RE, Religion and the Complexity of Real Life

What tops your list of priorities for RE? Good initial teacher training or CPD? A review of the EBacc so that we have parity with subjects included there? Improved syllabus or curriculum arrangements? Successful inclusion of non-religious worldviews? Perhaps, a completely renewed vision for the subject.

You might remark that all are needed and included in the final report of the Commission on RE. I want to focus on a different finding of the report, that the subject must get better at reflecting the complex nature of religion in the 21st century.

So, for example, on page 6 we read that ‘the distinction between religious and non-religious worldviews is not as clear-cut as one might think’, that we need to move ‘towards a deeper understanding of the complex, diverse and plural nature of worldviews at both institutional and personal levels’, and to ‘ensure that pupils understand that there are different ways of adhering to a worldview – you may identify with more than one institutional worldview, or indeed none at all’.[1]

Recognising and addressing such complexity sounds . . . complex. But the commissioners have captured the growing sense that accounting for the key beliefs and practices of six world religions will no longer do, if it ever did. Research backs this up.

One source they cite is Linda Woodhead on the religiously unaffiliated in Britain.[2] She reports how whilst ‘no religion’ now exceeds ‘Christian’ as most people’s self-designation, they are not straightforwardly secular. They reject religious labels and secular ones (they are not hostile to religion). A small minority believe in God whilst most are agnostic. A quarter take part in a personal religious or spiritual practice, but none take part in communal ones or join groups. ‘Nones’ share a liberal value set with many ‘somes’.

Another piece of boundary-blurring is this month’s Research of the Month, a new typology of religion from the Pew Research Center in Washington DC.[3] Their 2017 survey sorts US adults into seven groups based on the religious or spiritual beliefs or practices they share, how actively they practice and the value they place on religion. The Pew Center researchers generate categories from the data such as Sunday Stalwarts (traditionalist and highly engaged), Diversely Devout (traditionalist but also believing in e.g. psychics or reincarnation) and Solidly Secular (holding no religious or ‘new age’ beliefs). The categories cut across traditional religious and non-religious lines, and whilst some data may be unsurprising (76% of the Solidly Secular have no religious affiliation), it raises questions that 17% of the same category identify as Christian. The category of Religion Resisters, or those who think that organised religion does more harm than good, is where non-Christian religious faiths contribute their highest overall percentage (11%); by contrast, they make up 6% of the Sunday Stalwart category. The researchers recognise the problem of applying Sunday to e.g. Jews or Muslims but point out that 90% of the group belong to Christian churches: the survey questions used ‘daily’ and ‘weekly’ language.

As for holding more than one worldview, we could turn to the work of Graham Harvey, who writes of Maori and Hawai’ians who blend traditional practices with those of Anglicanism, Baha’i or Catholicism, without any sense of transgression.[4] Another of the Commission report’s angles on religious or worldview complexity is related to the point that worldviews, including religious ones, may not be primarily about holding beliefs.[5] There is a need to include the lived experience of individuals and communities.[6] Harvey’s emphasis on lived relational religion leads him to some startling conclusions: if Christianity is unique in placing belief at its centre it is not a religion (he later re-addresses the point and suggests that Christians ‘do religion like other people’).[7] I hope to return to his ideas critically in future blogs.

For now, I conclude that only research can underpin accurate portrayals of religion in the world. These reflect constant change and can only be gained through rigorous, imaginative methodology. We should remember as well that RE also needs evidence about learners and learning.

Links to research reports

We have reports of the various research sources mentioned above on RE:ONLINE.

Linda Woodhead: British ‘nones’: what do they believe in and do?

Pew Research Center: From Sunday Stalwarts to Solidly Secular

Graham Harvey: Religion is everyday life, not belief

1. The Commission on Religious Education, Final Report: Religion and Worldviews: the way forward. A national plan for RE, online material available at https://www.commissiononre.org.uk/final-report-religion-and-worldviews-the-way-forward-a-national-plan-for-re/ accessed on September 10, 2018.

2. Linda Woodhead (2016), ‘The rise of “no religion” in Britain: The emergence of a new cultural majority’, Journal of the British Academy, 4: 245–261. Available for free download at
DOI 10.85871/jba/004.245

3. Pew Research Center, ‘The Religious Typology: A new way to categorize Americans by religion,’ online material available at http://www.pewforum.org/2018/08/29/the-religious-typology/ accessed on September 1, 2018.

4. Graham Harvey, Food, Sex and Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life, Durham (Acumen) 2013: 115-16.

5. The Commission on Religious Education, Final Report: Religion and Worldviews: the way forward. A national plan for RE, page 74.

6. The Commission on Religious Education, Final Report: Religion and Worldviews: the way forward. A national plan for RE, page 76.

7. Harvey, Food, Sex and Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life, chapter 3, chapter 11).