REVIEW FOR CROSSCURRENTS

“Whatever happened to Religious Education?” by Penny Thompson
(Lutterworth 2003) 192pp £17.50

Penny Thompson, a member of the Liverpool Diocesan Synod, has written a profound and challenging book. The Bishop of St Albans says it is “feisty, provocative and argued with passion.” It is a thorough piece of research which exposes the development in RE over the past 40 years. We often bemoan the ignorance of young people today about the Christian faith. Our elders speak of how they learned collects, psalms and other scriptures. Today you only have to watch a quiz show on television, if there are questions about the most basic facts of the Christian faith the answers are often lamentable. Did they learn nothing in school? Whatever happened to RE?

As she traces the changes in RE it becomes apparent that Christians gave in to a humanist onslaught. We lost our nerve. We were persuaded that we could not teach the Christian faith as true in an increasingly secular society. Teachers of RE had to be neutral. All religions had to be taught. Some tried to stem the tide. A British Council of Churches report said: “we are not convinced that attempts to replace the historic faith by a mid-twentieth century mish-mash appeals strongly except to a vocal and persistent minority.” The excellent report “The Fourth R” produced for the Church of England’s Board of Education was largely ignored. Ronald Goldman and Ninian Smart set the pace for change. In “Readiness for Religion” Goldman argued that the Bible was not suitable for primary children. Smart pressed for neutrality in teachers. He wanted a phenomenological approach - e.g. a pupil should try to feel what it would be like to be Jewish and share in a Passover meal. Penny Thompson summarises the change brought in by the new RE: “under the previous regime Christian faith was taught because it was held to be true and as a means of developing personal qualities. But now pupils were to forge their own personal development from a bewildering array of opinions.”

The 1988 Education Reform Act attempted to reclaim the ground and base RE in the main on Christianity. It was hoped this would be the end of the mish-mash. Bishop Graham Leonard had understood the act to mean “you can teach Christianity as true.” However the act was interpreted as making it a legal requirement for the teaching of all non-Christian religions in Great Britain - the very reverse of what the Parliamentary debates show was intended. And this interpretation was widely accepted.
Penny Thompson challenges these developments as incoherent and unsustainable. She argues strongly for the teaching of the Christian faith from which to introduce pupils to a spiritual dimension of life. She rightly believes it is impossible for the teacher to be ‘neutral’ and that advocacy is a sound educational principle.

At present both parents and the government are backing faith schools. Church schools provide an opportunity to teach the Christian faith to young people. We must not fudge it.  

ERIC BRAMHALL                       
Formerly Head of RE at Wallasey Grammar School