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Religion as cuckoo or crucible: beliefsand believing as vital for citizenshipand citizenship educationBrian E. Gates aa St Martin's College, UK

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To cite this article: Brian E. Gates (2006): Religion as cuckoo or crucible: beliefs and believing asvital for citizenship and citizenship education, Journal of Moral Education, 35:4, 571-594

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Religion as cuckoo or crucible: beliefs

and believing as vital for citizenship

and citizenship education

Brian E. Gates*

St Martin’s College, UK

The importance of motivational beliefs and, more specifically, religion, is identified as central for

both citizenship and citizenship education. Whether they take an expressly religious form, or

appear in a purportedly more open form, such as faith or world view, beliefs are at the core of

human being. The tendency to speak more of shared values than beliefs in the context of educating

citizens is open to question – values are not necessarily any more universally agreed, since they too

are affected by beliefs. Moreover, the presumption of secularisation, that religious believing is fast

disappearing, is itself now exposed as strangely dated. Beliefs, often explicitly religious beliefs, are

fundamental in national constitutions. Thus, religion may inspire a critique of a nation’s

behaviour; religion will also need to be subject to critique. How to build an opportunity for

understanding and critiquing beliefs into any public educational system is a major challenge. The

provision for Religious Education (RE) in England is taken as an example of this challenge being

directly addressed as a necessary complement to any separate policy for character education,

citizenship education and/or moral education in whatever form they exist. RE is able to home in on

the religious plurality which figures in national and international life. Understanding of the insights

and contentions of religions in all their plurality is a source of illumination for citizens wherever

they are in the world

Being a citizen has an outward face, but an interior animation. Like those of an

automobile its visible appearance and performance will be what is commonly noticed

and measured, but what is under its bonnet or hood will be its major determinant.

This article will argue that the qualities of what is seen as citizenship and citizenship

education are significantly impeded unless special attention is paid to the more

interior motivational beliefs from which they derive real potency. This must include

a readiness to scrutinise religion and to be scrutinised by it, for religion is the engine

of belief. And yet in practice, the dimension of belief, as most especially constituted

in religious form, is widely neglected. This is true of English educators and their

counterparts in other western liberal settings in the discourse of both citizenship and

citizenship education. What strangely monochrome and peaceable world are they

*Division of Religion & Philosophy, St Martin’s College, Lancaster, LA1 3JD, UK. Email:

b.gates@ucsm.ac.uk

Journal of Moral Education

Vol. 35, No. 4, December 2006, pp. 571–594

ISSN 0305-7240 (print)/ISSN 1465-3877 (online)/06/040571-24

# 2006 Journal of Moral Education Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/03057240601025677

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living in? It has been exposed by global events to be a blind spot that warrants urgent

attention.

Beliefs – and values – in the arena of citizenship

What it means to be a citizen can vary according to how belonging is understood

from one nation state to another. The very notion of nation state, with high intensity

administrative order, has itself evolved into global usage relatively recently (Giddens,

1987). Yet the clustering of peoples into distinctive groups based on language,

culture, territory and shared beliefs goes back several thousand years. Some are

‘political nations’ wherein nationality derives from country of birth (ius soli), others

are ethnic nations with membership through parental inheritance (ius sanguinis)

(Krejci, 2004). And whether described as tribe or clan, nation or empire, the

language of religion has invariably been involved in the history of their social

ordering (Toynbee, 1976), and, in turn, carried over into assumptions as to what is

expected of one who ‘belongs’, as also of those defined as ‘outsiders’ (Marshall &

Williams, 1982).

These expectations are invariably set within a working framework of beliefs and

values which give the nation a distinctive identity, and which form the basis of its

constitution. Moreover, the forms through which national identity is appropriated

and expressed are often as much emotional as they are conceptually elaborated. This

applies within all of the current 193 independent nation states, each with its own

flag, symbolising loyalty to a greater entity, in reference to which individuals can feel

and know a sense of collective belonging (Nations Online http://www.nationsonline.

org/oneworld). It is no surprise therefore that the chants, songs and anthems heard

at both national and international sporting events reveal religious sentiments

mingling within the beliefs and values of the spectators wherever they are. Similarly,

the gestures and prayers of individual athletes reveal the intensity of conviction

which commonly motivates their performance.

Leaving aside the notion of the sporting citizen, citizenship has many other social

and political spheres of operation. These include employment, law and order1,

health and welfare, family obligation, media communications, electoral representa-

tion and the environment. They comprise both explicit and implicit expressions of

citizenship, since revenue from public taxation is as necessary for the function of the

nation state as the bloodstream to the human body, yet no less taken for granted.

The scope of Citizenship Education needs therefore to be enlarged to give attention

to the more implicit expressions as well as those which are supposedly more actively

participatory. In each of these spheres, the act of believing, as well as valuing, on the

part of individuals is involved, with such issues as: why work?; on what basis are

different modes of employment viewed as more or less important?; why bother at all

with society?; what claims, if any, do the dead have over the living?

Where the prevailing social context is sensed as grossly unfair, perhaps because of

inequalities in wealth and resource allocation that lead to premature death,

individuals and groups may challenge their national government by engaging in

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acts of resistance which may be non-violent or violent in form. These actions will be

based on beliefs and values.

These same beliefs may in some settings take on extreme forms, wherein the

enemy becomes demonised and all manner of aggression and retribution is given

licence. Instead of the boundaries of belief regarding who matters as inclusive of all

humanity, they are redrawn so that some people are believed to be dispensable, even

to the point of their warranting elimination. The subsequent cocktail of beliefs –

whether nationalist, tribal or even internationalist in form – mixed more often than

not with distorted religion, becomes a deadly poison which attacks the heart of any

form of citizenship which wants to acknowledge the independent worth of others.

Throughout the arena of citizenship, the beliefs and values of individuals and

communities are involved. And this is true even when mercenary or criminal

interests are a corrupting presence, since they rely on different beliefs, which actively

ignore or reject the claims of a more responsible citizenship. Corrupt societies and

governments only magnify the vulnerability of individuals to such distortion.

This is not the place to debate the priority of beliefs over values. Instead, the

article proceeds with the claim that they beat from the same heart, so that values are

usually consonant with beliefs, though behaviour (for the better or worse) may belie

both. It also claims that a neglect of the religious character and ingredient in beliefs

and believing shows a lack of realism, which consciously or unconsciously may itself

be ideologically driven. Whereas values have received attention in the arena of

Citizenship Education, beliefs have not.

Religion: the name of the game?

