The broken chain of learning: the crisis of religion and belief literacy and its origins

This chapter discusses the loss of religion and belief literacy, which it locates in two public spheres: welfare and education. The period before the loss of religion and belief literacy in Britain and the West was, by its very nature, almost entirely Christian. Although there was a degree of plurality, and an awareness of some other religions, these were largely treated as essentially exotic. Yet, at the very moment that people stopped paying (much) attention to religion and belief, they entered a period of dramatic change. This has meant massive declines in Christianity, increases in other world religions, a huge growth in atheism and non-religion, and a shift towards informal and revival forms of religion and belief, especially associated with varying ideas of spirituality. The resulting challenges of religion and belief literacy are rooted here in the post-war period, in which the deliberate dilution of religious socialisation post-1945 has been followed by the accidental invisibility of religious social action and its disconcerting re-emergence after 1980, and then a striking renewal of religion and belief as a public sphere issue around the turn of the century, and especially after 9/11. What emerges is a tension between a loss of public religion and belief and its subsequent re-emergence after a prolonged period in which it was not really talked about.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of religion and belief literacy. Religion and belief literacy is both socialised and learnt. While treated in schools as a discrete and marginalised subject for children, at the same time, it overlaps with citizenship and sex education, and is colonised in communities with anxious policy instrumentalisations about migration and extremism. Thus, it will be experienced primarily in those ways rather than engaged with more openly as an ordinary part of billions of identities and lived experiences around the world. This book shows that learning about religion and belief is a lifelong process, to be engaged in by publics in schools, universities, professional training, workplaces, and communities, where everyone is a learner. Crucially, learning happens in different combinations, in different orders, with different modes, for different purposes, and at different paces for each individual. This reflects the importance of connecting the chain of learning across all the spaces through which people pass in everyday life so that the fullest range of thinking and contestations about religion and belief landscapes are more or less consistently revealed in their complexity and by recognising the boundaries and competitions between ideas.

Religion and belief across schools

This chapter focuses on religion and belief in the wider life of schools. Religion and belief are not simply the preserve of religious education in schools, though they may be most obvious there. They also appear in the requirement of the act of daily worship, as well as in the right to withdraw — a right belonging only to this sphere and to sex education, apparently two areas in need of more than usually sensitive handling. However, religion and belief are implied, and have implications, throughout the whole life of schools. A number of spaces complement, supplement, overlap with, and even colonise the formal business of religious education. Spiritual, moral, social and cultural education (SMSC); ritish values; the Prevent duty; citizenship education; Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE); and relationships and sex education (RSE) are all interrelated parts of socialising pupils in religion and belief in schools, and each does so from its own epistemological and normative starting points, which do not necessarily line up. The chapter considers each of these spaces in turn, as well as in relation to each other and religious education.

Religion and belief in Religious Education

This chapter evaluates religious education. Under the Education Act 1944, it is a requirement in English law that learning about religion and belief must take place in all state-maintained schools, including those in reception classes and sixth forms. During the period up until 1988, teaching was almost entirely based on a Christian, scriptural approach, though increasingly with consideration of the other 'world religions'. The requirement for religious education of a 'Christian character', the notion of 'six main religions', the continuing mandate for a daily act of collective worship, the right to withdraw, and massive change in the real religion and belief landscape suggest that, in relation to religion and belief, we have a mid-20th-century settlement for an early-21st-century reality. This is likely to both reflect and reproduce a lack of religion and belief literacy among school leavers, who are confused by the religion and belief messages communicated in schools and, by extension, in wider society. Ultimately, based on the research findings, religion and belief learning should be concerned with preparing students for the practical task of engagement with the rich variety of religion and belief encounters in everyday, ordinary life.

Religion and belief in university teaching and learning

This chapter addresses the role of religion and belief in university teaching and learning. In some subjects, of course, religion is simply a topic of relevance, as in history and in religious studies itself. In others, it is a cultural legacy to be decoded and understood. In others again, it embodies the opposite of the rational, scientific method that predominates in higher education, and in relation to which practically all other disciplines have cut their teeth. As such, it is an utter irrelevance. In some cases, this produces hostility against all religious ideas. This is likely to feel painful for some students, who can feel uncomfortable when hearing lecturers be rude or offensive about their beliefs or about belief in general. In the social sciences, unlike race, gender, or sexual orientation, religion has rarely been a variable. The question of the place of religion and belief in university disciplines was explored in the project Reimagining Religion and Belief for Policy and Practice. The study analysed nine arts, humanities, and social science disciplines, including anthropology, cultural studies, geography, philosophy, religious studies, social policy, social work, sociology, and theology.

Religion and belief in university practices

This chapter assesses religion and belief in university practices. In many ways, universities continue to reflect their Christian medieval roots (directly or by pastiche), hanging on to the gowns and hoods, titles, and roles of a Christian age. This legacy is deep in the contemporary higher education landscape. A crucial challenge is how to work out a place for education — in universities, as for schools — which emerges out of a Christian past, and to some extent present, while at the same time taking fully and authentically on board the contemporary religion and belief landscape, which is Christian, secular, plural, and non-religious all at once. The problem is that universities tend to pick up where schools leave off, continuing the confusion with a subtextual replaying in both teaching and operations of old binaries and tropes about science versus religion, secular versus sacred, private versus public, and resource versus risk. These are all built deeply into the epistemologies of disciplines, as well as reflected in the day-to-day operations of institutions.

The future of religion and belief literacy: reconnecting a chain of learning

This chapter summarises what each learning sphere suggests about religion and belief. Religion and belief continue in a public sphere that largely thinks of itself as post-Christian, post-religious, and secular, while having limited understanding of either religion and belief or the secular. This makes it a particularly difficult subject for discussion and learning. As the previous chapters show, messages about religion and belief are messy and often contradictory within learning spaces, as well as between one learning space and another. While this might be said of all sorts of topics, this one has some particular features that single it out. First, the woolly secular-mindedness at its root often stops the conversation before it begins. Second, what is being discovered in this space is a lack of ability to talk about religion and belief. Third, at their core, religion and belief engage with existential questions in which everybody has a stake, regardless of how they answer them. Fourth, religion and belief deal in both certainty and doubt. These characteristics of religion and belief both strain the chain of learning and make it more difficult to reconnect. The chapter then applies a religion and belief literacy analysis to explore how the chain of learning might be reconnected.