Secularists, Humanists and Religious Education: Religious Crisis and
Curriculum Change in England, 1963-1975.
Corresponding Author:
Dr Rob Freathy
Graduate School of Education
University of Exeter
Heavitree Road
Exeter
Devon
EX1 2LU
Email: r.j.k.freathy@ex.ac.uk
Co-Author:
Dr Stephen Parker
Institute of Education
University of Worcester
Henwick Grove
Worcester
WR2 6AJ
Email: s.parker@worc.ac.uk
1
Secularists, Humanists and Religious Education: Religious Crisis and
Curriculum Change in England, 1963-1975.
Dr R. J. K. Freathy1 and Dr S. G. Parker
Abstract
With particular reference to religious education, this article provides an account of the
campaigns of Secularists and Humanists in England in the 1960s and 1970s and
locates them within their broader religious context. These campaigns, which have
been both underplayed and overstated in the existing historiography, failed to garner
the levels of support required to fulfil their ultimate aims. Nevertheless, Secularists
and Humanists did make a significant contribution to public and political discourses at
the time and created opportunities with the potential to exert influence over the
development of Religious Education, Collective Worship and moral education. Their
involvement was welcomed, indeed fostered, by many leading Christians and
religious educationists. Secularist and Humanist campaigns also precipitated
parliamentary discussion and provoked considerable opposition from Christians in
other quarters. Finally, some observations are made about the ways in which this
episode in the religious history of education can contextualise comparable
contemporary debates.
Keywords: Religious Education; Secularists; Humanists; De-Christianisation
1
Corresponding author. Email: r.j.k.freathy@ex.ac.uk.
2
Introduction
This article provides a detailed analytical description of the concerted and organised
campaigns of Secularists and Humanists in England in the 1960s and 1970s with
particular reference to Religious Instruction (later known as Religious Education)
(RI/RE).2 It is based upon a study of a wide-range of primary documentary sources
which were either written by, or demonstrate the influence of, Secularists and/or
Humanists. Some of the published sources have already been cited en passant by
Dennis Bates, Penny Thompson, Terence Copley and other historians of RE, but
they are here collated for special attention for the first time.3 Other unpublished
sources have previously been neglected, such as the National Archive files ‘Religious
Instruction 1959-66’ (ED 147-544) and ‘Department of Education and Science [DES]:
Schools Branch (Registered Files). Correspondence on revised education bill and
provisions’ (ED 183.5).4 This article focuses on the work of two organisations, the
National Secular Society and the British Humanist Association, and specific
individuals, such as David Tribe, Brigid Brophy, Harold J. Blackham, James
Hemming, Lionel Elvin and Harry Stopes-Roe. Among their aims, as will be shown
below, these campaigning organisations and individuals sought to abolish RI (and
sometimes RE), establish a secular alternative, and/or secularise its aims and
broaden its content to include world religions and secular worldviews. The purpose of
this article is not to provide a philosophical or theoretical evaluation of the arguments
underpinning these proposals, but to explore the nature and purpose of these
campaigns, to assess their contribution to public, political and professional
discourses concerning RI/RE, and to provide historical perspective on comparable
contemporary issues. Before doing so, however, it is necessary to outline the
religious context in which these campaigns occurred, describe the major theoretical
developments in RI/RE at the time, and discuss selected contextual factors which
impacted upon them.
The religious context
The Second World War was frequently portrayed by British clerics and politicians as
a spiritual and moral crisis threatening the Christian foundations of civilisation,
freedom and democracy. Such rhetoric was repeatedly coupled with an assertion that
Britain’s social and political traditions and values could only endure the threat of
idolatrous totalitarianism abroad and pre-war trends towards faithlessness at home, if
the nation’s Christian identity was reinforced and reinvigorated.5 In this context, the
2
In the 1944 Education Act, religious education referred to Collective Worship and the
curriculum subject called Religious Instruction (RI). Between 1963 and 1975, primarily for
pedagogical reasons, an increasing number of writers used the term Religious Education to
refer to the curriculum subject. This practice was adopted by the 1988 Education Reform Act
which used Religious Education (RE) to refer to the classroom subject only. In this article, the
term religious education, in the lower case, encompasses Religious Instruction, Collective
Worship and other religious elements of schooling, while the curriculum subject alone will be
referred to as RI, RE or RI/RE, all in the upper case, depending on whether it is important to
make a distinction between RI and RE.
3 D. Bates, ‘Christianity, Culture and Other Religions (Part 2): F. H. Hilliard, Ninian Smart and
the 1988 Education Reform Act’, British Journal of Religious Education (BJRE) 18, no. 2
(1996); P. Thompson, Whatever happened to religious education? (Cambridge: Lutterworth,
2004) and T. Copley, Teaching Religion (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2008).
4 The archival research for this article was funded by a British Academy Small Grant (Ref.
SG-54151) and undertaken by Jonathan Doney (University of Exeter).
5 S. Parker, ‘Reinvigorating Christian Britain: the spiritual issues of the war, national identity,
and the hope of Religious Education’, in God and War, ed. S. G. Parker and T. Lawson
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), 61-79; R. Freathy, ‘The Triumph of Religious Education for
Citizenship in English Schools, 1935-1949’, History of Education (HoE) 37, no. 2 (2007): 295316.
3
churches and the state collaborated in passing the 1944 Education Act. This
legislation, pertaining only to England and Wales, sought to reaffirm the nation’s
Christian character by requiring all pupils, except those withdrawn by their parents, in
both fully publicly-funded county (Local Education Authority [LEA]) schools and
partially publicly-funded voluntary (mainly church) schools, to receive a daily act of
Collective Worship and RI.6 In county schools, RI was to be defined by an Agreed
Syllabus prepared or adopted by a local conference consisting of four committees
which represented religious denominations, the Church of England, teacher
associations and the LEA. These committees had to reach unanimous agreement
before the Agreed Syllabus could be adopted by the LEA.7 Local authorities were
also permitted to constitute Standing Advisory Councils for Religious Education to
advise them on religious educational matters. Through these measures, the post-war
welfare state was given responsibility for Christian nurture.8 If this was not an
anachronism founded on wartime idealism and a national myth, it would later be
perceived as one. In the shorter term, however, its religious settlement, although not
a ‘final solution’,9 obscured and contained, even if it did not finally bury, decades of
antagonism between the Christian denominations over the nature and purpose of
religious education and created a semblance of unity which temporarily muted the
voices of Secularists, who had long argued that state-maintained schools should not
provide religious education.10 Indeed, the inclusion of the ambiguous concept of
spiritual development as one of the overarching purposes of the statutory system of
public education in the 1944 Education Act11 could be interpreted as either further
support for the dominance of Judaeo-Christian assumptions or a deliberate attempt
to encapsulate a wider spectrum of beliefs and practices than those traditionally
associated with religious education.12
By the 1960s, the cultural climate was less conducive to the state-sponsored
Christianisation envisaged by those who were responsible for piloting the 1944
Education Bill through both Houses of Parliament.13 Focusing on popular-based
cultural change amongst ‘ordinary people’ rather than any longer-term elite-led
intellectual phenomenon, Callum Brown argues that, in 1963, ‘something very
profound ruptured the [Christian] character of the nation’14 and that the
comprehensive collapse of British-organised Christianity across the decade was
evident on all indices of adherence, practice and identity.15 For him, this was primarily
due to the erosion of established patterns of social and familial life linked to changing
attitudes to sexual intercourse, orientation and equality, particularly amongst the
young and women, which led to the de-feminisation of Christian piety and the deChristianisation of femininity. Additionally, according to Hugh McLeod, mass
communication, immigration, ethnic diversification and the ‘enormous increase in the
6
Education Act 1944, 7 & 8 GEO. 6. Chapter 31, Part II, Section 25(1-4), (London: HMSO),
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1944/31/pdfs/ukpga_19440031_en.pdf (accessed 18
August 2011).
7 Op cit., Section 29(4) and Fifth Schedule.
8 S. J. D. Green, The Passing of Protestant England (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011), 239.
9 M. Cruickshank, Church and State in English Education (London: Macmillan, 1963), 169.
10 Ibid., 12.
11 Education Act 1944, 7 & 8 GEO. 6. Chapter 31, Part II, Section 7.
12 For an extended discussion, see T. Copley, Spiritual Development in the State School
(Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000), 66-9.
13 C. Cannon, ‘The Influence of Religion on Educational Policy, 1902-1944’, British Journal of
Educational Studies (BJES) 12, no. 2 (1964): 143-160.
14 C. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain (London: Routledge, 2001), 1.
15 Callum G. Brown. ‘What was the Religious Crisis of the 1960s?’, Journal of Religious
History 34, no. 4 (2010): 468-79.
4
range of beliefs and world-views accessible to the majority of the population’ (e.g.
new forms of Christianity, other religions, alternative spiritualities and new political
faiths) facilitated a cultural relativism in which increasingly no ideology ‘could claim a
condition of privilege’.16 The 1960s also ‘witnessed a frenzy of legislation that
effectively de-Christianised and liberalised British law and society’ including, in 1967
alone, the repeal of the 1697 Blasphemy Act, the legalisation of abortions and the
decriminalisation of homosexual acts.17 Many within the churches responded with
hostility and fear to ‘the permissive society’ which was seemingly being created. Yet,
as Matthew Grimley argues, the moral authority of the churches had not completely
waned, as shown by the Church of England’s prominence in a number of campaigns
for legal reform.18 For him, a reluctant acceptance that the nation was no longer a
Christian moral community, a desire to protect Christian teaching from secularising
trends, and a belief in the possibility of distinguishing between crime and sin, law and
morality, and public and private life, at a time when calls for the separation of Church
and state were re-surfacing, led moderate reformers to become active agents in the
secularisation of the law. Their pragmatic, preservationist, approach differed from the
‘new morality’ or ‘situational ethics’ promoted by ‘South Bank’ liberal theologians,
such as the Anglican Bishop, John A. T. Robinson,19 and the radical theologians,
such as Harvey Cox,20 who considered ‘the secular society’ to be ‘a condition neutral
in faith that was egalitarian, democratic and pragmatic in morals’.21
According to Brown, by the end of 1967, ‘British society as a whole - including the
government and the churches - became aware of secularisation as an intense
cultural and ecclesiastical revolution’.22 In this context, as David Nash observes,
sociologists self-consciously constructed a secularisation thesis which assumed ‘that
the importance of religious practice and belief is in inexorable (and inevitable) decline
as a fundamental process introduced by the arrival of modern society and its
consequences’ (e.g. urbanisation, industrialisation and scientific progress).23 For him,
much of this pioneering sociological work had ‘an evangelical modernist tone and, in
its more messianic moments [appeared] to be hoping for and even working towards a
rationalist utopia’.24 Similarly, as Alister Chapman has noted, secularisation theory
became a more central part of ecclesiastical discourse ‘in part because churchmen
and others were looking for explanations for sharply declining church attendance’.25
Indeed, ‘the secularisation thesis came to be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy:
not so much a theoretical construct above the societal fray, but a genuine participant
in events on the ground’.26 In other words, it not only sought to provide an
explanation for secularising trends, but also perpetuated them.
16
H. McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1-2
and 78.
17 C. Brown, Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (Harlow: Pearson Longman,
2006), 267.
18 M. Grimley, ‘Law, Morality and Secularisation: The Church of England and the Wolfenden
Report, 1954–1967’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History (JEH) 60, no. 4 (2009): 726.
19 Ibid., 739-41.
20 H. Cox, The Secular City (New York: Macmillan, 1965).
21 Brown, Religion and Society, 233.
22 Ibid., 225.
23 D. Nash, ‘Reconnecting Religion with Social and Cultural History: Secularization’s Failure
as a Master Narrative’, Cultural and Social History 1, no. 3 (2004): 303. See, for example, B.