By focusing on beliefs and believing, my intention is to highlight this strand of

human identity as one which is often overlooked, even though it is pervasive in

everyday behaviour. It is not my argument that all belief is religious, although belief

often is. Some expressly reject that label (the secularist or the atheist) and some

believing is of a different order (simply a matter of taste or preference e.g. that the

music of Dylan is better than Eminem). However, after Phenix (1964), taking

‘religion’ to be the most comprehensive, determinative, ultimate and intensive of all

realms of human meaning, links intrinsically with the beliefs that matter most to

people. Overall, the act of believing is at the core of citizenship, since both its more

passive and more participatory forms are expressions of deeply felt assumptions and

convictions about the nature of human being and of social and political belonging.

There is a cluster of words, which relate to this area of human existence. One is

‘trust’, without which, according to personal experience and the weight of social

scientific findings, lives fall apart. The sense of trust, or the lack of it, is established in

earliest childhood years (Bowlby, 1984). It is extended outward from nurturing

relationships to the wider world. Another is ‘faith’, which is co-terminous, as in

‘having faith in someone or something’. There are affective and cognitive

components of each, and their vitality depends on both as a guard against the

deceptions of a blinkered sense of faith or trust which is lacking in discernment.

Religion as cuckoo or crucible 573

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‘Belief’ takes on a more predominantly cognitive connotation, especially when it

takes the form of ‘belief that’ rather than ‘belief in’, but believing is more than skin

deep.2 Evidently then, trust, faith and belief are each both cognitive and affective in

different ways.

In their elaborated forms trust, faith and belief become ‘belief systems’,

‘philosophies of life’, ‘faiths to live by’, ‘religious convictions’ and ‘theologies’.

Each of these terms has its own connotations. Theology is perhaps the most specific:

though it has variants both between and within particular religions, it is usually taken

to include belief in God. ‘Religious conviction’ is less specific, since there are many

different ways of being religious, including non-theistic ones, such as Confucian or

Theravadan Buddhist. The term ‘faiths’ has also come to lose its specificity. Where

once it was commonly taken to have an expressly religious connotation, it is now

used in a more openly inclusive way to include secular humanist philosophies. In the

USA, James Fowler’s influential usage defines it as

a human universal. Most often it comes to expression and accountability through the

symbols, rituals and beliefs of particular religious traditions … But faith is not always

religious in the cultural or institutional sense … In the midst of the many powers and

demands pressing upon us, enlarging and diminishing us, it orients us toward centers of

power and value which promise to sustain our lives, and to guarantee ‘more being’.

(Fowler, 1980, p.53; cf.1981)

Within the UK, over the last fifteen years some within the British Humanist

Association have described their own position as one which has the form of faith.

Though this is contentious with some, who take a more exclusively rationalist and

secularist line, it has also come to be used by a recent Secretary of State for

Education to articulate his own secular humanism (Clarke, 2006). Another term,

which has had some academic currency is ‘world view’ (Smart, 1999a). It has the

potential advantage of German equivalence in weltanschauung, but is taken by some

to be more explicitly political and less attentive to the depth and intensity of religious

conviction. Similarly, ‘ideology’, has comparable breadth but is often given the

narrower scope of exclusively political connotation and one abstracted from personal

experience.

That leaves two other related terms, philosophy and spirituality. ‘Philosophy’

often suffers from a narrowed interpretation, reduced to logic or empiricism, and

poorly tuned to receive complementary wavelengths of meaning. The richer sense of

philosophy identified by Smart (1999b), drawing on classical traditions of both East

and West, comes closer to the realm of belief and religion. Its connotations may

include sagacity and wisdom, spiritual analysis, speculative cosmology, fathoming of

mystery and asking searching questions. These go to the heart of believing and trade

easily in the language of religion. Finally, ‘spirituality’ has for many in recent decades

come to be preferable to ‘religion’ (Heelas et al., 2004; Tacey, 2004). In part this

may be because it is seen as more inclusive, less institutionally hard-edged and much

closer to the real heart of humanity. But its territory is still that of deep believing,

with a special emphasis on inwardness, and its link back into philosophy and religion

has been powerfully expounded by Cottingham (2005).

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Reverting momentarily to the word ‘religion’, it is vital to recognize that behind it

is the range of different connotations associated with each of these other terms.

There is also the flow of personal meanings, which make up each religious tradition,

within which insider individuals will themselves vary in both the understanding of

what that tradition means and the degree to which they would wish to identify with

it. Although ‘religion’ has the ring of dependability in what it points to, at any one

time its resonance and vitality is fluid in character.

My point in all this is that citizenship without believing, philosophy of life, faith to

live by, or religious conviction is likely to be hollow-hearted and perfunctory. It lacks

the crucial springs of action. Accordingly, an approach to citizenship education,

which does not expressly include this strand of human identity risks surface skating

and missing an opportunity to become more deeply engaged in the process of social

and political enlivenment. There is an urgent need for disciplined attention to the

rationality and emotional integrity of believing and its development.

The bracketing of beliefs, especially those described as religious

Throughout much of the discourse of citizenship and citizenship education rather

more reference is made to values and valuing than to beliefs and believing. This is

evident from North America, as reflected in recent overviews of the related

literature, such as Althof and Berkowitz (2006) in this Special Issue or Lapsley and

Narvaez (2006) on character education. Again, in a review of what can be learned

from US- sponsored aid investments in Civic Education throughout the world,

whilst there are no references to religion, just two to family beliefs and two to

democratic beliefs and practices, there are 40 to values (USA. Office of Democracy

and Governance, 2002). From the UK, the justly influential Crick Report (Great

Britain (GB). DfEE, 1998), which legitimised the introduction of Citizenship

Education in England, makes 57 references to values, but only two to beliefs and

three to religion – and these latter only as a part of a list. The subsequent

specification for Citizenship Education in the National Curriculum speaks

frequently of human rights, but does not consider from where they derive. Instead

of referring to beliefs, it uses the term ‘point of view’ (GB. Qualifications and

Curriculum Authority (QCA), 2000). More recently, the point is reinforced by the

new handbook Developing citizens (Breslin & Dufour, 2006). In the 36 chapters, by

as many glitterati of the field in England, beliefs do not figure and the only references

to religion come in the one excellent chapter on Religious Education (RE) – by

Keast (2006), a specialist in the subject.

There may be several reasons for these oversights, but the three most influential

ones are as follows.

The first is the implicit view that there is greater commonality regarding values

than there is about beliefs. Lists of moral values associated with what it means to be a

good citizen, do indeed, share many features across nations, cultures and religions.

They include such virtues as telling the truth, care for neighbours, protection of the

vulnerable, respect for the environment and avoidance of murder. Although

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consensus is far from complete, recurrent features also extend to respect for

property, promise keeping, partner fidelity, loyalty to the nation, care for other living

creatures. A supportive invocation may also be made to the theory of natural rights

or the universal declaration of human rights, sometimes drawing on the classical

western tradition of natural law, but much less frequently on its ancient Indian and

Chinese parallels. Ironically, although not advertised, any such invocation indicates

implicit belief in their worth, and, as will be illustrated below, even legally attested

versions of constitutional rights are themselves ultimately dependent upon such

belief.

