THE CHRISTIAN VOICE IN EDUCATION

If the Christian religious voice could once more speak in the world of education it would be a voice which beckons to vocation.  It would entice the youth to love the transcendent, to love the world which forever issues from the creative power of transcendence, and to love their neighbour as themselves.  It would invite ministry rather than mastery as the true prize of education.

Taken from an article entitled ‘Is there a place for the religious voice in public education?’ by M.C.Felderhof, Journal of Beliefs and Values, vol 26 no 1, 1995.

Marius Felderhof teaches theology at Birmingham University, Westhill. 

He has argued strongly for the place of worship in community schools, taking on Professor John Hull in the process.  He believes that religious education is education into a religion and moreover that European and international law requires us to take account of the religious beliefs and aspirations of parents in state education.  What this means is that RE and worship should be responsive to the desires of parents for a religious upbringing for their children.    You can read a summary of a paper called 'Religious Education and Human Rights' in which he argues this here .  He has written a defence of such an RE against the inevitable charge of indoctrination called 'Religious Education, Indoctrination and Freedom', a summary of which you can read here .  I have also written  a similar defence against indoctrination which you can read here . This may also be found in my booklet on SACREs and ASCs and Challenging RE.

I find his work exciting and enormously refreshing.  He argues that we need to put religion back into RE.   My book has a chapter in it which shows how the practice of RE as induction into Christianity was the subject of a successful campaign to remove it in the 70s, despite widespread resistance.  The 1988  ERA was to an extent an attempt to reverse this but was resisted by the RE profession which has largely evaded it by re-interpreting the law.  Challenging RE, (see pages 7 and 8) says something about this.  But the full details will have to wait till my book is finished.