Wilson, Religion in Secular Society (London: C. A. Watts, 1966) and D. Martin, A Sociology of
English Religion (London: SCM, 1967).
24 Nash, ‘Reconnecting Religion with Social and Cultural History’, 314.
25 A. Chapman, ‘Secularisation and the Ministry of John R. W. Stott at All Souls, Langham
Place, 1950–1970’, JEH 56, no. 3 (2005): 498.
26 Ibid., 513.
5
Just over a decade later, drawing upon extensive data evidencing the declining
participation and membership rates of Christian denominations, Alan D. Gilbert’s The
Making of Post-Christian Britain became the standard account of the secularisation of
modern British society.27 Yet Gilbert’s premises and arguments, and even the
concept of secularisation, have latterly been questioned,28 with many historians and
sociologists becoming more sceptical about whether religiosity generally or
Christianity particularly has declined. For some, religious change and diversification,
rather than decline, occurred after 1945. The English became a nation of ‘believers’
retaining private religious beliefs, even if they were not ‘belongers’ participating in the
Christian church.29 For others, ‘the associational deficit’ implied by declining
‘mainstream religious participation’ has ‘not been filled by emerging new religious
movements’, but rather accompanied ‘a degeneration of common religious belief’.30
For Simon Green, the demise of English Protestantism, which he focuses on
specifically, was a gradual process, rather than a sudden death, hinging upon the
long-term impact of the churches’ lessening influence over young people, especially
represented by the precipitous decline of Sunday School attendance from six million
in 1906 to half a million in 1941.31 This served to diminish the religious and moral
sensibilities of subsequent generations such that, by the 1960s, the trend was
irreversible and placed young people ‘beyond the reach of all of the conventional
mechanisms by which protestant England had traditionally socialised its young’.32 He
argues that the decreasing exposure to orthodox Christian doctrine in Sunday
Schools (due to a lack of patrons) or in maintained schools (due to a lack of will or
competence) resulted in larger numbers of people experiencing the religious within
an entirely heterodox framework and contributed to the declining social significance
of religion. On the matter of religious education, Brown also notes that although it
was retained in schools in the 1960s, ‘despite secular pressure’, it became ‘a mere
shadow of the Christian instruction it had formerly been’.33 Thereby, although
disagreeing about the timeframe for the historical process variously called, for
example, ‘secularisation’,34 ‘the crisis of Christendom’,35 and ‘de-Christianisation’,36
Green and Brown have both identified religious education in churches and schools as
both one of its causes and effects.37
There is insufficient space in the present article to fully explain and justify our position
within the secularisation debate. However, in contextualising the campaigns of
Secularists and Humanists in England in the 1960s and 1970s, we have found useful
the three key strands identified by Jeremy Morris in his differentiated account of
‘secularisation’ by which he means ‘de-Christianisation’ (i.e. ‘what has happened to
27
A. D. Gilbert, The Making of Post-Christian Britain (London: Longman, 1980).
T. W. Heyck, ‘The Decline of Christianity in Twentieth-Century Britain’, Albion 28, no. 3
(1996): 437.
29 G. Davie, Religion in Britain since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).
30 S. J. D. Green, ‘From Puritanism to Pantheism - Reflections on the Degeneration
of English Life Since 1945’, Machray Review 7 (1997), http://prayerbook.ca/online-libraryarticles/73-research-into-historical-questions/198-from-puritanism-to-pantheism-reflectionson-the-degeneration-of-english-life-since-1945-by-sjd-green-machray-review (accessed July
28, 2011).
31 Green, The Passing of Protestant England, 161.
32 Ibid., 271.
33 Brown, Religion and Society, 269.
34 Brown, The Death of Christian Britain.
35 H. McLeod and W. Ustorf, eds., Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750-2000
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 18.
36 McLeod, The Religious Crisis.
37 Green, The Passing of Protestant England; Brown, The Death of Christian Britain.
28
6
Christian belief and practice in Britain’).38 These key strands are: (i) ‘institutional
marginalisation’, which is ‘the progressive disentanglement of established religion in
Britain from structures of local and national government, and the corresponding
evolution of approaches to social and educational policy that were largely divorced
from explicit religious commitment’;39 (ii) ‘institutional attenuation’, which refers to the
decline in church attendance within the context of other indices of occasional or
symbolic identification, endogenous growth, geographical differences, and the
continuance of institutional relevance and vigour;40 and (iii) ‘cultural displacement’,
which recognises the removal of Christianity as the sole ‘referent of public and
private morality’ and the emergence of ‘a marketplace of diverse secular and
religious standpoints’, as well as acknowledging the resilience of Christianity in the
public sphere and the complexity and pervasiveness of religious identities.41 The
developments in RI/RE theory, to which we next turn, are one example of
‘institutional marginalisation’. They were frequently justified by many leading
Christians and religious educationists, among others, as a response to ‘institutional
attenuation’ within, and the ‘cultural displacement’ of, Christianity. These processes
were, in turn, commonly perceived to be indicators of secularisation and/or
pluralisation.
Theoretical developments in Religious Instruction/Education
Intellectual leadership for the developments which occurred in RI theory in the first
half of 1960s was provided by Harold Loukes, Richard Acland and Ronald Goldman.
On the basis of social and psychological research, and in response to increasingly
negative assessments of the effectiveness of RI, they sought to make the subject,
which remained ‘fundamentally Christian in orientation, assumptions and world view’,
more child-centred and relevant to pupils’ everyday lives, and ‘less centred on
abstract religious ideas or the essentially academic study of the Bible or church
history’.42 However, by the late 1960s, theories about the nature and purpose of RI
(progressively known as RE) ‘began to take account of the increasing secularisation
and pluralism of British society’43 and to disclaim ‘any overtly religious or spiritual
function’ for the subject.44 For Gerald Parsons, the three most significant publications
were Edwin Cox’s Changing Aims in Religious Education (1966), J. W. D. Smith’s
Religious Education in a Secular Setting (1969) and Ninian Smart’s Secular
Education and the Logic of Religion (1968).45 The latter author was also a key figure
in, firstly, the establishment of the Department of Religious Studies at the University
of Lancaster, and secondly, alongside John Hinnells and Geoffrey Parrinder, the
foundation of the highly influential Shap Working Party on World Religions in
Education. The consequent curriculum changes, which are usually associated with
the Schools Council’s Working Paper 36: Religious Education in Secondary Schools
(1971), have been characterised as a shift from child-centred, neo-confessional,
Christian instruction to phenomenological, non-confessional, multi-faith RE.46 At the
same time, two significant projects undertaken at the University of Oxford sought to
J. Morris, ‘The Strange Death of Christian Britain: Another Look at the Secularisation
Debate’, The Historical Journal, 46, no. 4 (2003): 971.
39 Ibid., 972.
40 Ibid., 973-4.
41 Ibid., 975-6.
42 G. Parsons, ‘There and Back Again? Religion and the 1944 and 1988 Education Acts’, in
vol. 2 of The Growth of Religious Diversity, ed. G. Parsons (London: Routledge, 1994), 170-2.
43 R. Jackson, ‘Religious Studies and Developments in Religious Education in England and
Wales’, in Turning Points in Religious Studies, ed. U. King (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 107.
44 Parsons, ‘There and Back Again?’, 174.
45 Ibid., 173-4.
46 Ibid.
38
7
develop a discrete form of moral education independent of RI/RE.47 Working Paper
36 endorsed this, asserting that ‘the study of ethics and the study of religion are
separate and distinct academic disciplines or areas of study’.48
Secularisation theories penetrated the academic and professional discourses
associated with RI/RE. Some participants actively welcomed the secularisation of the
subject as a democratic response to the pluralistic society, whilst at the same time
condemning secularism for being antithetical to religion and for representing a
narrowing doctrine which would lead to the abolition of religious options.49 As an
example, John Hull, who was the editor of Learning for Living (1971-8) and the British
Journal of Religious Education (1978-96), welcomed the secularisation of RI in terms
of the subject’s changing sponsors, teaching force and objectives.50 First, he called
for the ‘Christian hegemony in Agreed Syllabuses’ to end, which would represent ‘a
small but significant shift’ in church and state relations,51 thereby enabling the subject
to be determined not by ecumenical definitions of commonly-held Christian truths, but
by multi-faith definitions of educationally-justifiable content and methods.52 Indeed,
although legally Agreed Syllabuses could be seen as ‘one of the final pockets of
ecclesiastical domination over a sphere of secular expertise’,53 Hull noted that, in
practice, curriculum development was increasingly being led by educational
professionals through teacher’s centres, working parties and projects.54 Second, Hull
noted that the development of multi-faith RE had ‘dealt the death blow’ to the belief
that teachers must be committed believers in the faith they are teaching.55 Thereby, it
had made possible the notion of the ‘secular religious educator’ whose professional
credentials to teach RE are not dependent upon any particular religious affiliation.56
Third, Hull highlighted the movement away from Christian doctrinal instruction and
biblical and theological teaching towards open discussion and life-centred methods
and, more significantly, the study of world religions and secular alternatives.57 For
him, this critical, but tolerant, descriptive approach was consistent with the nature of
Christian thought and could be justified by the increased plurality of beliefs in
society.58 This conception aroused political and public debate, he argued, because RI
had become a ‘symbol for the ambiguity of the culture’ it had traditionally conveyed.59
If the religious traditions and beliefs of the educating society were no longer
identifiable with Christianity, then fully publicly-funded education, including Collective
Worship and RI, could no longer be based on Christian presuppositions or be used
for Christian nurture.60 For Hull, the value-laden ‘formal principles’ of education
should encourage open enquiry and the questioning of everything, while the ‘material
principles’, governing its content and methods, should be ‘neutral’ with regard to
differing schools of thought and ideologies (e.g. Christianity, Islam, Humanism and
47
J. Wilson, N. Williams and B. Sugarman, Introduction to Moral Education (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1967); P. McPhail, Moral Education in the Secondary School (London: Longman,
1972).
48 Schools Council, Working Paper 36 (London: Evans Methuen, 1971), 67 and 70.
49 J. G. Priestley, ‘Religion, Education and Secularization’, in Religion Belongs in the Public
School, ed. E. Johns (Toronto: Ecumenical Study Commission on Public Education, 1985).
50 J. Hull, School Worship (London: SCM, 1975), 87.
51 J. Hull, Studies in Religion and Education (Lewes: Falmer, 1984), 88.
52 Ibid., 86.
53 Hull, School Worship, 79.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid., 87.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., 81.
58 Hull, Studies in Religion and Education, 1-2 and 96.
59 Ibid., 122.
60 Ibid., 99.
8
Communism).61 Thus, rather than promoting religious faith and truth, RE should
advance religious knowledge and understanding to prepare pupils to undertake
informed and thoughtful roles in a pluralistic society.62 The alternative, he argued,
would be unfair and inimical to good community relations, forcing increasing numbers
of non-Christian pupils to withdraw from RI and/or leading to a new sectarian system
of voluntary-aided schools.63 In summary, for Hull, ‘[RE] is nothing but what
education is, within the content area of religion’.64
The increasing eagerness of RI/RE teachers to secure independence from
ecclesiastical control and develop the subject in a more academic and ‘educational’
direction has been described by Adrian Bell as a process of professionalization.65
One contributory factor was the ‘revolution’ in the academic field of the philosophy of
education in the 1960s,66 which also contributed to the almost complete
disappearance of Christian theology from educational studies in universities and
colleges of education.67 In terms of RI, the most prominent philosopher of education
was Paul H. Hirst whose work exemplified two key philosophical strands identified
recently by Trevor Cooling.68 First, the ‘argument from fairness’ asserts that ‘in a
religiously plural democracy … no belief system should be privileged in education’
and ‘pupils should be free to create their own identity’.69 Second, the ‘argument from
objectivity’ asserts that epistemological, ethical and educational principles should be
stated (and derived) rationally, critically and independently of (religious) ontological
commitments and that education should promote autonomous rationality.70 On such
bases, Hirst argued that fully publicly-funded schools should refrain from providing
RI, Collective Worship or Christian moral education,71 but instead provide ‘factual
instruction about the beliefs that have played and do play so large a part in our
history, literature and way of life’ and confine moral education ‘to the common pool of
natural moral principles that all share’.72 The only consistent alternative to this model
was ‘the thorough-going pluralist system ... in which maintained schools offering
education according to different religious principles are readily available to all
children’.73 Through a ‘publications explosion’ in the philosophy of education, Hirst’s
work became renowned among educationists,74 including religious educationists
such as John Hull above, and thereby contributed to the on-going development of
RI/RE theory.
