Some years ago now, when a certain Dr Rowan Williams was a lecturer in the Divinity Faculty in Cambridge, he used to begin his lectures with prayer. There were complaints and the prayers ceased. The incident, however, reveals in its microscopic way not only the dilemma of religious education in state schools and universities but also the need to clarify our understanding of the educational role of the Church in a secular society. This of course will also require a definition of what we mean by secular.
In an interview given last year to La Repubblica the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger defined a ‘just secularism’ as allowing religious freedom (in which) the state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility towards civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.’ By implication an unjust secularism will be one which tries to push religion to the margins of society and to deny that religion has any part to play in the ordering of the state and it’s social, economic, and ethical well being. Such aggressive secularism may or may not see religious studies as having any part to play in education. In such circumstances religious education may at best be seen as an adjunct to other areas of study; Islam might be taught as a way of understanding the politics and culture of the Middle East; Judaism might be covered as part of the history of twentieth century Europe; Christianity as the background to English literature or European Art; and a little Buddhist meditation might be prescribed at the start of the day to calm the students. But wherever Religious Studies are retained the expectation is that they will be taught from the perspective of a rational, empiricist world view; such a view rejects the idea that religion can defend itself intellectually or be legitimately taught from the perspective of a personal faith. You can’t pray at the start of a lesson or a public lecture.
How then is the Christian teacher to conduct him or her self in an unjust secular society? The first step is perhaps to recognise how insidious the secular worldview can be. Most of us have grown up in a culture in which we have taken the approach of what we might call a ‘soft’ rational empiricism for granted. So we explore the origins of our faith with the same kind of historical scholarship as we might examine the Norman Conquest. We attempt to justify our faith in terms of our opponent’s mindset. We experience our faith as a minority option, always on the defensive, with a massively shrunken degree of influence, and a strong temptation to keep itself private. We fit God into the gaps left by the scientists. When Rowan Williams was stopped from beginning his lectures with prayer, the English faculty in the same university was riven by the opening salvos of the post modernist debate. In that debate the idea emerged (not for the first time) that the seemingly unbiased rational scientific worldview, looking down on everything from a position of objective impartiality is an illusion. It’s validity can no more be proved than can the religious point of view both are based on a kind of faith. Just as we might adopt a feminist, or psychoanalytic, or sociological, critique of society so might we adopt a scientific or a Christian viewpoint. None of us have disembodied intellects without a predetermined agenda. Therefore a commitment to a Christian viewpoint can imply a Christian approach to music, literature, science, politics, history or economics and so on.
Christianity isn’t just a mindset bracketed off from the rest, which we take up when we’re feeling religious. And so a Christian teacher or lecturer provided they have declared themselves to be such can begin a lesson or lecture with a prayer if they so chose as part of a demonstration of what the subject they are teaching is all about. Prayer is part of the tradition and practices of a living religious community. The belief that a religion can satisfactorily taught ‘from outside’ by a cool critical assessment of it’s claims and practices is largely an illusion. There is an important distinction to be made between propaganda, brainwashing, indoctrination or evangelism on the one hand, and the imaginative attempt to draw school children and students temporarily ‘inside’ a faith to enable them to understand it from within, to become guests in the community of faith. And this of course will include besides prayer a reasonable analysis of that community’s beliefs, values and the diversity thereof.
A just secularism will accept such an understanding of religious education, but it isn’t at all clear, as Cardinal Ratzinger feared (and now as Pope Benedict still fears) that we live in a justly secular society. And so when it comes to education we are all called on to be protestants, to protest the proper teaching of faith in schools and universities, accepting that a just secularism must allow other faiths (and atheisms) equal opportunities to demonstrate their own inner meaning. But to do so of course we need many more Christian teachers in our religious studies classes and departments is that a vocation to which any of us might be called?
With my love and prayers,
Father Stephen
The Vicar Writes
Stephen Tucker