The Victorian explorers who made multi-faith religious education possible

The image of the explorer is a well-established trope. Intrepid, half scientist and half swashbuckler, the explorer is always cultivated, rational and technical discovering a world that is, by contrast, uncivilised, fanatical, backward. It is well entrenched in children’s games, books and film – at least in ‘the West’ (a category that arguably only exists because of such imaginaries).

That famous and supposedly humorous scene in Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy is confronted with the exaggerated display of a swordsman in an Egyptian souk –only to casually shoot him dead to the furore of an emotional crowd – serves as a good example. Indy, a university professor, overcomes the barbarian with technological superiority and cool headedness. If there weren’t so many other real-life incidents of this kind of lackadaisical killing replayed on our screens – from barrel bombs to drone strikes – it could be passed off as mere entertainment. The fanatical and backward opposition to Western civilisation by a monolithic religion is one of the fundamental bases of Islamophobia.

As the world moves on, and the balance of wealth shifts from the West to the rest of the world, identifying colonial curriculum representations is important. This isn’t just a problem in Religious Education but also in other curriculum subjects and media. At home many children are more likely to get their idea of Africa from the Lion King or David Attenborough than from anything else. At school, the Band Aid mentality still persists in Geography, which, at its worst, can be seen as an apologetic for the living standards of the UK in comparison to lower income countries. And of course, in History we learn that the British abolished slavery and the Americans had to drop the bomb to save lives.

It is worth noting that even the curriculum subjects themselves originate from the days of empire, like much of Britain’s infrastructure of sewers, railways and housing. One necessity back then was to be able to show which parts of the map were red. Another to teach the basic elements of Christian religious knowledge, scripture.

Religious education, as we know, has changed since then to embrace the religions of the colonised, rather than to just preach the ideology of the colonisers. But here the colonial mind reappears. We often find reified and unreflective representations of ‘world religions’ based on naïve understandings, including the implicit message that less advanced people (or fanatics) even believe in ‘the other’ religions so we had better take them seriously. That is a question of respect. Alongside this, of course, comes the spectacle of the exotic, and the spiritual wisdom of the East that we should all imbibe a little on account of our wellbeing.

Do I exaggerate? If it wasn’t for the influence of real Victorian explorers on the multi-faith movement perhaps you could say I was. I pick two examples in this blog that have featured in my ongoing research about the origins of interfaith dialogue and education. One, Sir Francis Younghusband, founded Britain’s first interfaith organisation, The World Congress of Faiths. The other, Emily Georgiana Kemp, who is less well known, founded the first multi-faith chapel in a British educational institution.

Sir Francis Younghusband is the colonial explorer personified. Patrick French’s excellent biography explains that he did have a pith hat, and he was responsible for the needless slaughter of thousands in the invasion of Tibet at the dizzy heights (or should we say, lows) of British imperialism in 1904. He cut his teeth walking from China to Pakistan as a young soldier and dallying with his Russian counterpart in the Great Game. It was in the mountains of British India that he was to have the first of several spiritual experiences, one significant change coming after falling from his horse and reading Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You. In later life he was reluctant to speak about his invasion of Tibet, but he did enthusiastically and sincerely promote interreligious understanding. (With his friend Robert Bridges, he also promoted Parry’s Jerusalem as part of an interdenominational push for the First World War effort).

Younghusband founded The World Congress of Faiths (so-called because it first met in the centre of the empire, London) and brought together theologians and dignitaries of all faiths. From the fascinating proceedings of these meetings, the first taking place in 1936, we can see the seeds of several future lines of intellectual enquiry and cultural change. The discussion, among notables such as the Japanese Zen master, Dr Suzuki, prefigures issues in interreligious relations that have come to have even more significance. Can we pray together? Can the religions unite to promote peace? How can we promote mutual understanding? Rev. Dr. Marcus Braybrooke is just one interreligious author and leader who has worked with this organisation and others to promote understanding, which in turn has led to new initiatives, such as the Three Faiths Forum. (A good history of the World Congress of Faiths by Braybrooke can be found here). There was also an impact on popular culture. It was at the World Congress of Faiths that Alan Watts developed his interest in Buddhism that was later to be transferred to the Beatniks, for example.

A less well-known friend of Younghusband and member of the World Congress of Faiths was the Baptist, Emily Georgiana Kemp. Kemp wrote several travelogues of her explorations, often as the ‘first’ woman to travel to distant destinations in central Asia and China. Kemp was also an alpinist and author. Her experiences of the religions she encountered on her travels prompted the donation of a chapel to Somerville College, Oxford in 1934.

Somerville College Chapel represents a curious stage in the changing attitudes to non-Christian religions, religion in higher education and the role of women in British society. Kemp had attended Somerville soon after it first opened as an undenominational college for women in Oxford in the 1880s. Surrounded by Anglicans (and men), the college represented a progressive and accepting environment for women of all religions and of none. Kemp’s donation therefore had to please all, and her idea eventually manifested as a kind of non-conformist hall with the remit to be a place of prayer for all religions. The only inscription on the exterior of the building proclaiming above the door in Greek, ‘A house of prayer for all peoples’. The Somervillian author Dorothy L Sayers makes fun of its religiously open symbolism in her detective novel, Gaudy Night but in reality, interfaith spaces in educational institutions and other public spaces have since become the norm. It is not an untenuous link that the Prime Minister who made multi-faith Religious Education statutory in the 1988 Education Act, Margaret Thatcher, attended this ‘house of prayer for all peoples’ as an undergraduate student to hear a talk about the universal nature of God.

The beginnings of multi-faith Religious Education are often ascribed to the Birmingham Agreed Syllabus of 1975 and the philosophy of John Hick. The immigration of people from countries that had formed the British Empire, particularly the Indian sub-continent, contributed to the religious diversity of Britain and this needed to be represented in Religious Education. However, the encounter with religions all over the world by the British colonial and intellectual elites had led to a process of cultural and intellectual change well before then.

Perhaps one way to ensure excellent Religious Education is to keep these historical examples and their related cultural assumptions in mind when making choices about what we do and how we do it. For while with colonialism came horror and killing in the fashion of Indiana Jones, the explorers pioneered new ways of thinking about religion and education. Considered in this way we see the colonial mindset is lacking somewhat. There is not civilisation and the rest of the world. Indeed, there are not civilisations. There is only one diverse and interconnected human culture. Part of our job of educators is to show that – no matter how exotic and different aspects of it may appear in the stereotypes given to us in childhood.