Viewing archives for Inspirational People

Early Years to Upper Key Stage 2

This series of lessons progresses from Early Years to Upper Key Stage 2, exploring themes around Easter at increasing depth. The resources are adapted from the ‘Salvation’ strand in Understanding Christianity. If you already teach Understanding Christianity and are interested in moving to a Religion and Worldviews approach, this resource is for you.

Created by Lynn Revell and Kate Christopher as part of their Canterbury Christ Church University grant funded project Teaching Islam as a Worldview. Funding provided by  Culham St Gabriel’s Trust. You can find further resources which were created as part of this project in the RE:ONLINE resource Islam as a Worldview

Key Stage 3

In order to understand the impact of the life of Desmond Tutu, pupils will learn about the history and context of Apartheid South Africa. They will explore how some Christian churches upheld the racist system, while others challenged and disrupted it, as well as Tutu’s deep Christian faith that provided strength and inspiration for his incredible life.

Desmond Tutu (Christianity)

This resource is a Padlet. This is an online resource where information, images and links can all be stored. Click on the link above to access it.

Created by Lynn Revell and Kate Christopher as part of their Canterbury Christ Church University grant funded project Teaching Islam as a Worldview. Funding provided by  Culham St Gabriel’s Trust. You can find further resources which were created as part of this project in the RE:ONLINE resource Islam as a Worldview

Follow this link to read more about Kate and Lynn’s research and watch a short video: https://www.reonline.org.uk/research/research-of-the-month/islam-as-a-worldview/

What does a worldviews approach look like in the classroom? Dr Kate Christopher and Professor Lynn Revell have been exploring this question through a project called ‘Islam as a Worldview’. The project considers worldviews thinking through practical resources for the classroom, focusing on the teaching of Islam.

Through thinking practically, and with all ages of pupils in mind, the team present two working principles:

1. Worldviews starts with people
2. Pupils need to engage with different types of knowledge

These clear, simple principles form the basis of the teaching materials produced. The teaching materials are free and available for all.

Have a look at these teaching materials and see how you can bring in a wide and rich sense of history, context and lived diversity in Islam, through starting with people, and their time and place. Don’t be limited to your own Key Stage, you can pick up all sorts of ideas you can adapt from the resources.

Key Stage 4

Consider what inspires Malala to struggle against control and oppression. Explore the historical and cultural contexts of Malala’s life.

Created by Lynn Revell and Kate Christopher as part of their Canterbury Christ Church University grant funded project Teaching Islam as a Worldview. Funding provided by  Culham St Gabriel’s Trust. You can find further resources which were created as part of this project in the RE:ONLINE resource Islam as a Worldview

Key Stages 1 and 2

This resource encourages pupils to look at Islam through the eyes of the poet Rumi.

Created by Lynn Revell and Kate Christopher as part of their Canterbury Christ Church University grant funded project Teaching Islam as a Worldview. Funding provided by  Culham St Gabriel’s Trust. You can find further resources which were created as part of this project in the RE:ONLINE resource Islam as a Worldview

Key Stages 2 and 3

Find out about Muhammad Ali: the athlete, the antiracist, the conscientious objector and the devoted Muslim.

Created by Lynn Revell and Kate Christopher as part of their Canterbury Christ Church University grant funded project Teaching Islam as a Worldview. Funding provided by  Culham St Gabriel’s Trust. You can find further resources which were created as part of this project in the RE:ONLINE resource Islam as a Worldview

This study-set is suited to various parts of GCSE Hinduism options, or to general upper key stage 3 work on Hinduism. It provides material relevant to exam questions about karma yoga, attitudes to sexuality and family life, ahimsa, satyagraha and the example of Gandhi, including attitudes to conflict. It should extend students’ knowledge and understanding beyond the standard text books.

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:

• Jesus taught it: he said ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10.30), ‘I am in the Father and the Father is in me’ (John 14.11)
• Jesus showed it: his many miracles – ‘it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you’ (Matt. 12.28) – healing the sick and raising the dead
• Jesus proved it by his resurrection

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. 