In such affirmations of shared values, what is also commonly glossed over is not

that they are in practice often interpreted differently, but that the interpretations rely

on a person’s predominating beliefs. For instance, in the case of truth-telling, what is

believed to be the relative importance of the letter and the spirit of what’s true? With

regard to promise keeping, I might believe that promises are good so long as they suit

my own convenience. As for caring for neighbours, I might believe in this more as an

idea than in practice, and, of course, that my own immediate family must come first.

My perceptions of need to protect the vulnerable may be influenced by whether I

believe that all forms of human life, however embryonic or decrepit, are of equal

worth. Similarly, I may well believe that any threat to my own life should in all

circumstances be countered, even if it means the death of others. By contrast, I may

believe that property rights are of far less importance than human welfare; yet

another may believe them to be inviolable. And, as for showing respect to other

living creatures as well as to human beings, my vegetarian beliefs may be (but not

always) health related, species selective or extending to even the ‘lowliest’ of life

forms, including plants and even flames (which some Jains would defer from

extinguishing).

The suggestion that shared values and common sense morality are themselves

subject to a person’s fundamental beliefs and an act of believing needs to be further

qualified. Those beliefs may be explicitly systematised and articulated, or could be if

necessary, but they are just as likely to be implicitly habitual. This does not mean

that they should be discounted as unreliable, or that only the former matter. On the

contrary, personal believing, however inchoate, has its own internal coherence and

conviction, as the individual works with his/her own sense of identity, meaning and

purpose in living and dying.

A second explanation of the apparent reluctance to give as much attention to

beliefs as to values is heightened recognition of the diversities of beliefs and opinions.

Travellers’ tales of the variety of local customs and beliefs, as found in foreign lands,

have been around for thousands of years, but the systematic documentation of such

has led philosophers and social scientists in more recent centuries to talk the

language of cultural relativity. More extensive travelling in the shape of mass tourism

reinforced this outside the academic world. Similarly, vicarious exposure, through

television, to very different ways of believing and behaving socially, has given further

impetus to the attitude of superficial tolerance of diversity, so that one person’s ways

have often been seen as good as another’s. Even if not totally abandoned,

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overarching beliefs and the importance of meta-narratives have tended to take on a

lower profile, or allowed to hold their sway as simply peculiar.

The third reason for relatively greater attention being given to the matter of values

and valuing rather than beliefs and believing is the double-fronted impact of

secularity. On the one side was the dominating trend in much western political

thinking and related academic scholarship from the 1960s to the 1990s that religious

beliefs and believing were on the wane. The combined insights from the natural and

social sciences were received as explaining away the meaning and worth of any

religious frame of reference. There really was no need of such hypotheses. And

especially in European countries institutional religious practice was seen as in

terminal decline. This view sometimes took a hardened secularist form which was

abrasive in its critique of any religious claims and intent on exterminating them.3

Perhaps more often, the view was simply appropriated by futurologists and the

media as a cultural given, without any need for careful and extensive scrutiny (Lorie

& Murray-Clark, 1989).

Such devaluation may be implicit in the thinking of some social and political

psychologists in undervaluing the variable of religion in survey work. Admittedly, it

sometimes shows up as statistically insignificant, but that may simply be because

what is being measured is, for instance, institutional attendance, rather than one of

the many other potential aspects of believing or being religious. It is certainly

significant that the massive International Association for the Evaluation of

Educational Achievement Citizenship survey across 28 countries makes little

attempt to be more sensitive in the matter of beliefs and religion (Torney-Purta

et al., 2001).

The other side of the impact of secularity arose as a spin-off from the separation of

church and state, for example, in the USA constitution. Whilst potentially prizing

religion in its separateness, there was an effective banishment of it from the public

square, so that it did not need to be given any particular attention, and most

especially not in schools where it would immediately invite controversy (Carter,

1993; McGraw, 2003; Gates, 2004).

Any bracketing out of religion from the attention of politicians and from public

education, whether due to these or other reasons, has latterly become much more

difficult to justify. The beliefs dimension of human behaviour has suddenly taken on

a higher profile in being a citizen. The actions of the ‘suicide bomber’ are regarded as

relativising the beliefs which inform national citizenship by appeal to a different

order involving what is understood to be in the interests of a greater global justice,

and theologically endorsed. The beliefs which endorse the claims and counter claims

of different orders of citizenship have been highlighted.

Religious beliefs and citizenship in national/international constitutions

Citizenship of a particular country, empire or commonwealth is usually associated

with certain formally attached conditions. It may be acquired by birthright or special

adoption. Moreover, whilst the sense of being a citizen of a particular nation is

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sometimes central to a person’s consciousness, more often it lies dormant,

reactivated quite one-sidedly during international sporting competitions, trade

disputes or even bloodier conflicts.

A check on the constitutions of individual countries, as also on those of wider

international entities, is revealing. They are all conveniently accessible on the

following websites: Political Science Resources at Keele University UK (Keele,

2006), the Richmond University Constitutions Finder (Richmond, 2006) and the

Texas-based Constitutions Society (2006).

Virtually all constitutions involve some affirmative belief statement as to the

identity, purpose and worth of the nation or the other entity in question. Thus, that

of Switzerland (adopted by public referendum in 1999) begins, ‘In the name of God

Almighty …’, and that of Indonesia (adopted at Independence in 1945) with, ‘The

state shall be based in the belief in the One and Only God’. China’s constitution

(confirmed 2004) is more elaborate: ‘The People’s Republic of China is a socialist

state under the people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based

on the alliance of workers and peasants’ (Article 1). ‘The state organs of the People’s

Republic of China apply the principle of democratic centralism’ (Article 3). ‘The

state advocates the civic virtues of love of the motherland, of the people, of labour, of

science, and of socialism; it educates the people in patriotism, collectivism,

internationalism and communism and in dialectical and historical materialism’

(Article 24).

Once a constitution is formally promulgated and adopted, or accumulated by

precedent (not every country has a written constitution, for example, the UK), it

takes on the force of law. Whichever form it takes, even then, its credibility still rests

upon personal convictions collectively expressed, which in turn look to others to

share in those beliefs.