61
Hull, School Worship, 84-85 and 103.
Hull, Studies in Religion and Education, 109.
63 Ibid., 87.
64 Ibid., 88.
65 A. Bell, ‘Agreed syllabuses of religious education since 1944’, in Social histories of the
secondary curriculum, ed. I. Goodson (Lewes: Falmer, 1985). See also J. Sullivan,
‘Dismembering and Remembering Religious Education’, in Inspiring Faith in Schools, eds. M.
C. Felderhof, P. Thompson and D. Torevell (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 127.
66 R. F. Dearden, ‘Philosophy of Education, 1952-82’, BJES 30, no. 1 (1982): 60.
67 J. Arthur, ‘Christian Commentary and Education 1930-1960’, HoE 41, no. 3 (2012): 339359.
68 T. Cooling, Doing God in Education (London: Theos, 2011).
69 Ibid., 18.
70 Ibid., 17.
71 P. H. Hirst, ‘Christian education: A contradiction in terms?’, Learning for Living (LfL) 11, no.
4 (1972): 6-11.
72 P. H. Hirst, ‘Morals, Religion and the Maintained School’, BJES 14, no. 1 (1965): 13 and 15.
73 Ibid., 15.
74 Dearden, ‘Philosophy of Education, 1952-82’, 59.
62
9
The above theoretical developments have become the focus of many recent
publications, such as those by Philip Barnes,75 Kevin O’Grady,76 and Geoff Teece.77
Within this literature, there has been much criticism of the extent to which the writers
of the time were shaped by Enlightenment commitments, as evident in their arguably
naïve use of terms such as ‘objectivity’, ‘neutrality’ and ‘rationality’ when discussing
educational aims and methods, and in their promotion of ‘common’, ‘shared’, ‘natural’
or ‘universal’ moral principles. For Barnes and Andrew Wright, confessional,
committed and indoctrinatory RI did not give way to neutral, professional and
educational RE, but to a partisan and uncritical confessionalism that was ‘moderate,
liberal, ecumenical and in certain respects secular’.78 Barnes has also argued that
the separation of religious and moral education ensured that RE lost much of its
relevance to young people and that the positive contribution of religion(s) to the
development of character and the cause of morality became overlooked.79 By
contrast, in an earlier article we have challenged Dennis Bates’ assertion that a
‘liberalised establishmentarian view’ which sought ‘to secure the influence of
Christianity in English culture’ was replaced by a ‘liberal secular view’ which sought
‘to foster an empathetic ... understanding of major world religions and secular
worldviews’.80 Instead, we maintain that RE curriculum reformers conceded to the
demands for, and promoted, the teaching of world religions, whilst simultaneously
asserting the pre-eminent curricular place of Christianity. Thus, the movement
towards the secularisation of curriculum aims and the pluralisation of curriculum
content did not end Christian hegemony in RE because the primacy given to
knowledge about Christianity continued to be justified for historical and cultural
reasons, even if its veracity was no longer assumed.81 Moreover, these secularising
and pluralising trends were themselves frequently predicated upon a Christian
theological foundation disseminated by religious educationists, such as John Hull,
and professional organisations, such as the Christian Education Movement
(established in 1965). The present article seeks to contribute to these on-going
debates about the nature of the transitions which occurred in RI/RE theory in
England in the 1960s and 1970s by further exploring a particular aspect of their
historical context.
Contextualising the theoretical developments
L. P. Barnes, ‘Working Paper 36, Christian Confessionalism and Phenomenological
Religious Education’, Journal of Education & Christian Belief 6, no. 1 (2002): 3-23; ‘The
Disputed Legacy of Ninian Smart and Phenomenological Religious Education: A Critical
Response to Kevin O’Grady’, BJRE 29, no. 2 (2007): 157-68; ‘Developing a new post-liberal
paradigm for British religious education’, Journal of Beliefs and Values (JBV) 28, no. 1 (2007):
17-32; and ‘An honest appraisal of phenomenological religious education and a final, honest
reply to Kevin O’Grady’, BJRE 31, no. 1 (2009): 69-72.
76 K. O’Grady, ‘Professor Ninian Smart, Phenomenology and Religious Education’, BJRE 27,
no. 3 (2005): 227-37; and ‘Honesty in religious education: some further remarks on the legacy
of Ninian Smart and related issues, in reply to L. Philip Barnes’, BJRE 31, no. 1 (2009): 65-8.
77 G. Teece, ‘Traversing the gap: Andrew Wright, John Hick and critical religious education’,
BJRE 27, no. 1 (2005): 29-40.
78 L. P. Barnes and A. Wright, ‘Romanticism, representations of religion and critical religious
education’, BJRE 28, no. 1 (2006): 65-6. For a discussion of the empirical basis of these
claims, see R. Freathy and S. Parker, ‘The necessity of historical inquiry in educational
research: the case of religious education’, BJRE 32, no. 3 (2010): 229-243.
79 L. P. Barnes, ‘What has Morality to do with Religious Education?’, JBV 32, no. 2 (2011):
131-41.
80 Bates, ‘Christianity, Culture and Other Religions (Part 2)’, 86.
81 S. G. Parker and R. J. K. Freathy, ‘Ethnic Diversity, Christian Hegemony and the
Emergence of Multi-faith Religious Education in the 1970s’, HoE 41, no. 3 (2012): 381-404.
75
10
It is our contention that the developments in RI/RE curriculum theory described
above were influenced by the religious, ecclesiastical, theological, legal, cultural and
philosophical contexts in which they occurred, as well as by more specific factors,
such as the campaigns of Secularists and Humanists which are the focus of this
article. As will be seen, many of the arguments of Secularists and Humanists were
similar to those of Paul Hirst above, even though he explicitly denied he was
presenting a Humanist position.82 They also received more publicity than those of
academics and professionals, and were thus better known amongst the participants
in the on-going public and political debates about the religious clauses of the 1944
Education Act. The contributions of Secularists and Humanists to these discussions
were notably recognised by numerous contemporary academic commentators, such
as Ronald Goldman who, in identifying the causes of the enduring controversies,
cited ‘pressures from humanist, agnostic or other groups’, alongside the continuing
decline of church membership and ‘the ineffectiveness of much current religious
education’.83 Similarly, John Hull stated, ‘it has been mainly Christian educators who
have advocated the secularisation of religion in schools, even though ably supported
by humanist criticism’.84
Although the pressure group activity of Secularists and Humanists has been
documented in the existing historiography, it has been both underplayed and
overstated. At one extreme, following John Hull above, Dennis Bates argues that ‘the
leading proponents [of the study of world religions in English schools] were Christian
theologians and educationists, not secularists as is often thought’ and that ‘the major
division of opinion ... has not been between Christians and secularists but between
theologically liberal Christians and theologically conservative or establishmentminded Christians’.85 Yet, in lending historical perspective to contemporary debates
in the early 1990s, Bates may have downplayed the importance of Secularists and
Humanists to counter accusations from a ‘religiously conservative minority’ who,
firstly, associated the development of multi-faith RE with the erosion of the place of
Christianity in English society, and secondly, had managed to persuade the
Conservative Government to support the continuation of ‘traditional English Christian
culture’ through the religious clauses of the 1988 Education Reform Act.86
Consequently, Bates’ research, like that of Terence Copley,87 neglects to pay due
attention to the campaigns of Secularists and Humanists. At the other extreme, in
subsequent research, Penny Thompson argues that the most significant change in
RI/RE in English schools was the move away, in the 1960s, from the presumption of
the truth and worth of Christianity ‘following the failure of the profession to stand up to
the attacks ... made (not for the first time) by the humanists’.88 She notes that from
1962 the professional journal, Learning for Living, reported challenges to RI from
Humanist organisations, but ‘whereas previously humanist arguments had been
firmly rejected, now it was a different story’.89 Evidencing ‘a certain crumbling of
support for RE in schools’,90 she quotes M. V. C. Jeffreys who argued that the
subject ‘has been suffering from a loss of nerve. We take refuge in neutrality, in
teaching about religion instead of teaching religion, in doubtful scruples about
Hirst, ‘Morals, Religion and the Maintained School’, 5.
R. Goldman, Readiness for Religion (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), 3.
84 Hull, School Worship, 81.
85 D. Bates, ‘Christianity, Culture and Other Religions (Part 1): The Origins of the Study of
World Religions in English Education’, BJRE 17, no. 1 (1994): 6.
86 Ibid., 5.
87 Copley, Teaching Religion.
88 Thompson, Whatever happened to religious education?, 170.
89 Ibid., 11.
90 Ibid., 13.
82
83
11
“indoctrination” because we are bewildered by the confusion of theological voices
within the Churches and the new aggressive self-confidence of the secular
humanists’.91 Consequently, Thompson’s research may suffer from the attribution of
too much influence to ‘humanists’ and ‘secular humanists’.
As a corrective to these criticisms of the existing historiography, we next seek to
provide an analytical description of the nature and purpose of the campaigns of
Secularists and Humanists. The two most important pressure groups, the National
Secular Society and the British Humanist Association, will be discussed successively.
The campaigns of Secularists and Humanists
National Secular Society
According to Edward Royle, since the 1700s, ‘Free-thinkers’ in England have
promoted social and democratic reforms and attacked the privileges enjoyed by
Christianity and the Church of England in particular.92 In this tradition, in 1866,
Charles Bradlaugh established the National Secular Society (NSS) which attained
particular prominence between 1880 and 1886 when Bradlaugh became ‘the
personification of radicalism and popular democratic rights’ as a result of his effective
campaign to gain membership of the House of Commons despite being initially
barred because of his atheism.93 In terms of education, both Secularists and some
Christian Dissenters were aligned in voicing their opposition, albeit for different
reasons, to the inclusion of religion in publicly-funded schools.94 Their mutually
beneficial co-operation achieved some success with regard to the 1870 Elementary
Education Act in so far as, although religious education was permitted, there was no
obligation to provide it. Moreover, where it was provided, it had to be voluntarily
funded, exclude the catechism of any particular religious denomination (the CowperTemple clause)95 and take place at the beginning or end of a school session (i.e.
outside of normal curriculum time).96 Contrary to the wishes of the Church of
England’s National Society, a ‘conscience clause’ also stipulated that schools had to
allow parents the opportunity to withdraw their children from religious education.97
These conditions remained intact until the 1944 Education Act which repealed all bar
the Cowper-Temple and conscience clauses. Nevertheless, in terms of the broader
ambition of Secularists to abolish the ‘dual system’ of church and state schools,
Marjorie Cruickshank argues that, despite the logic of their views and the pressures
they brought to bear, they ‘never rallied the country as a whole’ or ‘decisively
influenced practical politics’.98
Although the secularist movement went into decline from the mid-1880s, the NSS
continued as a largely inconspicuous pressure group until its resurgence in the
1960s99 with a re-invigorated leadership, a growth in membership and the
establishment of new branches and affiliations.100 By 1965, its Executive Committee
was able to proclaim that, in the light of the decline in religious belief and influence,
Ibid., 25. (See M. C. V. Jeffreys, ‘Truth is not neutral’, LfL 8, no. 2 (1968): 9)
E. Royle, ‘Secularists and Rationalists, 1800-1940’, in A History of Religion in Britain, eds.
S. Gilley and W. Sheils (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 406.
93 Ibid., 415.
94 Cruickshank, Church and State in English Education, 54.
95 Elementary Education Act, 1870, 33 & 34 VICT, chapter 75, section 14[2].
96 Op cit., section 7 [2].
97 Op cit., section 7 [1].
98 Cruickshank, Church and State in English Education, xv.
99 Royle, ‘Secularists and Rationalists, 1800-1940’, 416.
100 Anonymous, A Year of Expansion (London: NSS, 1965), 9-10. National Archives (NA),
‘Religious Instruction [RI] 1959-66’ (ED 147-544).
