Over the last few years we have collated responses to questions about Religion and Worldviews from different perspectives. This resource provides personal answers to questions from lived experience and were written directly by believers. The links below take you to the individual resources:
This study-set is suited to various parts of GCSE Catholic Christianity and Christianity options. It provides material relevant to exam questions about why working for justice or love of neighbour is important to Christians, and / or Christian perspectives on equality or religious discrimination. It should extend students’ knowledge and understanding beyond the standard text books.
Part 1
The key theme of science and religion regularly comes up in class, from upper primary years onwards (KS2 – KS4 especially); it is a fundamental part of any discussion of worldviews and so I hope to give some pointers here to help address some of the basic issues that need to be considered with a class so that the pupils learn to think clearly – a kind of critical thinking or ‘epistemological’ approach. My next resource piece will address the issue of how we might find out if Christianity is actually true.
My three issues are:
1. Everyone has underlying assumptions about what they think reality, or the world/universe, actually is. Science takes it for granted (a) that this world is real, (b) that the methods of science are the correct ones for studying it, and (c) that science is progressing towards ultimately being able to explain everything. Pupils need to consider what they take for granted about the reality and reliability of the natural world, and why they think this – that’s a fair discussion, and requires some preparation by the teacher: https://www.stem.org.uk/resources/physical/resource/202448/science-and-religion-schools-support-cd-rom-ages-11-19 is a website link to substantial resources, or you could devise your own.
It is important to consider this as a basic, because underlying Christian assumptions add to these ones: Christians accept the reality of the world but say that the scientific methods are not enough – they’re good, but more methods are needed. Science has the right tools for scientific jobs, but to study morals, or spirituality, or God, you need other tools. A good comparison is to fishing: some nets catch some kinds of fish, but for lobsters you need pots…you need the right tools for the job! See further answer 2 below.
2.Religion asks ‘why are we here?’ ‘Why is there a universe at all?’ ‘Why should we behave well?’ Science asks ‘how did the universe evolve?’ How does the brain work?’ ‘How does gravity affect flight?’, and so on. Vital questions, but different ones. Something I have used with classes to show the difference between how and why questions is to ask a pupil ‘How did you come to school today?’ They answer maybe by car, on foot, etc. I then ask ‘Why did you come to school today?’ and I have got some fascinating answers! The why question is much more interesting than the how one, and the answers are totally different. ‘How?’ gives us a scientific or technological answer; ‘Why?’ gives a moral or intentional answer.
But….the answers do not contradict each other! They fit together: ‘I came to school by car (how), because my mother thinks it’s really important that I am educated (why)’. It’s just the same with religion and science: why we are here is far more important that how we got here. You need both science and religion or, to quote Einstein: ‘science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind’.
3.Briefly, pupils need to understand when they say, ‘there’s no proof’ what it is they are asking for. This is hard and takes time to get across, but is excellent critical thinking practice. Imagine this: your pupils come into the classroom and find a dead person on the floor. One fact – a dead body; lots of theories: a medical emergency, a murder, a suicide….? Each theory needs evidence – a bloodied dagger, footprints, a broken window, finger prints, etc. The theory that has the most evidence (i.e. most facts) is the first one to pursue. However, none of this amounts to proof, at best it gives us not just possibilities but probabilities. In order to be certain we need to identify the culprit (if our theory is murder) and obtain a proper confession – why did they do this, what were the motive and the cause? Many, many crimes remain unsolved because we cannot get this last clinching piece, there is not enough evidence to amount to proof. Most importantly we can often be led astray by following the wrong theory, missing a vital clue, or not asking the right questions (e.g. ‘who benefits most from this murder?’).
So with science and religion: if we are looking for God, what kinds of evidence would we be looking for? What facts? Which theories should we dismiss for lack of evidence? We have to remember that God is not the kind of Being you can find with a telescope (the very first Russian cosmonaut joked that he had not seen God when he went up in a rocket into space!). So what would your pupils accept as good evidence? And are they being reasonable? Of course, whether any religion is true is another discussion altogether, for another time!