The extent to which, if at all, overtly religious belief figures in the foundations of a

state varies considerably. There are countries which declare their Muslim identities,

most of which do so in such a way that makes it clear that Islam will be the singular

religious ingredient in any citizenship education. This is true of Malaysia (adopted

1957) and Pakistan (adopted 1999), as also of most Arab countries. However, of the

44 countries with predominantly Muslim populations, only 10 are Islamic states,

with constitutions determined by shari’ah law. Because of the secular constitution

established by Ataturk (adopted 1920), Turkey’s is more qualified than most

countries with a predominant Muslim population in this regard. Even so, Islam

provides the normative context overall, continuing in subsequent revisions,

including recently (2004), pertaining to prospective membership of the European

Union. With education in mind, Lebanon (adopted 1926), more exceptionally,

acknowledges Christian alongside Muslim interests.4 Elsewhere, Cambodia

(adopted 1999) declares its Buddhist identity, as does Thailand. And Vietnam

(adopted 1992) joins China in prizing its Socialist credentials.

Many European countries which would once have boasted a Christian (Orthodox,

Protestant or Roman Catholic) allegiance, now do so in a more qualified way. There

is now no established church in Spain (since 1978) or Finland (Seppo, 2004), and

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an official government commission has recently recommended separation in Norway

(Church of Norway, 2006). Less predictably, in some countries, for example, the

Russian Federation (adopted 1993), the Orthodox Church is re-establishing its

position, institutionally both in its preferential status in relation to other

denominations and religions and its normative status for the school curriculum

and popular mind set5 (Verkhovsky, 2003). In other countries, the religious

association is being downplayed. The French model since 1789 has been

deliberately secularist: ‘France is an indivisible, secular, democratic, and social

Republic’ (Article 2). Some would say that the strictness of interpretation of

secularity has been at the expense of the fractured social fabric. They point to the

correlation of urban riots and disproportionately high unemployment rate within

Muslim communities (Cesari, 2005). Certainly, for the time being, trappings of

religion are banned from schools, both from pupil adornment and from the

curriculum.

Two other secular models away from Europe do it differently. In the USA,

resistance to one established religion derived from the Christian convictions which

the early seventeenth century settlers took with them from Europe. Wariness with

regard to religion in the public school system has proved a deterrent in many states

against the federal option to teach about religion (Nord & Haynes, 1998). In India,

too, sensitivity to the plurality of religions at the time of Independence and Partition

led Congress to insist that the constitution should be secular (Baird, 1992), thereby

deliberately establishing the principle that all the religious traditions of India matter

equally. Over fifty years later, there is now an emerging acknowledgement that

religion is too important to have been consequently left out of the school curriculum,

although as yet it simply figures within Peace Education (Government of India.

National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), 2005).

Congruent with membership of the United Nations, the principle of freedom of

religious belief has become normative, although what that means in practice varies

considerably, not least in an educational context. It is not unusual for there to be a

stipulation within national constitutional clauses that if beliefs are perceived to

threaten the health of the nation, they will be controlled. This is widely used as a

response to groups identified as ‘cults’, and notoriously in China, in spite of

acknowledgement of more ‘mainstream’ religions, applied to followers of the Falun

Gong (Matas & Kilgour, 2006).6

Religion as a challenge to national citizenship

Anthropology and sociology make clear that religion thrives in small-scale societies

and tribal contexts, and that there, as in other social settings, it can serve to support

the immediate status quo and authority structures (the chief, the shaman, the tribal

elders), or, indeed, to point beyond them.

The history of religions also makes it clear that religions often endorse particular

nationalisms, not least with the notion of Divine Right of Kings.7 However; unless

their theologies are exhaustively identified with that status quo, voices from within the

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religion typically spy out such localising limitations and point beyond them. ‘My

nation right or wrong’ is just bad theology, for its sense of any transcendent reality is

too small – a category mistake, which sees a part as though it were the whole. Where

the voices of more global horizons are weak internally, there is commonly a louder

shout from religious believers from the same or other traditions elsewhere, as is

presently happening in criticism of the northern based government in the Sudan by

other Muslims and the World Council of Churches.

With some notorious consequences, the 1889 Meiji constitution established state

Shinto, centred on the Japanese Imperial Order, and it became an example of

religion turned in on itself. When its outward forms were largely dismantled in 1945,

it had been challenged not only by the Allied war effort, but by other versions of

Shinto (Sect and Shrine) (Smart, 1992). Some versions of the Chosen status of the

People of Israel distort that, so that it becomes a position of exclusive and superior

supremacy, quite belying the sense of servanthood and universalism found in

Biblical Torah and Prophets. As in the oft misremembered cartoon story of Jonah,

these also tell that the nation of Israel, along with other nations, is found morally

wanting by God and in need of penitence. Similarly, whilst some Brahmins would

argue that being Hindu is only feasible for one born on the sacred soil of India, and

then within a hierarchically restricted pattern of relationships (Burghart, 1987),

others see their faith as quintessentially bringing all beings into the position of

mutual recognition and interdependence – irrespective of national or species-based

origins. Christians from the first century onwards may have shown regard for

national and imperial leaders, but they have also had strong convictions about the

whole inhabited earth as looking for a new ordering which is characterised by justice

and peace. The House of Islam since the time of Muhammad has been in tension

with the House of Darkness, which is the rest of the world; but all creation, all

humanity, derives from the one God. Religions, by definition, point beyond

themselves.

There is a distinctive point here about the claims of nationalism: they are

relativised by religions when religions are true to their own proper credentials. Of

course, there are many instances where religions have been domesticated and tamed

to some local end, as already instanced, and as in the case of the Dutch Reformed

Church in South Africa. But, where they are true to the best in their traditions,

religions point beyond themselves to greater contours of concern. Far from having

God on their side, the ‘Godness’ of God is always also elsewhere and with others as

well.

Unfortunately, not all relativising of inflated nationalisms by religions is admitted

by those same religions as needing to be applied to their own institutional

operations. This is especially true when the institutions of a particular religion claim

for themselves the power of God and become absolutised. Speaking theologically,

such a move must be blasphemous, for there is no God but God. God may be in an

individual, in a group of individuals, but God as God must remain more than such,

or else misperceived and falsely delimited. If such tendencies can be detected in the

Bharatiya Janata Party in India, as in certain politicised manifestations of Islam

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(militant jihadists) or Christianity (militant crusaders), then they deserve to be

exposed by the global theologies of their own traditions. Human institutions are

fallible, and that needs to be acknowledged by both religions and constitutions.

This self-deceiving category mistake was evident in the two great pseudo- religions

of the twentieth century (Cohn, 1993). Nazism and Russian Communism each

sought to create larger entities than had previously existed. They broke up ethnic

boundaries and nationalisms in the pursuit of what they perceived as some greater

humanity. But the scale of human devastation that was given licence by their

relativising of local loyalties only became fully revealed in retrospect, in the

murdering of millions of Jews (Katz, 1994) and Kulaks (Applebaum, 2004).