91
92
12
the decreasing size of church congregations, the weakness of the ‘South Bank
gospel’, and the trend in which religion was increasingly ‘seen to be the handmaiden
of political and social institutions, the nursemaid of emotional uncertainties or the
custodian of conventional morality’,101 the time was ‘most propitious for Secular
Humanism’.102 The NSS promoted ‘naturalism in science, rationalism in morals, and
humanism in life’;103 the ‘unquestioned and inalienable rights’ of freedom of thought,
speech, publication and action;104 and ‘the complete separation of the Church from
the State, and the abolition of all privileges granted to religious organisations’. 105 The
resistance it received from ‘backwoodsmen’ and ‘moral re-arming snoopers’106
engendered a determination to recruit more members, generate more income and
use all its resources to combat the wealth, influence and strategic unity of the
churches.107
To achieve these aims, the NSS embarked on a concerted and organised campaign
which systematically sought publicity on a wide range of religious, moral and social
questions through press releases; letters to newspapers; articles and reports; and
television appearances by David Tribe, who was President of the NSS between 1963
and 1971, and who had done much ‘to rouse [the Society] from the lethargic and
moribund state into which it had slipped’.108 Media exposure was also sought through
the publication of leaflets on a wide range of issues,109 highlighting various forms of
discrimination against Secular Humanists, including the overly-generous allocation of
time for religious broadcasts afforded by the British Broadcasting Corporation
(BBC).110 The notable exception to this were the two talks, entitled Morals Without
Religion, given by the psychologist, Margaret Knight, on the BBC’s Home Service (5th
and 17th January 1955). Knight argued that, firstly, morality should be based on
scientific reason and evidence and a humanistic concern for happiness and
development in this life,111 and secondly, the best method of engaging the social
impulses of children was to ensure that they were brought-up in a loving
atmosphere112 and provided with altruistic codes of behaviour.113 The talks provoked
much correspondence and countless articles and letters in newspapers in Britain and
overseas.114 They became paradigmatic for how Secular Humanists could promote
their cause and were symptomatic of a change amongst religious broadcasters from
101
Ibid., 3.
Ibid., 5.
103 Anonymous, What is Secularism? (London: NSS, Undated), 3. NA, ‘RI 1959-66’ (ED 147544).
104 C. Cohen, The Meaning and Value of Freethought (London: NSS, Undated), 2. NA, ‘RI
1959-66’ (ED 147-544).
105 Anonymous, Membership Application. Centenary Year (London: NSS, Undated), 3-4. NA,
‘RI 1959-66’ (ED 147-544).
106 Anonymous, Centenary Year (London: NSS, 1966). NA, ‘RI 1959-66’ (ED 147-544).
107 Anonymous, A Year of Expansion, 10.
108 Anonymous, Centenary Year.
109 M. Knight, Christianity - The Debit Account (London: NSS, Undated); K. Mouat, The
Problem of Loneliness (London: NSS, 1965); D. Tribe, The Problem of Death (London: NSS,
1965); D. Tribe, Agnostic Adoption (London: NSS, 1965); Anonymous, Religion and the Law
(London: NSS, Undated); and Anonymous, Looking and listening - A Call for Greater
Freedom on TV and Radio (London: NSS, Undated). NA, ‘RI 1959-66’ (ED 147-544).
110 Anonymous, Religion and the Law, 2-4.
111 M. Knight, Morals Without Religion (London: Dennis Dobson, 1955), 28 and 36.
112 Ibid., 42.
113 Ibid., 50.
114 Ibid., 59.
102
13
a concern to promote Christianity towards the provision of a forum in which Christian
and non-Christian views could be discussed.115
For the NSS, the place of religion in schools represented a yardstick for the standing
of Christianity within society. As part of its ‘concentrated campaign’ to make this ‘a
national talking point’, the NSS designated November 1965 ‘Secular Education
Month’, during which it encouraged Secularists to write to Members of Parliament
(MPs) and the Department of Education and Science (DES).116 David Tribe’s Religion
and Ethics in Schools (1965) and Secular Education (Undated)117 received publicity
through television programmes, national and professional newspapers, and public
meetings.118 A copy of Religion and Ethics in Schools was also submitted to the
Secretary of State for Education and Science, Anthony Crosland, by William J.
McIlroy, who was General Secretary of the NSS between 1963 and 1970.119 On 26th
February 1966, to celebrate its centenary, the NSS held a gala dinner followed by
speeches from Lord Willis, Michael Foot and Brigid Brophy. In June 1966, the latter
also gave a lecture to the politically left-wing Fabian Society on Religious Education
in State Schools.120 Indeed, with Tribe, McIlroy and three others, Brophy also formed
part of a NSS delegation which was received by the Minister of State for Education
and Science, Edward Redhead, on 18th April 1966, to discuss the Government’s
proposal (realised in the 1967 Education Act) to increase the government’s
maintenance grant for church schools from 75% to 80% and to provide building
grants for new church schools.121 The NSS’ objection was the only protest received
by the DES,122 but the articulacy of the Society and the publicity it generated123
persuaded civil servants to receive the delegation and to keep correspondence with
the Society on file. News of the deputation was later reported in The Times, The
Daily Telegraph, Guardian and The Sun newspapers and provoked predictable
concerns.124
According to Tribe, the NSS made ‘the issue of secular education its number one
contemporary priority’ because, to his mind, ‘the entire school system has become a
vehicle for Christian indoctrination’.125 For Brophy, this was ‘an abuse of democracy
and tolerance, and an offence against the moral duty we owe to our children’.126
Collective Worship and RI, according to Tribe, lacked ‘acceptable intellectual
credentials’127 and were ‘morally dishonest’ because there was no way of
115
K. M. Wolfe, The Churches and the British Broadcasting Corporation, 1922-1956 (London:
SCM, 1984), 453.
116 Anonymous, A Year of Expansion, 8.
117 D. Tribe, Religion and Ethics in Schools (London: NSS, 1965); D. Tribe, Secular Education
(London: NSS, Undated). NA, ‘RI 1959-66’ (ED 147-544).
118 Anonymous, ‘This World’, Freethinker 86, no. 6 (1966): 44.
119 W. McIlroy, Untitled letter to C. A. R. Crosland (November 17, 1965). NA, ‘RI 1959-66’ (ED
147-544).
120 B. Brophy, Religious Education in State Schools (London: Fabian Society, 1967).
121 W. McIlroy, Untitled letter to C. A. R. Crosland (February 17, 1966); and M. B. Baker,
Untitled letter to W. McIlroy (April 12, 1966). NA, ‘RI 1959-66’ (ED 147-544).
122 D. H. Leadbetter, Untitled letter to M. B. Baker (March 3, 1966). NA, ‘RI 1959-66’ (ED 147544).
123 J. M. Grinham, Untitled letter to D. H. Leadbetter (March 2, 1966). NA, ‘RI 1959-66’ (ED
147-544).
124 D. C. James, Untitled letter to E. C. Redhead (April 19, 1966). NA, ‘RI 1959-66’ (ED 147544).
125 Tribe, Religion and Ethics in Schools, 5 and 16.
126 Brophy, Religious Education in State Schools, 12.
127 Tribe, Secular Education, 4.
14
independently verifying the suppositions upon which they were based. 128 Likewise,
Brophy argued that ‘it is an immoral imposture’ to claim we are so certain of the
existence of God ‘that we dare guarantee it to our children’.129 She objected to church
schools, on the basis that a ‘segregated institution for indoctrinating children is an
intolerant institution’, and to fully publicly-maintained schools, because they were
guilty of indoctrinating in ‘a more wishy-washy mode’.130 Neither Tribe nor Brophy
believed the parental right to withdraw children from Collective Worship and RI was
sufficiently well advertised,131 and Tribe maintained that parents would not exercise
this right even if adequate alternative provision was available because children would
still be ‘made to feel different, “special”, isolated, even if not actively victimized’. 132
Similarly, although the 1944 Education Act stated that teachers in LEA schools
should not be disadvantaged if they refused to attend Collective Worship or give
RI,133 Tribe held that ambitious teachers regarded opting out as disastrous for their
promotion prospects.134
Both Tribe and Brophy recommended the removal of all state subsidies from church
schools and the abolition of Collective Worship and RI in LEA schools. Tribe argued
that schools should remain impartial and guarantee freedom of belief and expression
to their citizens, and that the promotion of religion should be left to the churches and
Sunday Schools.135 For him, teaching in ‘secular’ LEA schools should be limited to
that which ‘is capable of universal verification according to the highest standards’ and
should leave ‘to the individual conscience formulation of views on ultimate reality’.136
Instead, he recommended the introduction of an impartial ‘syllabus of social morality
and citizenship for all students’ and the provision of ‘comparative religion and
philosophy to senior students’.137 He maintained that, as morality is ‘independent of
and superior to religion’, schools should provide practical and relevant moral training
rather than RI.138 Religion would not be excluded because, in junior schools, different
views of the world could be discussed in History, English and Social Studies, and in
senior schools, it could be incorporated into the non-doctrinal moral instruction
provided by Social Studies or a new subject called ‘Living Together’ which could
‘emphasise the importance of the things we have in common, the necessity for
tolerance, and the desirability of goodwill and co-operation’.139 This would ensure that
students see themselves as ‘national and world citizens’ rather than ‘in sectarian
terms’.140 Similarly, Brophy argued that state schools should (i) be tolerant, neutral
and open to ‘all religious and irreligious denominations, but offering worship and
instruction in none’; (ii) replace RI with moral education founded upon reason and the
imagination; and (iii) give children ‘tolerably unbiased’ accounts of the ‘the various
religious beliefs and disbeliefs held in the world’.141
British Humanist Association
128
Tribe, Religion and Ethics in Schools, 17.
Brophy, Religious Education in State Schools, 20.
130 Ibid., 12 and 14.
131 Tribe, Secular Education, 2-3; Religion and Ethics in Schools, 19; Brophy, Religious
Education in State Schools, 3.
132 Tribe, Religion and Ethics in Schools, 19-20.
133 Education Act 1944, 7 & 8 GEO. 6. Chapter 31, Part II, Section 30.
134 Ibid., 19-20.
135 Ibid., 17 and 21.
136 Tribe, Secular Education, 2.
137 Tribe, Religion and Ethics in Schools, 24.
138 Ibid., 21.
139 Ibid.
140 Tribe, Secular Education, 5.
141 Brophy, Religious Education in State Schools, 19, 20 and 17.
129
15
The British Humanist Association (BHA) had its roots in the Union of Ethical Societies
which was founded in 1895 by the American Stanton Coit.142 Ethicists envisaged ‘a
universal and synoptic morality which would unite individuals of different creeds’.143
One of their initiatives was the formation of the Moral Instruction League in 1897 to
promote systematic and secular moral instruction based on social or civic morality
rather than duty to God. After the First World War, the League was abolished and the
Union of Ethical Societies fell into decline, that is, until 1963 when the BHA was
founded through an alliance of the Union of Ethical Societies and the Rationalist
Press Association (est. 1899). (The second organisation withdrew after legal
problems in 1967.) The inaugural meeting of the BHA was held in the House of
Commons with A. J. Ayer (President of the BHA, 1965-70) among those present.
