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Catholic Church in England and Wales
The UK Supreme Court ruled on 19 November that Christian-focused religious education (RE) taught in schools in Northern Ireland is unlawful. The judgement said that the teaching was not “objective, critical, and pluralistic” and therefore could amount to indoctrination.
The case was brought by a father, who described his family as “broadly speaking humanist” and not Christian, whose primary-aged daughter started saying grace before meals at home after she learnt to do so at her “controlled” (Protestant) state school.
The father challenged both the RE syllabus and the practice of collective worship in the school. The court ruled that withdrawing her from lessons would have “stigmatised” her, which would breach her human rights.
The RE core syllabus in Northern Ireland was created by four main Christian denominations in 2007. The justices noted, as evidence for the ruling, that it “encourages pupils faithfully to accept the existence of the Christian God, to accept that good things come from the Christian God, that the Christian God can help in times of adversity and that morality is based upon, and derived from, the existence of the Christian God”.
This includes teaching prayer in Foundation Stage, God’s love and forgiveness in Key Stage 1, and care for creation as a gift of God in Key Stage 2. The ruling said that the churches who drafted the syllabus sought “to promote faith in Christianity as an absolute truth rather than knowledge about Christianity” and that to “teach pupils to accept a set of beliefs without critical analysis amounts to evangelism, proselytising, and indoctrination”.
Bishop of Down and Connor Alan McGuckian SJ said in a statement, “It is important and necessary to take time to critically reflect upon the detail of the Court ruling and its legislative significance and to attentively consider the implications for the development of the RE syllabus and the wider engagement with religious practice and ethos within NI schools.”
He said, “it is explicitly noted in the judgement that this ruling applies to a controlled grant-aided primary school and does not apply to Catholic schools”. But since Catholic schools, like all schools in Northern Ireland, are obliged to teach the core RE syllabus, they will be affected by any changes to the syllabus that result from the ruling, even though they will still be permitted to offer denominational religious education in addition to covering the syllabus.
The ruling said, the requirement to teach the core syllabus “applies in relation to every grant-aided school: […] controlled schools, […] Catholic maintained schools, and […] Integrated schools. […T]he mandatory requirement to ‘include’ religious education in accordance with any core syllabus is a minimum requirement. Provided the religious education given in a grant-aided school includes the core syllabus, the school is at liberty to give additional religious education.”
Bishop McGuckian continued, “We will have to wait and see how legislation and educational policy develop in the light of this ruling. Right now, however, I want to challenge the principle, that people of a secular mindset assert; namely that Christianity should be given no priority in all schools. That principle is simply ungrounded, unreasonable and illogical.
“Christianity and the Judaeo-Christian worldview, provides the value-based foundation […] deeply embedded within Human Rights legislation. The idea of the rights of the individual to be free from coercion, all the freedoms contained in the various charters of human rights, are based on and stem from the biblical teaching that every single person is created ‘in the image and likeness of God’. Enlightenment thinkers of a more secular viewpoint have built on that fundamentum, and, in many ways, they have served us well, but they grounded and built their insights on underlying Christian values that protect the dignity of every human person.
“Those who seek to have Christianity sidelined in our shared society are cutting off their noses to spite their face. The very values and principles on which they base their case are rooted in western civilisation which owes a great debt to the teachings of Christianity.
“Other world religions should also be respected, and they also have a contribution to make in an increasingly diverse multicultural and multifaith society. However, it should be recognised that Christianity, centrally and uniquely, has provided the framework of values that underpin western society. In schools across the western world, Christianity should, indeed, be given priority in our educational systems and everybody, including those of other faiths and none, should recognise and welcome this because of its foundational importance.”
The approach to teaching RE is a contested issue across the nations of the UK. In England, the RE curriculum is required to both reflect Christianity’s position as the “main” religion in the country and take into account the teachings and practices of the other principal religions. Local authority-maintained schools can follow a locally agreed syllabus.
In Wales, RE was replaced with Religion, Values and Ethics (RVE) in 2022, with a stated intention of making the curriculum more “inclusive”, covering both religious and non-religious worldviews. In Scotland, Religious and Moral Education (RME) covers three strands: Christianity, other religions, and philosophical and moral questions.
In a blog published by Theos think-tank on 14 November, researcher Esmé Partridge noted that in many English schools RE “has shifted from a theological approach – the teaching of religion as a normative, moral framework – to a sociological one, studying belief systems from a supposedly neutral standpoint”.
Partridge observed that this “ironically, risks imposing a certain worldview onto the classroom – precisely what the sociological paradigm sought to avoid. Presenting each of the religions as beliefs and practices which happen to be observed by different communities risks reducing them to sociocultural artefacts rather than reflections of any transcendent truth. This too, though implicitly, assumes an ideology of its own: relativism.”
She proposed that first grounding children in one faith in primary school “would ultimately make interreligious encounters even richer, enabling a genuine appreciation of shared values and virtues”.
A recent Theos report highlighted the importance of learning about diverse faiths for building “compassionate, cohesive societies”.
Religious education beyond the classroom can promote empathy and community cohesion, says Theos report
Religious education in schools and universities is too important to be neglected, a conference is told
Polish bishops threaten court action over ‘illegal curbs’ on religion classes
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