Religions, pseudo or apparently authentic, may indeed challenge limited horizons of

citizenship, but they, too, need checks against their own inflated egos. Citizenship in

the Third Reich or the USSR was based on its own version of legal rationality rooted

in particular beliefs of religious proportions. Those could only be exposed and

defeated if they were challenged by other more humanly comprehensive beliefs,

combining both religious and moral force.

Once again the argument is being advanced that there is a belief dimension to

being a citizen. The believing in question may take moral, political and/or religious

forms. Accordingly, education for citizenship will be significantly lacking unless it

engages directly with beliefs and believing.

A long educational revolution: responding to the plurality of citizens’ beliefs

in the UK

Nations and religious communities alike have been traditionally reluctant to

encourage opportunities for challenge to their authority. It is as though there is some

institutional drive to favour uniformity. Yet, it is now more usual than not, across

both nation states and faith communities, for the integrity of individual conscience

to be affirmed. It figures within the apologetic of every world religion. And it is built

into the Declaration of Human Rights, which most nations have signed in joining the

United Nations.8 In effect, that is an acknowledgement that not everyone will think

alike. Although the principle of conscientious objection in times of war has never

been universally acknowledged, how and how well a nation makes provision for its

objectors is a fair test of its readiness to admit its own limitations. So, with religion is

respect for dissidents within its own traditions.

One further sign of mature democracy is that it not only permits dissent, but that it

also provides opportunities for the grounds of differences to be understood. Patently,

the contemporary world is host to an even greater variety of mutually challenging

beliefs than it already was 2000 years ago, though the extent of that itself is often

under-estimated. The strength of adherence to particular belief systems – moral,

political and/or religious – varies within countries and continents. Nowhere,

however, is it the case that only one belief will be found, and even in a society

which is relatively monochrome in prevailing belief, degrees of believing as well as

other beliefs will be uttered by individuals (that glorious human capacity to think

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unpredictably) as brought home by one or other of the electronic media which now

abound.

Because religious beliefs have had such a central role in most notions of national

identity, it is reasonable to consider one example of the ways in which their plurality

is being sensitively affirmed and worked with in an educational context. It may be

that, when done well, such affirmation already provides some degree of citizenship

education. It may also be that in countries wherein the feasibility of such religious

education remains unlikely at least in the near future, the model will be illuminating

for what might be done additionally under the formal heading of citizenship

education. The educational process involved is one of critical engagement rather

than passive instruction. In the course of deepening appreciation of the beliefs of

others, it encourages young people to think for themselves.

The model chosen is from England, which as a society manifests all the signs of

the globally mixed economy of beliefs: Christian by inheritance and the self-

ascription of over two-thirds of the population; secularising in that its social fabric

increasingly operates independently of a particular faith allegiance; and religiously

diverse, with Muslims as the largest religious minority (GB. Office for National

Statistics, 2001). (Without claiming that this religious demography is typical, it is

worth remarking in passing that, in one form or another, one-third of the world’s

population identifies with Christianity, one-fifth with Islam and one-sixth with no

particular religion (Barrett, Kurian & Johnson, 2001)). What is special about the

English model is that it begins by taking beliefs and believing very seriously within

the context of public education.

The political recognition of the diversity of beliefs in the UK has been a long

revolution over four centuries. In terms of its recognition within the context of

publicly funded education the time frame is shorter. State funding for schools only

began in 1870 when a partnership was established with the agreement that church

and state would collaborate in providing for the nation’s educational needs. Though

only a part of these needs, the matter of beliefs remained fundamental.

In 1944, amidst heightened WW2 consciousness of the explosive power of beliefs,

a new Education Act decreed that all schools should provide Religious Education

(GB. Statutes, 1944). Beliefs and believing were seen to matter for all children and

young people, but what was to be believed was acknowledged as contentious.

Schools owned by the churches (Church of England, Free Church and Roman

Catholic) and Jewish community, yet receiving public funding, had discretion about

this denominational RE. In local education authority (LEA) schools, the syllabus

had to be locally agreed by a conference comprising representatives of teachers,

politicians and the churches. There was also a conscience clause ensuring the right of

parents to withdraw their children from any RE; this is still in place (Louden, 2004).

From 1944 to the mid 1970s, these Agreed Syllabuses were Biblically based,

thereby providing a common denominator across the main differences of belief,

including the Jewish community. Thereafter, the syllabuses (starting with that from

the City of Birmingham (1975)) began to take account of other religious traditions.

This development was formally acknowledged and reinforced by the 1988

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Education Reform Act (GB. Statutes, 1988). The ERA stipulated that Religious

Education in LEA schools should take account of Christianity and the other

principal religious traditions of the UK; these were understood to be Buddhist,

Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh.9 No syllabus which ignored them would be legal.

The membership of Agreed Syllabus Conferences, which have the role of agreeing

any local syllabus, needed to be enlarged to reflect the diversity of beliefs. This also

applied to the Standing Advisory Councils for RE (SACREs) which were then

required to continually support and monitor the provision. With due attention to the

nature of religious diversity on the ground locally, attention to plurality of religious

beliefs subsequently became the established norm for primary and secondary

schools.

In 2004 there was a further development. RE provision nationally in England and

Wales is varied as a result of denominational schools providing education for around

one-quarter of all pupils and the existence of many different locally agreed

syllabuses. (Potentially these are as many as 150, but in practice far less because

some LEAs adopt syllabuses agreed by other authorities.) Following extensive

consultation with faith communities, and the British Humanist Association, and

interested academic and professional associations, the government published a

National Framework for RE (GB. QCA, 2004). Although it is non-statutory, it is

intended to convey the spirit of good RE across all publicly funded, including

denominational/faith,10 schools throughout England.

One of its distinctive features is that it sets out expectations from RE for all pupils

between the ages of 3 to 19 years. Rather than specifying the details of content,

which remain within local or denominational discretion, it indicates its expectation

that every child will be exposed to the diversity of religious beliefs, that their

understanding will go beyond surface meanings, and depth and discernment will be

encouraged in whatever personal beliefs an individual student comes to hold.

There is no assumption that this public provision for RE will be a substitute for

RE within a home or parental faith community. However, it is presupposed that the

various faith perspectives which are encountered in school will be authentically

explored – hence the involvement of men and women from different religious

communities in the local syllabus conferences and support councils. The potential

contribution from RE to the believing that informs an individual student’s sense of

citizenship is therefore intended to be real, and open (Gates, 2007, forthcoming).

Citizen as familiar face or foreign foe

In this English context, because of daily exposure to those from different

backgrounds, learning to read and understand religious and cultural diversity is an

important social skill. Being able to explain and corroborate what I and others

believe, where we agree and disagree, is an important philosophical and

communicative skill. The National Framework is clear that such skills are vital for

any educated citizen. Irrespective of the extent to which it makes sense to try to

identify ‘shared values’, there should be no false pretence that deep down everyone

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believes the same, as in some legendary common core of religions. There should be

neither wilful exaggeration of difference between religions to exacerbate conflict nor

immediate rubbishing of a belief simply because it is a bit different from usual.