From its inception, the BHA began campaigning for the elimination of world poverty,
the repeal of Sunday Observance Laws, freedom of speech, the removal of privileges
given to religious groups, and the reform of the 1944 Education Act.
The BHA’s first Executive Director, between 1963 and 1968, was Harold J.
Blackham. He had succeeded Stanton Coit in 1935 as Chairman of the Union of
Ethical Societies and established the International Humanist and Ethical Union in
1952 with the Dutch philosopher Jaap van Praag.144 Blackham’s efforts to bring the
Ethical and Rationalist organisations in Britain together have led him to be called the
founder of the BHA.145 In terms of education, he argued that ‘religion in state schools’
should adopt ‘a genuine [open] educational approach that is not a Christian
monopoly’ and which can ‘conciliate non-Christians and gain the support of all
genuine educators’.146 The aims of such a programme would include a commitment
to moral development based upon a ‘common foundation in social morality and
personal relations’.147 According to Blackham, this would inevitably lead to
consideration of the fundamental sets of beliefs, allegiances and values, namely
Abrahamic monotheism, Indian metaphysics, politico-cultural absolutes (e.g. Marxism
and Fascism) and Humanism, as well as the confrontations and dialogues between
them.148 Blackham hoped that such an approach would meet the ‘real needs of the
growing child’ and concentrate ‘upon the attainment of responsible living and
thinking’.149 If this change did not occur, he threatened, ‘an increasing demand on the
part of Humanists for alternative courses in the secondary schools and the training
colleges’.150 In a later publication, Blackham also argued that it was unrealistic and
unwise to expect ‘the nation’ to determine the philosophical foundations of moral
education in fully state-maintained schools.151 This could only be derived from the
shared tasks and ideals of school communities themselves which must seek to
enable pupils ‘to think for themselves and to make their own responsible
decisions’.152
Royle, ‘Secularists and Rationalists’, 419.
S. Wright, ‘“There is something universal in our movement which appeals not only to one
country, but to all”: international communication and moral education 1892-1914’, HoE 37, no.
6 (2008): 811.
144 M. Taylor, ‘Obituary: Harold Blackham (1903–2009)’, Journal of Moral Education 38, no. 2
(2009): 247.
145 BHA, ‘BHA mourns Harold Blackham (1903-2009): “architect of the humanist movement”’,
http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/209 (accessed September 7, 2011).
146 H. J. Blackham, ‘A Humanist View of Religious Education’, LfL 4, no. 2 (1964): 19.
147 Ibid.
148 Ibid., 20.
149 Ibid.
150 Ibid., 19.
151 H. J. Blackham, ‘Introduction’, in Let’s Teach Them Right, ed. C. Macy (London:
Pemberton Books, 1969), 3.
152 Ibid., 6.
142
143
16
Some of Blackham’s proposals were repeated in the BHA’s Religion in Schools:
Humanist Proposals for State-Aided Schools in England and Wales (1967).153 It
argued that fully publicly-funded schools should develop new ways of teaching about
Christianity and other religions and ways of life, such as through History, Literature
and Social Studies. They should also develop ‘methods of moral education not
related to religious beliefs, using all aspects of school life as well as the opportunities
that the classroom can give’.154 These recommendations, and the requisite
amendments to the 1944 Education Act, could be justified on the basis that (i) ‘a
harmful conflict’ may develop between the teaching and practice of the school and
home; (ii) the rights of pupils and teachers to withdraw from Collective Worship and
RI were not working; and (iii) moral education should not be based on widely
questioned beliefs and sanctions, but on the common values, influences and
experiences of the whole-school community.155
The BHA’s critiques of Christian (moral) education represented one element of a
much broader campaign to promote the establishment of a more open, just and
democratic society.156 In ‘Education for the Open Society’, the psychologist James
Hemming saw the ‘speed of communication and travel’ presaging the end of the ‘oldstyle, conformist, self-perpetuating society, with its unquestioning acceptance of
authoritarian controls’ and the beginning of the open society in which there is a
greater variety of ideas, attitudes and opinions.157 On this basis, he desired the
establishment of an open and inclusive education system that maximises individual
personality and creativity, works through children’s curiosity and aspirations, and
promotes socially-responsible interaction.158 Its moral foundation would be ‘the
authority of agreement’ that comes about through ‘the implementation of commonly
accepted purposes, directed to the realization of human aims and aspirations’.159 For
this reason, he called upon schools to become ‘humane, participant, democratic
communities’160 and for the establishment of a core curriculum based upon universal
human experience, which would be socially-relevant and provide a ‘pattern of sense,
meaning and involvement’ and a feeling of ‘unity and purpose’ which is important for
social cohesion and world-mindedness.161
Summary
The reinvigoration of Secularist and Humanist organisations in England in the 1960s
coincided with an intense social and cultural revolution marked, amongst other
things, by ‘institutional attenuation’ within the Christian churches, and the ‘institutional
marginalisation’ and ‘cultural displacement’ of Christianity. In accordance with the
zeitgeist, Secularists and Humanists promoted the future establishment of a more
liberal and democratic society in which ethical and educational principles would be
grounded in objectivity, rationality and universality rather than conformism,
authoritarianism and sectarianism. On the basis of arguments from fairness and/or
objectivity, Secularist and Humanist individuals and organisations, including the NSS
and BHA, undertook concerted and organised campaigns with the intention of either
abolishing RI (often, but not always, as distinct from the emerging concept of RE),
153
BHA, Religion in Schools (London: BHA, 1967).
Ibid., 14. See also M. Hill, Moral Education in Secondary Schools (London: BHA, 1967).
155 BHA, Religion in Schools, 3, 6 and 8.
156 BHA, ed., Towards an Open Society (London: Pemberton Books, 1971), vii.
157 J. Hemming, ‘Education for the Open Society’, in Towards an Open Society, ed. BHA, 121.
158 Ibid., 119 and 123.
159 Ibid., 121.
160 Ibid., 124.
161 Ibid., 122 and 126-7.
154
17
establishing a secular alternative (such as moral education), or secularising the
subject’s aims and broadening its content to include world religions and secular
worldviews. This article next seeks to assess how these proposals contributed to the
on-going public and political discourses about the religious clauses of the 1944
Education Act and the nature and purpose of RI/RE.
Public and political response
Opinion polls
According to Christopher Macy, much of the public discourse concerning the
beleaguered subject of RI/RE in the 1960s and 1970s focused on the question of
‘What The People Want’162 and drew upon the findings of a whole series of surveys
of public, professional, parental and pupil opinions.163 The most often cited piece of
research was based on a questionnaire survey of 1,730 parents in the North-East of
England. It concluded that ‘five out of six parents are still in favour of the present
legal obligation upon the schools to provide [RI] and the support for compulsory daily
school worship is about as high’.164 In responding to the survey on behalf of the NSS,
Maurice Hill argued that, because they do not understand the subject-matter, ‘the
majority [of respondents] will usually vote for the status quo unless long and full
public discussion has taken place’.165 Furthermore, he maintained that the
questionnaire was biased towards Christianity, RI and Collective Worship; most of
those who disagreed with its religious attitude are likely to have remained silent
(46.5% of questionnaires were not returned); confusing impressions were given of
what happens in schools; and respondents were not given an opportunity to consider
alternative ways of teaching about Christianity or non-religious forms of moral
education.166 A year later, Hill167 provided a critique of a Gallup Poll168 and a survey
undertaken by Ronald Goldman.169 According to Hill, nothing in either survey
provided ‘any support for the imposition by Christian parents of religious teaching
upon other people’s children’.170 In fact, he maintained, ‘[t]he vast majority of adults in
Britain are not practising Christians’ and assume that the alternative to forcing ‘other
people’s children to suffer religion’ would be a ‘moral, historical and cultural
vacuum’.171 Yet his critique was undermined by his failure to demonstrate that the
educational proposals of the NSS or BHA received widespread public support. If
anything, the opinion polls suggested that, firstly, Secularists and Humanists had
underestimated the residual sympathy for Christian education to be found amongst
the non-churchgoing population, and secondly, on the basis of the high nonMacy, Let’s Teach Them Right, viii.
For example, E. Blishen, ed., The School That I’d Like (Harmonsworth: Penguin, 1969); M.
Jahoda and N. Warren, eds., Attitudes (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966); P. R. May, ‘Why
Parents Want Religion in Schools’, LfL 6, no. 4 (1967): 14-18; ‘Why teachers want religion in
school’, LfL 8, no. 1 (1968): 13-17; and ‘Teachers’ Attitudes to Religious Education’,
Educational Research 11, no. 1 (1968b): 66-70; National Opinion Polls, Moral and religious
education (London: BHA, 1969); and D. S. Wright, ‘A Study of Religious Belief in Sixth Form
Boys’, Research and Studies, 24 (1962): 1-8.
164 P. R. May and O. R. Johnston, ‘Parental Attitudes to Religious Education in State
Schools’, The Durham Research Review 5, no. 18 (1967): 137.
165 M. Hill, RI and Surveys (London: NSS, 1968), 1.
166 Ibid., 10.
167 M. Hill, Surveys on Religion in Schools (London: NSS, 1969).
168 Social Surveys (Gallup Poll) Ltd, Television and Religion (London: University of London
Press, 1964).
169 R. J. Goldman, ‘Do we want our children taught about God?’ New Society 5, no. 139
(1965): 8-10.
170 Ibid., 1.
171 Ibid., 6.
162
163
18
completion rates, a large proportion of the population was apathetic rather than
antipathetic with regard to the existing legislation governing religious education in
schools.
Reactions from policy-makers and politicians
Although there is little to suggest that there was significant political support for the
NSS’ or BHA’s educational proposals, Lady Bridget Plowden’s report for the Central
Advisory Council for England titled Children and their Primary Schools (1967) does
provide evidence that comparable arguments had gained limited recognition by
educational policy-makers. The Council was divided in its views on religious
education. At one extreme were a majority who believed religious education ‘should
influence the entire curriculum and set the tone of living and learning for the whole
school community’.172 At the other extreme were a minority, including A. J. Ayer, who
argued in a note of reservation at the end of the report that religious education should
not figure in the primary school curriculum at all. The main reason given was that
religious education, when undertaken seriously, would involve theology and ‘theology
is both too recondite and too controversial a subject to be suitable for inclusion in the
curriculum of primary schools’.173 If religious education remained obligatory, then it
was argued that the moral element should ‘predominate over the theological’ and that
moral examples should not be exclusively Christian.174 A second note of reservation
was included from an individual who maintained that an ‘alternative programme of
moral or ethical education’ should exist for parents who wish to withdraw their
children from religious education.175 Both notes of reservation generated
parliamentary debate.
The Labour MP, David Kerr, asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science,
in the House of Commons, whether he had any proposals for introducing ‘courses in
the principles of humanism as an alternative to [RI]’ and whether he would be
consulting the BHA on ‘the excellent minority Report’ on religious teaching.176 William
Hamling (Labour MP) asked what steps the Secretary of State was going to take to
amend the regulations concerning RI and Collective Worship in fully state-maintained
schools177 and, with particular regard to ‘the disabilities which humanist parents
suffer’, Peter M. Jackson (Labour MP) asked whether the Secretary of State intended
to implement the report’s recommendation that parents should be told of their right to
withdraw their children from RI and Collective Worship.178 The negative answers that
were received disappointed the questioners, but their questioning evidences both the
pressure being brought upon the government at this time from a small lobby group of
Humanist MPs and the insufficiency of their lobbying in terms of securing
governmental support. In this sense, it represents both a limited success and a
critical failure of the campaigns of Secularists and Humanists.