© Bahá’í International Community

The Bahá’i year, in common with most religions, has certain days which are regarded as Holy days, commemorated or celebrated by the Bahá’i community.

One of these special days falls in July each year, on either 9th or 10th depending on the solstice. On this day Bahá’is commemorate the Martyrdom of The Báb, (which means “the Gate” in Arabic), an event so shocking that were it not independently documented it would seem more legend than true story.

The Báb is regarded by Bahá’is as both a Messenger of God and the Herald of Bahá’u’lláh. Born in Shiraz, Persia, in 1819, His given name was Siyyid ‘Ali- Muhammad. He was a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, and was known for His gentle nature, keen perception and wisdom even from a very young age. In 1844 He declared His mission to begin the spiritual and moral renewal of the peoples of the world, a process which would see the emancipation of women, and unite the peoples of the world. He also taught that another Messenger of God, the fulfilment of the world’s great religions, was soon to appear.

The Báb’s teachings, His call for a return to moral rectitude, His claim that He was a divinely inspired ‘Educator’, and the following which grew around Him, were huge challenges for the clerics and authorities of the time. Eventually, in 1850, a decree was made for His execution. The Báb was arrested and sentenced to death by firing squad. The following account is from Hassan Balyuzi’s book, The Báb: The Herald of the Day of Days[1]:

Sam Khan (Commander of the firing squad) approached the Bab: ‘I profess the Christian Faith and entertain no ill will against you. If your Cause be the Cause of truth, enable me to free myself from the obligation to shed your blood.’ To this the Báb replied: ‘Follow your instructions, and if your intention be sincere, the Almighty is surely able to relieve you from your perplexity.’

The Báb and His disciple were suspended by ropes from a nail in the wall, the head of Mirza Muhammad-‘Ali, Anis, resting on the breast of the Báb. Seven hundred and fifty soldiers were positioned in three files. Roofs of the buildings around teemed with spectators.

Each row of soldiers fired in turn. The smoke from so many rifles clouded the scene. When it lifted the Báb was not there. Only His disciple could be seen, standing under the nail in the wall, smiling and unconcerned. Bullets had only severed the ropes with which they were suspended. Cries rang out from the onlookers: ‘The Siyyid-i-Báb has gone from our sight!’

A frantic search followed. The Báb was found, sitting in the same room where He had been lodged the night before, in conversation with His amanuensis. That conversation had been interrupted earlier in the day. Now it was finished and He told the farrash-bashi to carry out his duty. But the farrash-bashi was terror-stricken and ran away, nor did he ever return to his post. Sam Khan, for his part, told his superiors that he had carried out the task given to him; he would not attempt it a second time. So Aqa Jan Khan-i-Khamsih and his Nasiri regiment replaced the Armenians, and the Báb and His disciple were suspended once again at the same spot. The Nasiri regiment fired. The bodies of the Báb and His disciple were shattered, and their flesh was united.

Further accounts exist from contemporary foreign journalists and officials who witnessed or were told of the event, including one from Sir Justin Shiel, Queen Victoria’s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Tehran to Lord Palmerston, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, July 22, 1850.

The remains of the Báb and Anis were retrieved at night by the Báb’s friends and eventually interred on Mount Carmel in Israel, a place of pilgrimage for Bahá’is across the world today.

1 Balyuzi, H.M. (1973). The Báb: The Herald of the Day of Days. Oxford, UK: George Ronald. pp. 154–161. ISBN 0853980489.

Further reading:
Nabíl-i-Zarandí (1932). Shoghi Effendi (Translator), ed. The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl’s Narrative (Hardcover ed.). Wilmette, Illinois, USA: Bahá’í Publishing Trust. ISBN 0900125225.

See also:
https://bahaikipedia.org/Martyrdom_of_the_Báb

This resource was written by Debbie Tibbey, one of RE:ONLINE’s Email a Believer team.