Learning to become not just literate and numerate, but also religiate is designed to

remove false stumbling blocks between people who believe differently, whilst

opening new vistas on living that may not have been previously noticed.

Forty years ago, there was a current slogan heard in Vietnam: ‘Kill a Commie for

Christ’. This year in the Lebanon, a similar slogan has been heard: ‘Killing a Jew

brings you closer to God’. Both slogans thrive on ignorance.11

It is not uncommon amongst the Muslim Arab populations of the Middle East

for the Jew to be perceived as an interloper who has dispossessed the Palestinian

people from their rightful land, and to have done that arrogantly and belligerently.

Much more rarely expressed in the Middle East is an awareness of the systematic

brutality of the Nazi extermination camps, or the centuries of pogroms which

preceded them in the other countries of European Christendom. On the contrary,

the malicious anti-semitic forgery, known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which

was first circulated in Russia in the 1890s, is now regularly shown in serialised

cartoon form on peak time TV throughout Middle Eastern countries, and it is

received as true.12 The caricature of the Jews as the wicked source of misery amongst

Muslims is all too similar to their centuries old caricature amongst Christians as

money-grubbing, brothel keeping, spreaders of plague and kidnappers of young

boys.

Elsewhere in the world, it has not been uncommon for Muslims to be portrayed as

fatalistically indifferent to human life. The violence of the Crusades in the Middle

Ages is portrayed as Muslim, and only defensively as Christian (Kedar, 1984;

Frassetto & Blanks, 1999). According to some media comment, today’s suicide

bombers are proof of the madness of their religion. Actually, Islam shares the

prophetic indignation, found also with Jews and Christians, against poverty and all

forms of social injustice; those responsible will warrant divine judgement.

Unfortunately, as has happened in the past with some Christians (against the

witches and communists, as well as the Jews), some Muslims have styled themselves

as God’s agents of retribution.

All these facts deserve to be known in the context of any good RE and/or

Citizenship Education. But so, too, does the story of Gaffa Khan, the Muslim leader

who was vigorous in his use of non-violence to bring peace to the territory of

Afghanistan in former centuries (Bondurant, 1971). Or again, the quote contained

in the collection of those quotations officially recognised within the Muslim

community as amongst those most highly valued, because ascribed directly to

Muhammad himself, speaking as follows:

The first of people against whom judgement will be pronounced on the Day of

Resurrection will be a man who has died a martyr. He will be brought and Allah will

make known to him His favours and he will recognise them. (The Almighty) will say:

And what did you do about them? He will say: I fought for you until I died a martyr. He

will say: You have lied – you did but fight that it might be said (of you): He is

courageous. And so it was said. Then he will be ordered to be dragged along on his face

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until he is cast into Hell-fire. Hadith 6 from Forty Hadith Qudsi (Izzudin & Johnson-

Davies, 1980).

There are resources for citizenship education from across the world’s religions, but

these traditions deserve to be understood at some depth, especially by those

teaching, if pupils are to be taken beyond superficial impressions. Take any of the

following less obvious instances from what for many Christian readers will still be

only the partially known Christian tradition:

N Biblical portraits of marriage, including polygamous patriarchs and kings

(Abraham, Jacob, David and Solomon) in the Old Testament, and Paul’s advice

(1 Corinthians 7:3) about mutual recognition of sexual interests within marriage

(Barton, 1996);

N a Papal ‘fatwa’ against Queen Elizabeth 1st of England;13

N Doukhobar Christians relocated from Russia to Canada following persecution in

the 1890s holding a naked demonstration to make a political point (Hawthorn,

1955);

N being committed to truth whilst practising deception in Nazi Germany –

Bonhoeffer’s theological prison reflection after his involvement in the failed plot

against Hitler (Bonhoeffer, 1955).

Without appreciation of the reasoned basis in belief, any one of them may be quite

striking, but remaining so only at the level of oddity. Yet this is precisely the

challenge to those engaged in Citizenship Education: if we do not understand the

complexities of a religious tradition which is near to us, how much more likely is it

that we will be unaware of our ignorance in relation to other traditions. Some

opening up of the diversity within a ‘familiar’ tradition itself becomes important as a

means of unmasking superficial stereotypes and replacing them with a sense of

richness and vitality which might otherwise be missing. However, it must also be

acknowledged that some real understanding of the beliefs involved is necessary, if

the related behaviour is to be understood. Actions generally depend on motivations

and beliefs, and citizenship education is incomplete unless it attends to them.

Admitting conflicting claims to truth: young citizens engaging with different

beliefs and identities

Reverting more directly to the approach to RE and citizenship education found in

England, there is a clear expectation that, as a necessary component in the

development of their own beliefs and values, from their earliest years in school

children will be introduced to the diversity of what people believe. Far from proving

to be very confusing for them, experience suggests that the risk of confusion is much

greater in the absence of such teaching from the curriculum (Homan & King, 1993).

Well managed learning opportunities have the opposite effect, as is evident from

individual school reports by the schools’ inspectorate (GB. Ofsted, 2006).

This is no less true with younger pupils than with older ones. The promotion of

exploratory conversation between children themselves, as much as between children

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and teacher, is a common feature of infant and junior school classrooms, not least as

a means to making sense of beliefs and believing and values and valuing. This may

come in the guise of ‘Circle Time’, or involve the use of Persona Dolls with different

religious identities. It has been most systematically developed as a fundamental

pedagogical strategy for good RE by Robert Jackson and colleagues at the Warwick

University Religions and Education Research Unit (Jackson, 2003, 2004). It is often

referred to as the ‘dialogical approach’. Julia Ipgrave has exemplified this way of

working over several years. Exposure to the otherness of people’s beliefs comes from

three sources: the children themselves, other children of a similar age but in different

schools (often electronically linked), and indirect encounter through handling the

emblems and artifacts of belief and identity (Ipgrave, 2001). In addition, Eleanor

Nesbitt has exposed the variations and complexities in religious belief and identity,

which can be found even within one pupil, sometimes because of parental

differences (Nesbitt, 2004). Whatever their background, all children and young

people have an entitlement to this process of exploration.

The main thrust of this RE tradition in England is to promote understanding of

beliefs and values, directly engaging with different versions and interpretations of the

claims to truth involved. The legal safety net for this is the existence of representative

Standing Advisory Councils for RE (SACRE) in every part of the country – 150 in

all. They sit alongside the local syllabus conferences and each is constituted to be

able to draw on the combined experience of nominated teachers, politicians and

members of the different faith communities. These ‘ecumenical councils’ are

remarkable in themselves. As already indicated, at the time of their first permissive

introduction in 1944, the potential for their faith diversity and disagreements was

derived from within the Christian churches. In the last twenty years, the challenges

in arriving at consensus agreement and advice have become much greater. They are

stretched both by the range of faiths needing to be represented and by the question

of how best to be supportive of educational experience in beliefs and values, which is

relevant in a rapidly changing world.

