my concern is that people with a great deal of power seem to want to change this. One objection I have to the teaching of very dubious material in schools is that it takes up time which could be used, needs to be used, for teaching children to enquire and analyse. I suppose one could argue that teaching ‘creation science’ alongside more established scientific theories might lead to just that, but I have a feeling that anybody mad enough to teach ‘creation science’ is unlikely to do so in such a constructive fashion.
My Granddad used to say the worst thing in the world is a mediocre idea in the hands of a zealot… Seriously, the UK government will do anything to avoid building new schools using the Exchequer’s (i.e. tax payers) money – see recent Private Eyes for outrageous, enraging PFI exposes. Taken into account that Blair and Brown both have largely right-wing ‘Christist’-based ideologies, it is no wonder they support any old Christian loony sect coming into the education finance arena… as long as it’s off the public balance sheet, it’s ok. And satisfyingly for them, it is also under the vomit-inducing ‘Embracing diversity’ mantra. Do we really get the rulers we deserve ?…
“…we really are a terribly secular country.”
Or a wonderfully secular country. ;-)
Jerry,
in my, possibly more recent ;-), religious education in the UK, R.E. taught Christianity, Islam and something else (can’t remember, may have been something like Sikhism, Buddhism or Hinduism) in the 3yrs it was compulsory at secondary school. It was never taught as fact, always as ‘Christians believe…’, so I never needed to consider it any differently to the Greek or Norse gods (even though I was a good little religious child at the time).
Mike
“my concern is that people with a great deal of power seem to want to change this.”
I’d be more concerned if I thought they had a hope in hell of doing so, but they don’t. There’s something fairly deeply inscribed in our culture which isn’t conducive to serious religious belief. People will claim to believe in God, if they’re pushed, but it is rarely the kind of belief which has any purchase on their behaviour.
Nick
“Taken into account that Blair and Brown both have largely right-wing ‘Christist’-based ideologies”
That’s just rhetoric.
PM
“in my, possibly more recent ;-), religious education in the UK, R.E. taught Christianity, Islam and something else (can’t remember, may have been something like Sikhism, Buddhism or Hinduism) in the 3yrs it was compulsory at secondary school.”
Ah, well that is different to my experience. We were definitely Christianity only.
Did people take the RE lessons seriously?
“One objection I have to the teaching of very dubious material in schools is that it takes up time which could be used, needs to be used, for teaching children to enquire and analyse.”
That seems right to me. Why waste time teaching the Bible as fact, even if students don’t pay attention, when there are other things to be taught? (Mind you, I was certainly an expert at not paying attention at school, which could be why I flunked out when I was sixteen. But I think it’s better to not pay attention in, say, history or math class than in RE.)
“There’s something fairly deeply inscribed in our culture which isn’t conducive to serious religious belief.”
Yeah but even if that’s true, that something has to be fairly recent. Soapy Sam and Gladstone weren’t all that long ago.
“People will claim to believe in God, if they’re pushed, but it is rarely the kind of belief which has any purchase on their behaviour.”
Now that’s true here, too. To such an extent that I often wonder what people even mean by believing in God. Just some kind of vague gesture at the sky? It seems so.
“Yeah but even if that’s true, that something has to be fairly recent. Soapy Sam and Gladstone weren’t all that long ago.”
Well actually, that’s a matter of some debate. If you have a look at the literature on secularisation, whilst there are people who see secularisation as being a fairly recent phenomenon (e.g., Bryan Wilson), there are others who think that we tend to make the mistake of thinking that religious observance in, for example, the Victorian era, equated to deeply held religious belief (if I remember right, David Martin is an example of somebody who argued that actually the Brits just weren’t that religious even back then).
Oh really. Interesting.
I suppose it’s possible that both are true. That is, that there was plenty of intense religiosity but also plenty of more shallow religiosity along with plenty of no religiosity at all. I take some of my confidence that there was a good deal of the intense variety from novels, autobiographies and poetry of the period, as well as some historical analyses. Large subject. Maybe I’ll do a comment on it…
“that there was plenty of intense religiosity but also plenty of more shallow religiosity along with plenty of no religiosity at all.”