Part 2
As promised before, here is a common-sense way of discussing how we might know if Christianity is actually true. I’ll start by highlighting some dangers:
‘Nothing-Buttery’ – this is where someone might say that Christianity is ‘nothing but’ an adaptive response to a scary environment, or it is nothing but ignorance of the facts of science, or ‘just’ a way to manipulate others by fear of hell. Always avoid ‘nothing but’ explanations because they hopelessly over-simplify difficult problems.
Historical scepticism – young people often think that the longer ago something happened, the less reliable accounts of it are, and so ‘legend’, ‘myth’, or, politely, ‘aetiological tale’ may be used. Granted all we know about fake news these days, it is good that historians these days know how to check the accuracy of past records and have a huge amount of scientific help (just think of TV history programmes).
A closed mind – our emphasis on worldviews should ensure we encourage young people to move beyond what their limited experience of the world can tell them, and to be open to multi-faceted truths and variant understandings. A fingers-in-the-ears approach to anything novel, like miracles, is no help!
Bad religion – there has been so much of this (in all Faiths) – tortures, massacres, abuses, superstition. Many people cannot see beyond this, but it is important to point out the far larger amount of good that has been done, often without publicity.
It can be interesting to test a class with ‘would I lie to you?’ type statements, and draw out from them whether, and why, they think they are true – before telling them the answer. https://www.johnlewis.com/would-i-lie-to-you-board-game-2019/p231601008 has a board game at £25 which could be a good investment.
There are three main ways that we can use to know if something is true, or at least highly likely:
a. Known facts – [Empiricism] this just means using testable, observable facts to construct a probable theory or explanation, avoiding the three dangers above. On this basis we can use contemporary accounts of Jesus from outside the Bible (there are a few); we can check the historical, geographical etc., references contained in the Gospels; and we can use resources like archaeology or classical literature to see if the story is corroborated. Archaeology has been a huge help here: published in 2018, ‘The Bible and Archaeology’ by Matthieu Richelle is very well informed, easy to read and cheap!
b. Reasoning – [Rationalism] this refers to thinking round the issues. We need to ask questions which are more imaginative but also profound: if there had been no Jesus, how and why did Christianity even start? If Jesus did not rise from the dead, where is his body now? Why is there no ‘tomb of the Messiah’ as there is, in Medina, the Tomb of the Prophet? Why would people deliberately die for a faith they knew was not true? If there were no Jesus, or no resurrection, why would anyone bother to invent such an amazing story and try to pass it off as true? These are valuable lessons in reasoning for class discussions.
c. Experience – this is the most difficult area. Most Christians would say they have experienced Jesus in their lives, and perhaps they would add that they have seen a miracle (miracles are a big discussion topic on exam specifications, so beware). A video resource like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlLD6ddWPXg can lead to a great discussion. For some people the truth of Christianity is an intuition which they find hard to put into words. Pupils should be encouraged to realise that intuitions play a large part in our lives (whom should I marry?) so should not be disregarded.
There are plenty of books and video clips backing all this up, but, as we know, the internet is awash not just with fake claims, but also with highly biased, sometimes offensive, sometimes just plain naïve information. Please don’t just set a ‘research this’ type homework without indicating the specific resources they must use.
This resource was written by Richard Coupe, one of RE:ONLINE’s Email a Believer team.
These resources have been created to support the Jerusalem Trust and BBC film Catholics – Children.
There are resources designed for use with KS2 (8-11),KS3 (11-14), KS4 (15-16), KS5 (17-18) and adults.
In order to use this resources it is necessary for students to watch entire film. In addition, sections may, of
course, be reshown as required in relation to each topic. The Programme Outline contains the timings for each
part of the film.
Teachers can select all or any of the resources and activities as suitable for the course they are pursuing. There
are additional ‘Stretch and Challenge’ topics as well as cross-curricular materials.
Additional versions of resources have been created:
To avoid confusion these are coded in the bottom left -hand corner of each page.
Many of the materials, especially the challenges, are also suitable for
These resources have been created to support the Jerusalem Trust and BBC film Catholics – Women.
There are resources designed for use with KS2 (8-11),KS3 (11-14), KS4 (15-16), KS5 (17-18) and adults.