Another English example of distinctive student experience, which draws directly

on the SACRE mode of operation, is that of Young People’s SACREs. This has

recently been pioneered in North Yorkshire, and is currently being extended

elsewhere. Following the model of the adult SACRE, Joyce Miller and colleagues in

the city of Bradford, a locality with a high proportion of Muslims, established a

youth equivalent. Students aged 16+ were nominated as representative counterparts

from each of interest groups which comprise the adult Standing Council. In

successive years the youth council has concerned itself with some of the issues which

have been exercising the parent SACRE, including the priorities in RE for 16–19

year-olds and local inter-faith relationships. Positive reports of the impact on all

concerned have led to the model being adopted in other LEAs.14

There is some similarity between Young People’s SACREs and the more widely

known phenomenon of School Councils. However, the deliberate determination to

work with the diversities of belief and the modelling of a statutory political process

carry major promise for the future.

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In drawing attention to current practice of RE in England there is no intention to

imply that comparable provision may not be found elsewhere. The related new

curriculum in South Africa is styled Religion Education rather than Religious

Education, and uses the word Religion to flag an inclusive agenda (Chidester, 2002).

Within the European Union since 9/11, the Council of Ministers has approved direct

attention to beliefs. Hitherto, there had been reluctance to deal overtly with the

substance of religion in any of its educational programmes. Instead, over the

previous decade there was a preferred reference to culture and inter-cultural

education. This was the apparently easiest way to avoid a confrontation between the

rival interests of continuing denominational ownership of education on the one

hand, and, on the other, a secularist belief that religion should not be studied in

school. Now, in accord with the European Convention on Human Rights (Council

of Europe, 1950), a reference to religion and beliefs has been added as warranting

further development (Council of Europe, 2006).

There is yet a distinctive feature in the English approach, which continues

formally to admit the vital interests of faith communities in educational provision.

Thus, the Dual System of educational partnership between church and state,

established in 1870, has now been extended to a plural system of partnership

between faith communities and state. Together they serve as one of the institutional

carriers of beliefs and values within the nation, pledged in a contract of mutual check

and balance. This communitarian dimension, directly linking education with its

roots in living communities of faith, offsets any tendency for a formal curriculum

requirement to lose contact with the passion of its sources.

Religion and ethics in the roots of citizenship and citizenship education

Up to this point, the words ‘ethics’ and ‘moral education’ have not appeared. This is

entirely because their centrality to citizenship and citizenship education is axiomatic

to this Special Issue. Moral values provide common substance in the discourse of

both education and politics. In sharp contrast, it has been argued that, whilst in

widespread use in contemporary politics, religion and its related vocabulary is more

ignored than attended to in citizenship education.

Whilst contributory explanations for this have been touched on, a further

consideration may be at work. Principled affirmations of the autonomy of ethics can

be a deterrent against acknowledging any link with religion. Accordingly, even to

mention the possibility of such can be seen as risking a return to religious tutelage.

By concentrating on the purity of a religion-free morality, the childish condition of

dependence on a contaminating heteronomy can be avoided.

Once the conceptual distinction between religion and ethics has been

clarified, however, there are two necessary caveats which public education

should heed. One is that, in popular discourse the world over, there is a

continuing mix of beliefs and values, religion and ethics. The other is that

philosophically the autonomy of religion is no less an important principle than the

autonomy of ethics, and the two autonomies have an endemic relationship, the one

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with the other. In their roots and ramifications they intermingle, giving mutual

support and challenge.

In the name of moral autonomy, assumptions of religious legitimation for acts of

partiality and prejudice on the part of individual citizens, national governments or

religious establishments deserve to be exposed as such. This will apply in respect of

ownership of land and natural resources, gender inequalities, the conduct of war

and, indeed, across all arenas of personal and social behaviour.

In the name of religious autonomy, assumptions of moral legitimation on any

front deserve to be put under scrutiny. For instance, laws are not necessarily just

because they have been passed by a national government; the appeal to universal

human rights is as much an expression of faith as it is of reason, as is any decision

regarding where the boundaries are to be drawn between human life and the claims

of any other degrees or forms of sentient being; and it is questionable that individuals

will do the right thing once they have been taught what that is or, indeed, have come

to evaluate for themselves what it might be.

The implication of this for citizenship education is that it will do a disservice to

children and young people unless it finds ways of giving appropriate priority to their

need to understand both the religious and the moral roots of being a citizen. In some

national settings, this may be especially difficult to achieve. Constitutionally or

legally, the extent of direct attention to religion in the school curriculum may be

seriously restricted. Alternatively, it may be specified as needing to take a

denominationally exclusive form. The argument of this article is that neither of

these positions is morally healthy, and if that is the prevailing condition other

curricular means need to be created to give more open scrutiny to religion.

More positively, the combined realities of global politics, local relationships and

personal meaning warrant properly resourced engagement in the context of public

education with both the religious and the moral in their own right. For children and

young people to be equipped to make mutual sense of how and why they want to live

their futures requires nothing less. The model exemplified from England at least

begins to do this, but it has long way to go before it becomes the norm for all even

within the UK15 in practice.

A concluding comment: cuckoo and crucible

The complaint is sometimes heard that religion is, as it were, a cuckoo in any public

school curriculum, which will seek to take over and oust elements which claim to be

more natural and native, especially when they are termed moral education or

citizenship education. This article has argued the contrary. Religion has been a

pervasive presence in human civilisations over the centuries and best guesstimates

suggest that, for well over four-fifths of the world’s population, it continues to be a

defining ingredient in how individuals characterise themselves (Barrett et al., 2001).

Far from being a cuckoo, religion is more a crucible. Though it has sometimes

paraded itself as the perfection rather than a pointer to such, it is actually a crude

container for the human clustering within which deepest beliefs and values are

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variously held and refined. In the interests of the moral education of global citizens,

no school can afford to ignore the matter of religion. Where that happens, from the

best of intentions, whatever the school espouses in its place may turn out to be the

intrusive cuckoo. What is then effectively ejected from the nurturing environment of

the school is the appreciation and testing of living faiths.

In sum, there are two fundamental points. Firstly, citizenship depends

upon beliefs and values, and these are both religious and moral. Therefore,

Citizenship Education which pays scant attention to the process and content of

both moral and religious believing is likely to stumble, for therein lie the springs

of active participation. Secondly, religion is too important – with its

transformative capacities for both good and evil – to be left to separate faith

communities to tend in isolation from each other. Disconnection between religious

communities, as between states, breeds fear and suspicion. It also imperils any

emergent sense of belonging to an inclusive global community of living beings – past,

present and future.