In fact, in 1969, the Secretary of State, Edward Short, began to make plans for a new
Education Act which would defend RI and Collective Worship from the ‘increasingly
violent attack’ from Secularists and Humanists. For him, ‘all who care about the
preservation of the Christian character of our community must man the barricades’
172
Central Advisory Council for Education, Children and their Primary Schools (London:
HMSO, 1967), 203.
173 Ibid., 489.
174 Ibid., 492.
175 Ibid.
176 Great Britain. House of Commons. Official Reports. Parliamentary Debates (London:
HMSO, 23rd February and 13th April 1967): Vol. 741. Cols. 1933-5 and Vol. 744. Cols. 1357-8.
177 Ibid., 7th December 1967, Vol. 755. Col. 357.
178 Ibid., 24th October 1968, Vol. 770. Cols. 1560-1.
19
because ‘[i]f we do not do so ... Britain will cease to be a Christian country within two
generations’.179 Nevertheless, the possibility of reform catalysed further lobbying. On
the 25th March, for example, Peter M. Jackson called for the ‘moral basis of public
education’ to shift ‘from conformity to traditional religion to the actual school
community with its respected differences and shared tasks and ideals’ and for the
1944 Education Act to be amended, so that religion is neither ‘taught in any
evangelical sense’ nor ‘taught to children between the ages of 5 and 12’ whose
critical faculties are undeveloped.180 However, there was to be disappointment for
those who hoped that the abolition or reformation of RI would be another ‘permissive’
reform enacted by the Labour Government. Secularist and Humanist individuals and
organisations were neither invited to the expert seminar which the Secretary of State
held at St George’s House, Windsor, in March 1969 to discuss the problems and
prospects for RI181 nor consulted by the DES.182 By 12th May 1969, the DES had
‘received 2,268 letters in favour of the retention of the compulsory religious education
provisions in the Education Acts and [only] 123 against’.183 In the end, the Labour
Party was removed from office before the Bill could be introduced into parliament, but
there is nothing to suggest it would have satisfied Secularists or Humanists. Indeed,
one of its basic intentions was to thwart them.
Summary
For the general public, politicians and policy-makers, the carefully-planned, clearly
articulated and well-publicised campaigns of Secularist and Humanist individuals and
organisations, including the NSS and BHA, made palpable the purported process of
secularisation and, at least partially, substantiated nascent secularisation theories.
They did so not only through the promulgation of relevant philosophical arguments
and empirical evidence, but also by personifying the progress of this sometimes
imperceptible process. Their proposals provoked responses from both supporters
and, more frequently, detractors in the on-going public and political debates about
the religious clauses of the 1944 Education Act. Even if not persuasive enough to
garner the level of support necessary to repeal the existing legislation, the arguments
of Secularists and Humanists were sufficiently prominent and exacting to contribute,
alongside other more pervasive secularising or de-Christianising contextual factors,
to the emergence of a critical climate in which the long-term survival of religious
education, and perhaps even Christianity itself, seemed under-threat and in need of
defence. Against this background, it is perhaps unsurprising that some Christians
and educationists chose to enter into dialogue with some of their supposed
antagonists.
Dialogue between Humanists, Christians and educationists
In contrast to their largely indifferent or negative reception by the general public and
the majority of politicians, the arguments of Humanists, which were generally more
conciliatory than those of Secularists, found a more sympathetic hearing amongst
many moderate, liberal and ecumenically-minded Christians and educationists. Joint
discussions on ‘The Educational Justification for Religious Teaching in State Schools’
179
E. Short, Speech by the Secretary of State for Education & Science. At the Opening of
Alnwick Church of England Junior School (January 10, 1969). NA ‘DES: Schools Branch
(Registered Files). Correspondence on revised education bill and provisions’ (ED 183.5).
180 Great Britain. House of Commons. Official Reports. Parliamentary Debates (London:
HMSO, 25th March 1969): Vol. 780. Cols. 1480-1501.
181 DES, Religious Education, Present and Future (London: HMSO, 1969); and Prospects and
Problems for Religious Education (London: HMSO, 1971).
182 Great Britain. House of Commons. Official Reports. Parliamentary Debates (London:
HMSO, 27th March 1969): Vol. 780. Cols. 349-50.
183 Ibid., 12th May 1969, Vol. 783. Cols. 176-7.
20
between the Institute for Christian Education and the Union of Ethical Societies
(represented by Blackham) had occurred as early as 1962,184 but from the mid-1960s
an increasing number of religious educators decided to walk ‘hand-in-hand’ with
Humanists as coadjutors.185 For Kathleen Bliss, in a 1965 special issue of Theology
focusing on the 1944 Education Act, this meant showing sensitivity to the objections
of Secularists and Humanists; voluntarily according ‘to the children of secular
humanist homes’ protection from religious proselytisation; and being sympathetic ‘to
the secular humanist’s dilemma both as parent and teacher’.186 Collaboration
between Christians and Humanists was also promoted by Bliss in order to address
‘the tide of unbelief ... in everything but scientifically accredited facts’ and ‘the growth
of secular cynicism’ which fails to provide answers to fundamental questions such as
‘who am I? what is life’s meaning and its purpose?’.187 For her, the Christian faith in a
‘secular world’ is characterised by ‘continuous dialogue with those who do not share
our views’ and for this reason exposure to ‘the constructive and informed criticism of
secular humanists will do much good’.188 A number of examples of dialogue between
Humanists, Christians and educationists are provided below.
First, in April 1965, a study conference on religion in education, organised by
Alexander Wedderspoon at the University of London’s Institute of Education,
included a ‘highly articulate delegation of four from the [BHA]’ among its invited
membership189 and one of the conference aims was ‘[t]o consider the standpoint of
the secular humanist’.190 This was provided by Lionel Elvin who was a member of the
BHA and Director of the Institute of Education between 1958 and 1973. In the
Foreword to Tribe’s Religion and Ethics in Schools (1965), Elvin had noted that one
of the reasons why there was increasing disquiet about the religious requirements of
the 1944 Education Act was because liberal Christians ‘dislike the fundamentalist
approach’ found in many schools.191 Indeed, at the London conference, he
contrasted the advocacy by liberal Christian educationists and Secular Humanists of
the ‘open’ approach to RE, which meant ‘teaching about religion rather than the
teaching of religion’, with the views of ‘the majority of less liberal Christians’ who
continued to support RI.192 Elvin also suggested that ‘if Christian believers would
combine forces’ with Humanists to separate religious and moral education, then
Humanists would ‘put more of their energies into this than in getting the religious
education period as such abolished’.193 The list of conference recommendations
included the suggestion that RE in the Sixth Form (16-18 year olds) should include
‘intelligent and responsible discussion ... of secular agnosticism’.194 However, in his
personal conclusions, Wedderspoon criticised Secular Humanists for being
‘vociferous out of all proportion to their numbers’, unreasonable in proposing to deny
RE to the majority of parents who are not agnostic, and incorrect to describe RI as
‘brainwashing’ or ‘indoctrination’.195 He stated that, whilst it was commendable for
Anonymous. ‘News and notes’. LfL 2, no. 4 (1963): 36-8.
H. F. Mathews, Revolution in Religious Education (Wallington: Religious Education Press,
1966), 115.
186 K. Bliss, ‘Should the 1944 Education Act be Changed?’ Theology 68 (1965): 324-5.
187 Ibid., 326.
188 Ibid., 327.
189 A. G. Wedderspoon, ed., Religious Education 1944-1984 (London: George Allen & Unwin,
1966), 190.
190 Ibid., 14.
191 L. Elvin, Foreword to Tribe, Religion and Ethics in Schools, 2.
192 L. Elvin, ‘The Standpoint of the Secular Humanist’, in Religious Education 1944-1984, ed.
Wedderspoon, 175 and 177.
193 Ibid., 183-4 and 187.
194 Wedderspoon, Religious Education 1944-1984, 200 and 229.
195 Ibid., 226-7.
184
185
21
‘Christian educationalists and humanists’ to ensure that religious and moral
education ‘represent the fairest possible expression of the prevailing situation’, the
real problem was ‘the basic cleavage’ between their conceptions of truth and
knowledge and between the religious and ‘secularist and materialist’ principles upon
which they respectively believed the education system should be based.196 In this
regard, he noted that the majority of conference members were unwilling ‘to abandon
future generations ... to the fatuities of secularism, still less to the bleak negations of
“the humanist alternative”’.197
Second, in the same year, Religious and Moral Education in County Schools was
published by a group of Christian educationists including Colin Alves, F. H. Hilliard
and Roy Niblett, and BHA members including Hirst, Blackham, Elvin, Hemming and
Derek Wright. The twenty-two authors agreed that pupils in county schools ‘need to
be taught about the Christian religion as part of their cultural history’ and ‘have the
opportunity to share in an experience of the Christian religion as part of their total
education’.198 However, RE should adopt a genuinely ‘open approach’ to help pupils
make ‘as freely as possible’ their own personal commitments.199 To avoid the
possibility that a rejection of religion may remove any moral foundation, the authors
agreed that moral education in secondary schools ‘should be explicitly planned to
help [pupils] prepare themselves for responsible living’ and to consider ‘the nature
and destiny’ of humankind.200 In the Sixth Form, for example, they called for a
compulsory course in moral and religious education including ‘some study of religions
other than Christianity and of [non-religious] ideologies such as communism’.201
Lower down the secondary school, they called for provision by teams of teachers
with varied beliefs and standpoints, the use of discussion-based methods relating to
real-life issues, and an emphasis on common moral values,202 whilst in primary
schools, they advocated classrooms characterised by honesty, sincerity and
respectfulness, and the presentation of common moral values in such a way that
pupils remain free to develop their own values.203 In terms of Collective Worship, the
authors suggested making it easier for pupils and teachers to opt out; concentrating
on shared values; alternating between Christian worship and non-religious options;
allowing older pupils to excuse themselves; and encouraging a wide range of staff to
participate. In a sequel publication, Hemming and Howard Marratt argued that moral
education should neither be founded upon classical or theological ideas nor ‘a new
religion or morality … which is an artificial synthesis’. Instead, ‘[i]f we are to educate
pupils to live in a society which is open, or pluralistic, then they must be allowed to
consider a variety of viewpoints’.204
A third example of Christians and Humanists working together is Education or
Indoctrination by Tim Beaumont and Colin Bloy. Here they maintained that fully statemaintained schools should not be responsible for religious nurture because the public
have voted decisively against organised religion (and militant Humanism).205 For
196
Ibid., 227.
Ibid., 238.
198 C. Alves et al., Religious and Moral Education (Leicester: Blackfriars, 1965), 2.
199 Ibid.
200 Ibid., 3.
201 Ibid., 4.
202 Ibid., 7-10.
203 Ibid., 11-12.
204 J. Hemming and H. Marratt, Humanism and Christianity (Leicester: Blackfriars, 1969), 236.
205 T. Beaumont and C. Bloy, Education or Indoctrination: a combined Humanist and Christian
approach to Religious Education in State Schools by two members of the Liberal Party
(London: Prism Education Pamphlets, 1969).
