The Borders between Religions: A Challenge to the World Religions Approach to Religious Education

The dangers of essentialism: South Asian communities in Britain and the ‘world religions’ approach to the study of religions

“…Elsewhere I have argued that the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority model syllabuses negotiated to guide teachers do not question the underlying assumption that religion should be studied as a series of discrete separate traditions. 54 The compilers of the syllabuses have focused on the vertical lines between religions without acknowledging that horizontal connections are equally important. That there can be overlap between traditions, both horizontally and vertically, has not even been considered.…”

Ethnography, Religious Education, andThe Fifth Cup

“…22 My reconsideration of the representation of religions in RE has focused on, firstly, the ''construction of religious boundaries,'' 23 to which Ron Geaves has drawn attention as ''the borders between religions.'' 24 Secondly, and related to the issue of definition, I have highlighted discrepancies between, on the one hand, the experience of pupils who identify (whether strongly or weakly) with particular religions and on the other hand, RE's portrayal of those religions in its curriculum material. 25 The Fifth Cup emotively evokes both these concerns, as the experience that Amrit and his Punjabi classmates had of caste-based stereotyping and conflict was incompatible with their RE teacher's presentation of Sikhism as a casteless religion, distinct from Hinduism, and of caste as having no part in contemporary society, especially outside India.…”

Context, complexity and contestation: Birmingham’s Agreed Syllabuses for Religious Education since the 1970s

“…These academic debates have centred upon (i) the concern that teaching other religions alongside Christianity relativises truth claims (Christian ones in particular) (Barnes and Wright 2006); (ii) the confusion that an apparently objective presentation of a range of religions inculcates in children (Kay and Smith 2000;Thompson 2004); (iii) debates about how accurately teachers present world religions to children, including acknowledging their internal diversity and lived realities (Geaves 1998;Watson 2007); (iv) the extent to which the priority given to multi-faith RE, and the social purposes underpinning it, undermines and marginalises other legitimate aims for the subject, particularly that of religious nurture in the faith of the home (Thiessen 2007); (v) whether RE does, in fact, result in tolerance of religious pluralism in society (Felderhof 2007, 87-97); and (vi) the extent to which the influential phenomenological approach has secularised RE and society (Copley 2005), leading to calls for the revival of the teaching of Christianity and the reversal of the trends in world religions teaching begun in the 1960s (Thompson 2004). Using Labaree's (1999) categories, it was clearly the case that the curriculum remained highly contested at the rhetorical level throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and that RE was subject to a significant range of 'conflicting goals', at least in the minds of policymakers and RE academics.…”