I think there’s a Marxist argument – and I really am working at the limits of my memory here – that intense religious belief in the early stages of capitalism was associated with the bourgeoisie and aristocracy; and it had to do with the necessity of ensuring monogamy and lines of inheritance, etc.
But that could be nonsense!
Hmmm. Well ‘in the early stages of capitalism’ would coincide with John Wesley and all that, presumably. Methodism was at least partly working class (including agricultural laborer), I think. Adam Bede sort of thing. But what if any the causal relations were between them…I don’t know. Time to read Weber or E.P. Thompson, maybe.
Ah, I see. But then I would think that would still be tricky, because that was sort of the point of Methodism – that it was not about conformity etc, but was rather a ‘religion of the heart.’ So that it was (if I have this right, which I may well not) another in the series of Protestant waves, like the Great Awakenings in the US, and (partly) like Puritanism, that oppose polite pro forma religion to real, gut, impassioned, renewed, awakened, re-born, born again, etc religion.
But that co-existed (again, assuming I have this right) with great swathes of the population that were totally indifferent or hostile, especially the most brutalized section of the urban working class. There was a lot of hand-wringing about that – Dickens wrote a story about it, for example.
And then there’s the old High Church-Low Church divide. That’s another conformist religion versus ‘religion of the heart’ split which is at the same time a class split – at least I think it is, unless I’ve been over-simplifying all this time. But surely nice genteel High Anglicans looked down on the enthusiasts – for class reasons as well as doctrinal or ceremonial ones.
But I haven’t read the argument, so I really don’t have a clue what I’m talking about!
“But I haven’t read the argument, so I really don’t have a clue what I’m talking about!”
Well I haven’t actually read it either. I just remember squinting at it as I glided past a textbook one day whilst teaching the sociology of religion.
Cackle!
Jerry
“That’s just rhetoric.”
Er, admitted. It probably was. In fact it was closer to polemic. However, I don’t think we are under threat of an Christian evangelical or for that matter Islamic fundamentalist revolution in our culture (we’ll leave that orange fool Kilroy-Silk et al to scream about heads-on-poles, barbarians at the gates style jihad.) I do feel that tolerant secularism in this country – the ability of generations of different ethnic backgrounds, faiths, etc to ‘rub along together’, as Timothy Garton Ash put it – is going to be sorely tested in the long run, if we pursue these divisive, elitist agendas within education. Blair happens to be quite right-wing, and although a populist, is also something of a religious zealot.
Further update on modern RE classes (Ok 7 yrs ago isn’t too recent): secular through and through – studying multiple religions culminating in ‘Ok now invent your own’. I seem to remember mine was a confusion of Homeric donut worship and Adam’s Biro world. RE fitted into the curriculum well where other subjects such as history of medicine gave attention to the releasing spirits by trephaning and the mistaken authority given to Galen’s book. Science provided the various anecdotes of ether, phlogiston etc. The message I took was that there are and have been nutty ideas – be careful.
Interestingly, an atheist chap I study philosophy with in the evenings seeks to teach RE or another paper-aeroplane subject like citizenship, as the best route to engage pupils in broad philosophical discussion without the spotlight status that say English has. Bound for aerial bombardment perhaps.
At the moment, the UK is too drunk for religion. Flag waving ‘Engerland till I die’ nationalism seems more up our street. You could imagine it fecund for a US inspired religous temperance movement though the minister at my CoE primary was clearly terribly pious with his refills of the communion chalice…
“a confusion of Homeric donut worship and Adam’s Biro world.”
Very good. Thanks for update. Seven years a mere eyeblink.
Gotta be careful with the High Church (conformist) vs. Low Church (heart) thing–for starters, there are at least two different High Church types, the “traditional” Anglicans (high and dry, may self-identify as Protestant) and the post-Tractarian Anglo-Catholics (tons of ritual, can be very enthusiastic). Peter Nockles is very good on this stuff.
On secularization, incidentally, Callum G. Brown’s The Death of Christian Britain (Routledge) has some pretty interesting things to say. Not sure I agree with all of it, but it’s thought-provoking nonetheless.
Thanks, Miriam, I thought I probably had the High-Low thing oversimplified. That’s why I hedged what I said with so many qualifications.