197
22
them, Agreed Syllabus Conferences, which determine the content of RI/RE, should
include representatives of non-Christian religious and ethical groups and should
‘teach knowledge of the faiths by which large numbers of the world live, and in
particular of the Christian faith, still held by a large number of English people and
inextricably part of [Western] culture’.206 The type of provision would be amenable to
the scientific method, in which all can participate, because it trains pupils to find,
receive, interpret and communicate information.207 Beaumont and Bloy also called for
a policy of ‘contracting in to religious education rather than contracting out’; the
obligatory provision of alternative lessons for those withdrawn; and for voluntary
(mainly church) schools to inform parents of the right of withdrawal.208 Finally, they
advocated replacing Collective Worship with ‘[a]ssemblies acceptable to Christians,
followers of other religions and members of non-religious ethical groups’ in order to
teach basic human values.209
The penultimate example is drawn from a conference on ‘comparative religion’ held
in Shap in Cumbria at Easter 1969 and which led to the foundation of the Shap
Working Party on World Religions in Education. Perhaps it was an indication of the
esteem with which he was held and the credible position that Humanism had attained
for itself that Blackham was invited to present a paper at this conference. Blackham
supported the comparative study of religion because: (i) ‘education is broadened by
including some acquaintance with the diversity of cultures in the world’; (ii) education
would be deepened because ‘[s]tandards are formed only by comparisons’; and (iii) it
provides ‘an opportunity for the study of religion as such, as a distinctive type of
experience’.210 Nevertheless, the purpose of such study was not to provide pupils
with ‘a faith to live by’, but ‘to give some insight into different ways of thinking about
the world and human life, some sense of the history of ideas, some understanding of
distinctively religious experience and claims’.211 For him, RI as defined by the 1944
Education Act, moral education and comparative religion represented three
independent programmes of study, and, in the interests of increased flexibility and
professional rather than ecclesiastical control, he called for the repeal of the religious
clauses of the 1944 Education Act because they were no longer related to
contemporary actualities or educational needs.212
The last example of collaboration between Humanists, Christians and educationists
is the Social Morality Council (SMC) (later the Norham Foundation) which was cofounded in 1967 by the BHA for ‘joint study and action on moral issues by religious
and non-believers’ and ‘to promote morality in all aspects of the life of the
community’.213 Its President was the Roman Catholic Auxiliary Bishop B. C. Butler
and its Vice-President was the Humanist Lord Ritchie-Calder. Butler believed that the
SMC was the latest and most significant manifestation of ‘ecumenism’ because it
sought a ‘[r]approchement between religious believers and non-believers’ which is
where ‘the cleavage of society is most acute’. Thereby, he hoped ‘common ground’
could be found ‘to face the vast moral issues of our time’.214 A working party of the
206
Ibid., 11 and 13.
Ibid., 8 and 11.
208 Ibid., 6 and 13.
209 Ibid., 9 and 13-14.
210 H. J. Blackham, ‘A Humanist Approach to the Teaching of Religion in Schools’, in
Comparative Religion in Education, ed. J. R. Hinnells (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Oriel Press,
1970), 55-6.
211 Ibid., 57.
212 Ibid.
213 Social Morality Council, Moral and Religious Education in County Schools (London: SMC,
1970), 1.
214 Ibid.
207
23
SMC published Moral and Religious Education in County Schools (1970). It was
chaired by Blackham (who, in 1971, went on to co-found the Journal of Moral
Education which was owned by the SMC) and included Christians, Humanists, Jews
and observers from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate and the Schools Council Project on
RE in Secondary Schools. It called upon county schools to encourage a ‘sympathetic
understanding of a religious approach to life’ and reinforce ‘common foundations in
moral values’ based upon ‘underlying solidarity in the nexus of interdependence
which is the basis of human existence and the source of inviolable obligation’.215
Methodologically, it advocated a whole-school approach to moral education,
including regular discussion periods,216 and an open-ended, multi-faith and
discussion-based form of RE which enables pupils ‘to understand what the Christian
faith means in the context of other beliefs sincerely held by men and women of
integrity and goodwill who do not find it possible to accept a Christian commitment’
and ‘to create in [pupils] a more sensitive understanding of their own beliefs and of
the different beliefs by which others govern their lives’. 217 The working party accepted
that because ‘society today is truly plural, in the sense not only that numerous
religious communities co-exist in it but also that a large section of it is non-believing’,
the ‘State cannot legislate for a unity in the schools which does not exist outside
them’.218 Furthermore, it recommended the replacement of Agreed Syllabus
Conferences with national and local advisory councils involving representatives of
religious faiths, humanism, parents, teachers and pupils.219
Summary
On the basis of the ‘common ground’ they had identified between them, many
Humanist individuals and BHA members sought together with moderate, liberal and
ecumenically-minded Christians and educationists to develop educationally-valid and
multi-faith forms of ‘open-ended’ RE and moral education which would be suitable for
all pupils and teachers regardless of their religious or secular backgrounds. It was a
vision which cohered in many ways with that of numerous academics and
professionals associated with RE in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as John
Hull and countless members of the Christian Education Movement. It was also
evident in mainstream policy documents, such as the Schools Council’s Working
Paper 36 (1971). Whether this congruence of ideas was a co-incidence, a correlation
due to other contextual factors or the result of direct causation is a moot point. There
were certainly opportunities for Secularists and/or Humanists to contribute to the
secularisation of the aims and methods of RI/RE and the pluralisation of its content
through their invited participation in official processes of ecclesiastical policy-making
and curriculum decision-making. This will be demonstrated below with regard to,
firstly, the Anglican Commission on Religious Education in Schools, and secondly,
the Birmingham Agreed Syllabus of 1975.220
Church of England policy
Perhaps it is unsurprising, given the publicity afforded to the campaigns of Secularist
and Humanist individuals and organisations, and the extent of the collaboration
between Humanists, Christians and educationists, that both the BHA and NSS were
invited to submit evidence to the joint commission of the Anglican Church of
England’s Board of Education and National Society on religious education (est.
215
Ibid., 6 and 12.
Ibid., 7-9.
217 Ibid., 13.
218 Ibid., 6.
219 Ibid., 9.
220 City of Birmingham Education Committee, Agreed Syllabus of Religious Instruction
(Birmingham: City of Birmingham Education Committee, 1975).
216
24
1967). This was chaired by the Bishop of Durham, Ian Ramsey, who was also a
member of the SMC’s Executive Committee. In its evidence, the BHA argued that, in
an increasingly plural society, ‘the State does not have the moral authority to impose
... public education in, and practice of, a particular faith’ or otherwise to finance or
recognise the ‘religious teaching of individual Churches or religious bodies’.221
Instead, ‘religion should be dealt with in secondary schools in an open way as
teaching about religions’ and should be excluded altogether from primary schools.222
Although favouring ‘complete secularisation’, the NSS recognised that it would be
wrong to prohibit religious teaching of all kinds because ‘teachers and pupils of all
religions and none [should] be able to express their opinions, and to compare and
contrast views in an atmosphere of freedom’.223 As a result, it recommended that
knowledge about ‘what members of different religious groups believe … could be
given either in a course on comparative religion, or as part of history, literature, or
social studies courses’.224 In terms of moral education, the BHA argued that this
should be ‘rooted in the child’s experience of the school as a community’ rather than
in Christian teaching or worship, and the NSS suggested undertaking moral
education through the example of teachers, school atmosphere, free discussion,
fund-raising and practical help. The BHA believed that (i) ‘[p]arents should be ...
required annually to state whether ... they wish their children to attend the act of
worship and/or receive [RI]’; (ii) ‘[p]roper provision should be made for those who are
excused’; and (iii) ‘[t]he right should be exercised by the child ... from the age of
14’.225 Comparable recommendations were made by the NSS. Both organisations
recognised the benefit of assemblies rather than Collective Worship226 and
condemned any ‘segregation of schoolchildren on religious lines’.227 For the BHA,
this was because ‘sharing a common school experience’ was the best preparation for
an open society.228 Lastly, unlike the NSS, the BHA acknowledged that education
should ‘play some part in the search of young people for a way of life’ and it
recommended the development of social-scientific ‘life-centred’ courses which would
be taught by teachers from a diversity of outlooks and specialisations and enable
pupils to see themselves and their society in the context of evolution and history.229
Some of the recommendations of the Anglican commission’s final report, titled The
Fourth R, cohered with the NSS and BHA proposals. Although primarily concerned to
advance an educational case for the continuation of a Christian-centred approach to
RE and Collective Worship,230 the report provided a rationale for world religions
teaching, endorsed the study of secular alternatives to religion, described the legal
machinery for defining RE as a relic of the ecclesiastical era, and expressed
readiness to accept greater flexibility in any future revision of 1944 Education Act. It
is implausible that these recommendations were solely the result of the intervention
of Secularists and/or Humanists. As we have seen, a number of their proposals
concurred with those of many Christians and educationists. However, in discussing
the evidence submitted by the NSS, Terence Copley argues that they ‘had, perhaps
unwittingly, written a brief for how RE was to try to develop in the decade ahead’.231 If
221
Commission on Religious Education in Schools, The Fourth R (London: National
Society/SPCK, 1970), 327.
222 Ibid., 326.
223 Ibid., 346.
224 Ibid., 345.
225 Ibid., 326.
226 Ibid., 345.
227 Ibid., 326-7.
228 Ibid., 327.
229 Ibid., 329.
230 Bates, ‘Christianity, Culture and Other Religions (Part 2)’, 91.
231 Copley, Teaching Religion, 98.
25
so, it was deliberate rather than unwitting. The Established Church, like the state,
was an obvious target for the lobbying activities of Secularist and Humanist
individuals and organisations, particularly given that it retained control of RI/RE
through the statutory power of its representative committees to veto the otherwise
unanimous decisions of Agreed Syllabus Conferences. Indeed, the campaigns of
Humanists would draw most publicity as a result of their later attempts to influence
the development of, and ensuing discourse about, the Birmingham Agreed Syllabus
of 1975 which became paradigmatic for subsequent Agreed Syllabuses nationally.
The Birmingham Agreed Syllabus
During the 1960s and 1970s, few places in England exhibited the issues of ethnic
diversity and religious plurality in schools better than Birmingham and these
perceived ‘problems’ became key justifications for revising Birmingham’s existing
Agreed Syllabus of Religious Instruction.232 However, as soon as the process of
revision had begun, in May 1969, the BHA engaged in considerable and persistent
lobbying for representation on the Agreed Syllabus Conference and, by the end of
the year, the city’s Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education decided that
their requests should be heeded. As a consequence, Harry Stopes-Roe was coopted to the Co-ordinating Working Party and the Sixth Form Working Party. He
became highly influential in promoting the inclusion of Humanism in the new Agreed
Syllabus and monitoring the extent to which it endorsed faith-nurturing aims. StopesRoe was Chairman of the BHA and a university-friend of John Hick who was
Chairman of the Co-ordinating Working Party. The first version of the new syllabus
was completed in Autumn 1973 and generated considerable publicity because it
included ‘stances for living’ which was an inclusive term, coined by Stopes-Roe, to
describe both secular and religious ways of life.233 Those who objected brought into
question whether the statutory syllabus, which was only a single-page, fulfilled the
requirements of the 1944 Education Act.234 The decision of the Anglican Diocesan
Director of Education, Brian Rice, to seek legal advice from the National Society was
expressive of persistent anxieties within the Established Church, particularly amongst
the local clergy and laity, about the developing nature of religious education in fully
publicly-funded schools.235 As a consequence of such concerns, and in response to
the legal advice sought by the LEA, the aims and content of the syllabus were
extended and clarified to ensure that the non-religious subject matter was used only
to advance instruction in religion rather than taught for its own sake.236
The final version of Birmingham’s Agreed Syllabus of Religious Instruction was
published in May 1975.237 It provided an ‘educational’ rationale for RE and rejected
the aim of fostering the claims of particular religious standpoints.238 It required a
multi-faith approach from the first year of primary school, which covered six world
religions, and expected pupils to compare and contrast religious and non-religious
‘stances for living’. While Humanism was specifically mentioned in the statutory
232
City of Birmingham Education Committee, Agreed Syllabus of Religious Instruction
(Birmingham: City of Birmingham Education Committee, 1962). See S. G. Parker and R. J. K.
Freathy, ‘Context, complexity and contestation: Birmingham’s Agreed Syllabuses for
Religious Education since the 1970s’, JBV 32, no. 2 (2011): 247-263 and Parker and Freathy,
‘Ethnic Diversity, Christian Hegemony and the Emergence of Multi-faith Religious Education
in the 1970s’.