Notes

1. This can be illustrated from anecdotal reflections as well as research studies. For instance,

according to a Scottish Chief Constable: ‘I joined Sussex Police at the age of 18 and so I

probably had what some might consider as rather naive motives for joining. Like many

colleagues I wanted a career that offered variety, excitement and a meaningful role in making

a positive difference to the lives of others’. Edinburgh Evening News, 25 February 2006.

Similarly, from Ottawa a Police Sector Council study of 1600 young people aged 16–30

reveals that all but 6% saw public sector policing as an opportunity to do meaningful work.

For the third who saw it as a serious job option, the most frequently cited reasons were:

‘making one’s community safer’, ‘helping victims of crime’ and ‘being of service to the public’

(Ipsos-Reid, 2005). However, this is not to deny that motives are usually mixed, or that there

will not be variations from one country to another.

2. Extensive research, first begun in the 1960s, has demonstrated the power of ‘belief in a just

world’ to influence how individuals interpret events in daily life, a belief maintained in spite of

appearances and which enables sense to be made of otherwise distressing facts of life (Lerner,

1980; Montada & Lerner, 1998).

3. To the familiar Freudian and Marxist confidence that religion is being outgrown may be

added that conveyed in the position of Steve Bruce (2002).

4. For a descriptive analysis of the constitutional context in 44 Muslim countries, see Stahnke &

Blit (2005).

5. ‘Soviet citizens used to stand in endless lines to venerate Vladimir Lenin’s embalmed remains

on Red Square, Moscow. Now Orthodox believers are standing in round-the-clock lines to

venerate saints’ relics. In the latest example of such religious fervour, in over 40 days nearly

2.5 million believers across Russia, Ukraine and Belarus venerated what Orthodox Christians

believe to be St John the Baptist’s hand, after the relic’s return to Montenegro, its home since

1941.’ Report from Moscow Orthodox Patriarchate in Ecumencial News International. ENI-

06-0607, 31 July, 2006.

6. In Western Europe, Scientology has been subject to extensive legal proscription on this basis,

most especially in France (Vivien, 2001; Pallison, 2002) and Germany (Moseley, 1997). In

China, the proscriptions extend to forms of Buddhism, as well as less well known groups like

the Falun Gong; for a comprehensive overview, see United States Commission on

International Religious Freedom (2005).

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7. Within Christendom, since the time of Constantine in the fourth century CE, emperors and

monarchs were regarded as deriving their authority from God and this was transmitted by

inherited birthright. There is parallel across civilisations and cultures, from ancient Egypt to

twentieth century Japan or twenty-first century Cambodia. Indeed, the current Thailand

constitution (Section 6) describes the King as holding a position of revered worship. The

notion of the moral potency of the imperial lineage in Japan is vividly conveyed in Hiroike

(2002) II, Ch. 13 A & B; for a comparison with the Divine Right of Kings, see III, pp. 65–7.

In the wake of transition to constitutional democracies, the deference to elected leaders and

to the will of the majority may for some still contain a sense of divine indebtedness, albeit

mediated through a no less God-given right to vote.

8. ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes the

freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with

others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship

and observance’. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as adopted by the

United Nations in 1948. ‘Possessed of reason and conscience, every human is obliged to

behave in a genuinely human fashion, to do good and avoid evil!’ Endorsed by 1993 World

Parliament of Religions as part of its commitment to pursue a common Global Ethic (Kung &

Kuschel, 1993). The full text and related resources are available from its continuing Council:

http://www.cpwr.org.

9. According to Section 8:3 of the Education Reform Act: ‘Any agreed syllabus….shall reflect

the fact that the religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian whilst taking

account of the teaching and practices of the other principal religions represented in Great

Britain.’ (GB. Statutes, 1988). This was in direct recognition of the increased diversity of

religious communities thriving within the UK, and it was also deliberately reflecting the wider

global condition.

10. In government usage the previous terminology of ‘church school’ has been superseded by

‘faith school’ to reflect the fact that though the majority of such schools are related to the

Christian communities, there are also publicly funded Jewish, Muslim and Sikh schools,

albeit in small but increasing numbers. In its application to all schools, this framework

envisages critical reflection within any particular faith as well as a readiness to understand the

faith of others.

11. The first slogan was commonly seen on car bumpers in the USA at the time of the Vietnam

war and has been newly reproduced in the repetitive chanting by USA soldiers during training

in the PC DVD game Vietcong 2 (Kolar, 2005). The second has been seen on a poster on a

classroom wall in a Palestinian school, as shown in a UK Channel 4 TV documentary 31 July,

2006: Judah and Mohammed.

12. A devastating collation of publication and distribution in book and televised form is

contained in the Wikipedia 2006 entry on the Protocols: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion. Because Wikipedia entries are vulnerable to abuse,

the extensive corroborative documentation of the extent of current broadcasting of this

material is a necessary guarantee that this point is not being exaggerated.

13. Leaving aside the 1605 Gunpowder Plot on Parliament, which was of September 11

proportions, the strength of lethal antagonism which Christianity has engendered is evident in

the letter sent by Cardinal Como in 1580 in response to an enquiry to the then Pope Sixtus as

to whether it would be sinful for two English nobles to take the life of Elizabeth 1st: ‘Since that

guilty woman of England rules over two noble kingdoms of Christendom and is the cause of

so much injury to the Catholic faith, and loss of so many million souls, there is no doubt that

whosoever sends her out of the world with the pious intention of doing God service, not only

does not sin, but gains merit, especially having regard to the sentence pronounced against her

by Pius V of holy memory. And so if these English nobles decide actually to undertake so

glorious work, your lordship can assure them that they do not commit any sin’. Cited in Black

(1959), pp. 178–9.

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14. Assisted by special grants from the Westhill Trust, there are now ten other Youth SACREs, in

the following Local Education Authorities: from 2005 – Bristol, Hounslow, Hull and the East

Riding, Portsmouth, Solihull; and from 2006 – Blackburn with Darwen, Kirklees, Newham,

Surrey and Tameside.

15. ‘Home grown suicide bombers’ are not an example of any weakness in this model, but rather

of its incomplete implementation. An examination of the quality of RE in the schools of the 7

July London bombers shows that it had been characterised as weak by the schools inspection

agency, OFSTED, in reports published at the times when they had been at school. This will

have impacted both on their own understanding of Islam in relation to other religions and on

the attitudes towards the Muslim community of their non-Muslim peers in the same schools.

See Campaign against terrorism – a paper prepared by the Religious Education Council of

England and Wales, July 2005.

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