Being invited to be one of the fourteen Commissioners on the RE Council’s 2016-2018 Commission on RE was a great privilege, and it has been very interesting to be involved with the developments since 2018, such as the REC’s follow-up ‘Worldviews’ project resulting in the literature review (Benoit, Hutchings and Shillitoe 2020) and Discussion Papers (Tharani 2020). As pointed out by Trevor Cooling in this series of presentations, the move towards worldviews was not just to include the non-religious as well as the religious in a changing social context – and certainly not about adding a list of non-religious isms to an already expanding list of religious ones – but also about reflecting on the ways in which our own worldviews affect our interpretations of information, including about the worldviews of others.

Having retired in 2015, alongside working on the Commission and with Barbara Wintersgill on the Big Ideas project, I have had more time to read about, reflect on and write about a number of related issues including the concepts of religion and worldviews; the disciplines of Study of Religions, Theology and Religious Education; Buddhism, Hinduism and Paganism as religions (or not); phenomenological approaches to studying religions and in RE; and the role of experience as a source of authority.

The Commission Report, as well as highlighting the term worldview and initiating a developing ‘worldviews approach’ to RE, distinguished between institutional or organised worldviews (in the sense of systematic ‘isms’ such as Christianity or institutional organisations such as the Catholic Church) and personal worldviews. In between are many other levels such as sub-groups and local communities. It also stressed the importance of diversity within as well as between organised worldviews, that these have changed and developed over time and in interactions with each other, and that individuals and communities may draw upon more than one tradition.

In the contemporary globally connected world, researchers have found that in various ways people are increasingly exhibiting forms of multi-religious belonging, whether brought up in mixed heritage families, identifying with one tradition while taking aspects from another, or drawing upon a variety of traditions to form their own ‘patchwork religiosity’ (Lähnemann, 2008). Others, such as Woodhead, Lee, and Cotter have highlighted the increasing number of people (the ‘nones’) who identify as non-religious, becoming a majority in some countries such as England. Yet what is meant by non-religious varies, including at times elements that other may label religious. In this complex context the distinction between religious and non-religious worldviews can start to break down.

The presentation focuses on the possibility of identifying not as belonging to one particular religious tradition, or as influenced by several, or as non-religious, but as being non-binary in relation to the religious/secular divide.

Paying attention to personal worldviews reveals a weakness in the binary division between ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’, in that people may draw upon or be influenced by a variety of religious, spiritual or secular elements in their beliefs, values, practices and identities. Trying to label this complex and often fluid situation either ‘religious’ or ‘non-religious’ can be difficult. RE professionals are often asked whether they are actually religious themselves – for many decades I found this difficult to answer, once I stopped identifying with one particular tradition. Neither ‘religious’ nor ‘non-religious’ really seemed accurate.

We have recently become more familiar with the term ‘non-binary’ in relation to gender – as used by those who do not find either ‘male’ or ‘female’ appropriate, and have started to use the pronoun ‘they’. The first person I heard applying ‘non-binary’ to religious identity was Richard Holloway – and I found this idea personally very liberating, and also started employing it in RE contexts since about 2018. Norwegian Professor Oddrun Bråten also finds the concept of non-binary worldviews helpful and argues for a ‘superwide’ use of the term ‘worldview’ to include ‘more complex personal worldviews that might relate to several religious or spiritual or humanistic ideas’. This better reflects the diversity of pupils’ worldviews as revealed by research and experience. Another article I found useful was by Finnish Professor Peter Nynäs, who doesn’t actually use the term ‘non-binary’, but argues that individuals have a dialogical relationship with their context, and ‘combine spiritual and religious positions with secular values into authentic and unified outlooks on life’. Not being able to answer the question ‘are you religious?’ doesn’t mean that you are confused, it means that the categories do not fit your experience.

Of course, one response to the question ‘Are you religious or not?’ is ‘it depends what you mean by ‘religious’, and academics have been discussing this for many decades, some arguing that we should drop the term altogether. The Commission argues that discussing what we actually mean by terms like ‘religion’, and recognising that different people mean different things (as academics like to say it is a contested concept) is a vital part of RE. A narrow definition of religion, modelled on Western Christianity, is particularly unhelpful in understanding Dharmic traditions or new forms of religiosity such as contemporary Paganism. It is important to introduce students to traditions such as Buddhism that are not based on the concept of God, and non-Western philosophy that is less based on binary thinking.

Deciding whether something is religious or not is not just a ‘merely academic’ issue however, as defining something as religious, especially in law, can have real life consequences. In practice as well as theory it is often difficult to separate out the religious and the secular, even when required to do so. There is an interesting difference between civil funerals and civil weddings in England. Civil funerals, which began in 2002, often contain a mix of ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ elements. However civil wedding ceremonies are not allowed to have any religious content. Thus, when my partner and I wanted a pluralist, non-binary wedding ceremony in 2018 we ended up having the legal, non-religious part in a deconsecrated chapel licensed for civil weddings only (though handfastings were allowed) and our ‘religious’ (Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Pagan) blessings in a marquee outside.

So, I am suggesting that getting away from the binary division between religious and non-religious is not only helpful for those like me who have problems identifying with either label, but also is a really important part of keeping our subject relevant to everyone – religious, non-religious or non-binary – not just those who are either adherents of or academic specialists in particular organised traditions.