In order to use this resources it is necessary for students to watch entire film. In addition, sections may, of
course, be reshown as required in relation to each topic. The Programme Outline contains the timings for each
part of the film.
Teachers can select all or any of the resources and activities as suitable for the course they are pursuing. There
are additional ‘Stretch and Challenge’ topics as well as cross-curricular materials.
Additional versions of resources have been created:
To avoid confusion these are coded in the bottom left -hand corner of each page.
Many of the materials, especially the challenges, are also suitable for
This resource will:
A paper by Dr Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft, David Thompson Research Fellow, Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge and Dr Kathryn Wright, CEO, Culham St Gabriel’s Trust.
Published January 2020.
Well, have you managed to avoid Slade, the Pogues, Michael Buble, Bing Crosby, Mariah Carey, Wham!, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Chris Sievey, Cliff Richard, Elvis Presley, Band Aid……..?
Perhaps the only way to do this is to stay indoors with your fingers in your ears! I’m sure Ebenezer Scrooge would have avoided them all (‘Bah! Humbug!’), but I have just come across one school that is hosting a debate: this House believes Ebenezer Scrooge is a better role model for children than Father Christmas. What do you think? Being a Grumpy Old Man I might tend to agree with the motion, or, being a Grumpy Old Philosopher, I might prefer to change the motion and deny the validity of the binary choice……..
Either way, what is Christmas? I don’t mean what is the whole Biblical and traditional story(-ies), I mean what is it now for modern Britain? Thankfully the Daily Mail spoofs that to mention the word ‘Christmas’ would somehow cause offence to others are a thing of the past, but I have a friend who now insists on wishing me a happy vegetarian Winterval and urges me to engage more with the seasonal solstice and look forward in hope not evidently to the Christ-child but to more daylight. Hmmm.
There again, Advent is replaced by Black Friday and Cyber Week, carols by Jingle Bells, the joy of feasting by guilt over the poor, and the journey of the Magi by Elton John’s journey from his first piano. Is this all too negative? – no, but it is short-sighted. In a sense this is what Christmas always was – no wonder the Puritans banned it from 1644 to 1647! It has always been jolly and drunken for the majority. It started that way in ancient Rome, when Saturnalia moved to the 25th December. Its 4th Century AD rebranding as the birthday of Jesus followed a century of debate in the churches as to when Jesus was actually born (many days of the year suggested) but the replacement for Saturnalia became official soon after Constantine had embraced Christianity, of a sort, for the Empire.
Another origin is similar, the Sol Invicta cult of the Roman World, in which Constantine himself was brought up, which partied on 25th December, but the general idea is the same: a religious/secular festival in the gloom of midwinter. Plenty of other accretions to Christmas have come from similar festivals (Yuletide, for example), in the hope that ‘Christianising’ them would sanitise them.
So where does this place us today? Should we as Christians bow to what seems inevitable and have our Christmas whilst the world has its Xmas? I say a guarded ‘No’ to that. Why?
[i] There are many on the fringes of Faith, indeed adherents of other Faiths also, who want life to be more than shopping, reality to be explored, not turned Virtual; we can hold a candle for those people.
[ii] The Christmas stories are our cultural heritage, with a message of ‘Peace on earth’, of goodwill to all people, of remembering the rejected family with Baby in a manger about to become refugees in Egypt.
[iii] The staggering wealth of music, dramas and poetry speak of a society that desperately needs a central value beyond Brexit and the economy.
[iv] We need something better for our mental health than mere Mindfulness – we need something to be Mindful of, namely the hope that Bethlehem can bring us all as we explore its many meanings.
But the real Bethlehem today is a parable of the lives of so many people – under occupation by forces beyond its control, impoverished, walled in, drained of its Christian heritage, the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square commercially exploited – a parody at the heart of Christianity. One Bethlehem tours website (all-in package including Jerusalem and the Dead Sea) includes the comment that ‘For those not interested in Bethlehem there will be free time in Jerusalem’ – presumably the shopping malls of West Jerusalem? Bethlehem has now so little to offer even the commercial tourist.
In our schools we need to explore and exploit the nativity story: life under Roman occupation; an unpopular census for taxation purposes; an illegitimate pregnancy and family shame; an honourable carpenter protecting his young bride-to-be; the value of the family connections in their hometown of Bethlehem; the holy family squashed together in the animal quarter of a peasant house, occasioning ribald remarks from neighbours; the brutality and despotic fear of Herod and the child massacre that follows. Then there is the welcome from the lowly and near-dispossessed (shepherds); and from the wealthy overseas wise (the Magi), with their extraordinary royal gifts that must have seemed so inappropriate when they finally located Jesus, following the star to the Christ-child; then their refugee journey to Egypt.
If we can’t find parables in this shared narrative for our modern world then we seriously lack empathetic imagination.
So let us merge Christmas and Xmas (after all, X is the Greek letter at the start of Christ’s name), let us both use and celebrate the feast and give our gifts; and let us explore the depths of the narrative for our modern world, whose tinsel and plastic cribs are but a parody of reality.
This resource was written by Richard Coupe, one of RE:ONLINE’s Email a Believer team.
I am frequently asked how Jesus could be God. So this is a brief study, under the general title of Leaders and Prophets, about this central belief of Christianity.
Christianity believes that God really came into this real, material world, being fully human whilst never losing His deity: he was not just a prophet. How did Christians ever arrive at such an idea? First of all we can look to the Gospels:
Secondly, after the resurrection, and the reception of the promised Holy Spirit (Jesus had said he himself would send the Spirit) the first Christians had a great deal of thinking to do, rather like this: Jesus must have been the Messiah, fulfilled Old Testament prophecy literally (‘Mighty God, everlasting Father’ – Isaiah 9.6) and be coming back again as he promised; only if he is really divine can he do all this. And when he said ‘before Abraham was, I Am’ (John 8.58) he made the most staggering claim: he is that Word of God, that Wisdom of God, that very image of God, through whom everything was made in the first place (Proverbs 3.19) and in whom we are made!
Thirdly, talk of God’s personified Wisdom and Word were current in Judaism at the time and, differently, in contemporary Stoicism – the divine Word (Logos) is the guiding principle, the inner formula, of the universe as a while. So John opens with the claim: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…..the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’.
St Paul articulated what this means in his letters to the Philippians and the Colossians: he identifies Jesus as pre-eminent over all creation (Colossians 1.15-20), the means by which creation was made and is sustained, and in whom ‘all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell’. He also explains (Philippians 2.4-11) that, in becoming man, Christ divested himself of divine privileges (omnipresence, omnipotence, etc.) and submitted to an ignoble death. So the incarnation is definitely in the Bible.
However, how this came to be understood over the ensuing centuries varied
Some Christians came to see Jesus as a man adopted by God because of his holiness, ‘Son’ of God in an exceptional way but not God in the flesh. Conversely some others were so keen on Jesus being God, or God’s Word, that the human element of Jesus was considered a mere minor addition, and possibly not really real anyway (Apollinaris, Sabellianism, Gnostics). Others argued over whether Jesus’ soul was divine, human, or both (Nestorius, Origen), and a major heresy argued that though he was divine and human together, God is so immutable and transcendent that the ‘god’ in Jesus must have been a lesser aspect of divinity, a special creation not eternal and not fully God (Arius). Did Jesus have just one unique nature (Monophysites) or two unmixed (orthodox definition)? Or two, unmixed indeed but actually separate (Cyril)? And so it went on!
It took the Councils of Nivea and Constantinople, in the 4th Century, to reach the most widely accepted definition in the Nicene Creed:
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
Of course all these problems were caused by old views of humans – body and soul – and at a Platonic version of God, for whom matter was untouchable. Christianity had to break both moulds to get this definition of one Lord Jesus Christ, fully God and fully Man, a definition finally fully set out at Chalcedon in AD 451 – see http://anglicansonline.org/basics/chalcedon.html and note that even so there are variations within Christendom still. That’s the thing about God, He just won’t conform to our thinking! We have not got adequate categories to explain the Incarnation, that is clear, but it is the essential central mystery of Christianity.
Divided nature – what he does as God, what he does as man
This resource was written by Richard Coupe, one of RE:ONLINE’s Email a Believer team.