233 Hull, Studies in Religion and Education, 83.
234 Ibid., 85.
235 The Birmingham Post, 10 June, 1974.
236 Hull, Studies in Religion and Education, 85; H. V. Stopes-Roe, ‘Education and the Law in
Birmingham’, LfL 15, no. 4 (1976): 134.
237 City of Birmingham Education Committee, Agreed Syllabus of Religious Instruction.
238 Ibid., 4.
26
syllabus, Communism was specified as an alternative in the accompanying nonstatutory handbook.239 As a consequence, there was coverage in the local and
national British press, debates in both British Houses of Parliament, dedicated
publications and a conference. Furthermore, the revisions that had been undertaken
between the 1973 and 1975 versions provoked ardent criticism from Stopes-Roe. He
maintained that the original had been fair and balanced with respect to religious and
non-religious ‘stances for living’, but that the final version was ‘dominated by
religion’.240 For him, ‘the material as a whole is slanted in a religious direction’ and,
‘particularly for the younger ages, fundamental emotional forces [e.g. wonder,
mystery and love] are taken over by religion’.241 Religious domination was also
evident in the contrasting statements regarding the primary purposes of RE. The
original version stated that it is ‘to enlarge and deepen the understanding of the
different stances for living to which different people are committed’, whereas the final
version stated that it is ‘to enlarge and deepen the pupils’ understanding of religion’
which included ‘increasing their sensitivity to the areas of experience from which a
religious view of life may arise’.242 Stopes-Roe concluded that the realisation of this
aim would establish ‘religious indoctrination’,243 and subsequent attempts to refute
this charge were rather unconvincing.244
A new law?
The thwarted attempts of Stopes-Roe and other Humanists to eradicate religious
partiality in the new Birmingham Agreed Syllabus led the BHA to call for the abolition
of RI/RE as a ‘compulsory’ curriculum subject. In its pamphlet Objective, Fair and
Balanced: A New Law for Religion in Education, the BHA advocated amending the
religious clauses in the 1944 Education Act to replace RI with ‘Education in Stances
for Living’.245 This new subject, they argued, would provide pupils with an opportunity
to be educated together in an objective, fair and balanced manner about the religious
and non-religious outlooks and systems of belief upon which people build their
lives.246 To facilitate this, the pamphlet presented ‘a draft Bill’247 ready to be
introduced in the next Session of Parliament as a Private Members Bill by Geoffrey
Edge (Labour MP). In fact, Edge got no further than submitting a written question answered negatively - to the Secretary of State which asked whether he would
remove the compulsory act of Collective Worship in fully state-maintained schools
and replace compulsory RI with optional teaching of comparative religious and nonreligious studies for life.248 It was the third question to have been asked in the House
of Commons that year about the statutory requirements for RI (see also the debates
on 4th February and 6th May 1975).
City of Birmingham Education Committee, Living Together: A teachers’ handbook of
suggestions for religious education (Birmingham: City of Birmingham Education Committee,
1975).
240 Stopes-Roe, ‘Education and the Law in Birmingham’, 133.
241 Ibid., 135.
242 Ibid., 134.
243 Ibid., 135.
244 J. Hick, ‘Education and the Law – a comment’, LfL 15, no. 4 (1976): 135-6; J. Hull,
‘Religious Indoctrination in the Birmingham Agreed Syllabus?’, Faith and Freedom 30 (1976):
27-35.
245 BHA, Objective, Fair and Balanced (London: BHA, 1975).
246 Ibid., 32.
247 Ibid., 1.
248 Great Britain. House of Commons. Official Reports. Parliamentary Debates (London:
HMSO, 7th November 1975): Vol. 899. Col. 328.
239
27
At the time, John Hull argued that the religious clauses of the 1944 Education Act
were not under serious political threat,249 but the possibility of abolition was palpable
enough to persuade Raymond Johnstone, the Marchioness of Lothian, Charles Oxley
and Mary Whitehouse to launch the ‘Save Religion in State Schools’ campaign in
January 1976 which soon garnered substantial public and political support. For these
campaigners and their successors, whom David Rose has labelled ‘Christianisers’
and ‘cultural restorationists’,250 the secularisation of the aims of RI/RE and the
broadening of its content to include world religions and secular worldviews was
symbolic of a broader attack upon the Christian heritage, identity and morality of
Britain and principally perpetrated by militant Secularists and Humanists. In similar
terms, the majority of those who responded and contributed to the twenty-six
questions and debates focusing on RI/RE in the British Houses of Parliament during
the 1970s asserted ‘an inextricable association’ between traditional Christian
instruction and ‘the moral development of young people, the quality of national life,
and (in the view of some) the very survival of Britain’.251 According to Adrian Bell, the
underlying assumptions of such discourses were rejected by ‘the most influential
segments of professional opinion’ who continued to promote multi-faith RE even
though it ‘represented a minority view within the population as a whole’. 252
Nevertheless, these public and political discourses help to contextualise later rearguard actions to preserve Christian morality in schools.253
Gerald Parsons argues that the clash of assumptions ‘between an essentially liberal,
secular and pluralist educational establishment and a number of religiously
conservative groups [was] made explicit and brought forcefully into public debate by
the religious aspects of the 1988 Education Reform Act’.254 Although retaining the
main clauses of the 1944 Education Act governing RI (now RE) and Collective
Worship in schools, the 1988 legislation stipulated that, firstly, each LEA was
required to establish a Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education, mirroring
the constituency of Agreed Syllabus Conferences, to advise on RE and Collective
Worship; secondly, Agreed Syllabuses had to ‘reflect the fact that the religious
traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian whilst taking account of the
teaching and practices of the other principal religions represented in Great Britain’;
and thirdly, Collective Worship had to be ‘wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian
character’.255 Such provisions, which remain extant, evidence the long-term failure of
the campaigns of Secularist and Humanist individuals and organisations, including
the NSS and BHA, to garner the levels of public and political support required to
repeal, or at least substantially reform, the religious clauses of the 1944 Education
Act.
Summary
Despite failing to precipitate the revocation or significant reform of the existing
legislation governing RI and Collective Worship, Secularist and/or Humanist
campaigners were successful in creating opportunities with the potential to exert
influence over the developing theories and practices of RI/RE, Collective Worship
and moral education. These openings included dialogue with Christians, academics
and educational professionals, involvement in ecclesiastical policy-making in
J. Hull, ‘Editorial’, LfL 15, no. 4 (1976b): 123.
D. Rose, ‘The voice of the cultural restorationists: recent trends in RE policy-making’,
Curriculum Journal 14, no. 3 (2003): 305-26.
251 Bell, ‘Agreed syllabuses of religious education since 1944’, 139.
252 Ibid.,193-5.
253 F. Tulloch, ed., Curriculum Christianity (London: Unity Press, 1977).
254 Parsons, ‘There and Back Again?’, 183.
255 1988 Education Act. Part 1. Chapter 1. Section 8(3) and 7(1).
249
250
28
education, participation in local curriculum decision-making, and membership of
relevant bodies, such as the Religious Education Council of England and Wales,
which was established in 1973 to represent the collective interests of professional
associations and faith communities. Secularists and Humanists also made
conspicuous contributions to public and political discourses concerning religious
education. Both the NSS and BHA received widespread publicity for their views
through national print and broadcast media outlets, as well as through the
educational and ecclesiastical press. For many of those who produced and
consumed such coverage, Secularists and Humanists played the role of devil’s
advocates constantly challenging their supposed antagonists to defend the existing
statutory requirements and to justify prevailing theories, policies and practices. Their
campaigns garnered support and opposition, as well as precipitating numerous
parliamentary questions and debates about the maintenance, reformation or abolition
of religious education. For some, the vocal presence of Secularists and Humanists in
the public sphere was symptomatic of broader social and cultural changes which
were challenging the Christian (moral) foundations of national institutions, traditions
and values. In this context, reactionary campaigners saw an inextricable link between
the fate of Christian education and worship in schools and the future of Christian
Britain. In the next section, comparable questions concerning the relationship
between religion, education and identity will be discussed with regard to selected
contemporary educational issues.
Contemporary relevance
There are parallels to be drawn between the campaigns of Secularists and
Humanists in England in the 1960s and 1970s and those of today. The BHA, for
example, continues to call for inclusive (non-religiously affiliated) school assemblies;
impartial, fair and balanced RE which includes the study of world religions and
secular worldviews; and the phasing out of faith schools.256 Both the NSS and BHA
continue to contribute to public and political discourses concerning educational
issues and to receive disproportionately extensive publicity, considering the size of
their memberships. The BHA also continues to be represented on bodies concerned
with the maintenance and improvement of RE, for example, as one of the ‘faith and
belief communities’ on the steering group which supported the development of
Religious Education: The Non-Statutory National Framework.257 It is not possible,
without further research, to ascertain whether the levels and detailed content of this
campaigning, and the extent of professional, political or public engagement with it,
have remained constant or changed over time. It is clear, however, that the
potentially profound influence which schools have over the beliefs, morals and values
of successive generations continues to be recognized by interest groups across the
religious and secular spectrum.
A growing number of academic commentators have begun to highlight the extent to
which the ‘institutional marginalisation’ of Christianity in schools and the provision of
multi-faith RE, which adopts a predominantly procedural and practical rather than
ideological agnosticism, may have led to decreasing exposure to Christian
knowledge, exacerbated the relativising effects of religious pluralisation, and thereby,
furthered the secularisation or de-Christianisation of English society. First, Terence
Copley believes that the omission or marginalisation of religion in schools constitutes
a form of secular indoctrination.258 Second, Trevor Cooling argues that the adoption
of a secular (or Humanist) view of the objective nature of shared human knowledge
256
See, for example, BHA, A Better Way Forward (London: BHA, 2006).
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, Religious Education (London: Qualifications and
Curriculum Authority, 2004).
258 T. Copley, Indoctrination, Education and God (London: SPCK, 2005).
257
29
and values as a basis for the life and curricula of fully state-maintained schools has
been unfair to those of a religious faith because it excludes a religious interpretation
of the meaning and significance of what is otherwise shared human knowledge.259
Third, and most recently, Marius Felderhof argues that Secular Humanism now
dominates the curriculum of fully state-maintained schools since nearly all subjects
pursue knowledge ‘as if God did not exist’.260 For him, RE should be an exception to
this and deploy a religious methodology to explore “what it might mean to understand
oneself and the world religiously, i.e. as an agent ‘before God’ or ‘before the
transcendent’”.261 Where such an approach is denied, Felderhof believes the state is
acting intolerantly with regard to the right of citizens to maintain and manifest their
religion. Whether one agrees with these criticisms and proposals greatly depends on
one’s theological, political and educational viewpoint, but they are clearly part of a
broader historical and contemporary discourse about the function of religious
education in schools and the place of religion in society.
Zaki Cooper and Guy Lodge have recently noted, in contrast to the predictions made
in the 1960s regarding ‘the inexorable decline of religion’, that there has been a
‘sharp rise in religious affiliations, practices and beliefs’ and a growing sense of
antagonism between ‘some religiously minded groups and individuals’ on the one
hand, and ‘liberal secularists’ and ‘the ethics of the democratic secular state’ on the
other.262 According to them, this has led faith communities to ‘feel more alienated and
apart from the cultural mainstream’ and for their contribution ‘to the life and cohesion
of communities’ and as ‘vital sources of civic mobilisation and social campaigning’ to
be overlooked by political progressives and liberals.263 For Michael Kenny, one of the
factors exacerbating such feelings is ‘the resurgence of a sharp-edged secularism
associated with a variety of high-profile commentators (Martin Amis, Richard
Dawkins, A. C. Grayling and Christopher Hitchens among others)’ who view
secularity, rather than religious diversity, as the foundation for national identity and
democracy.264 For Kenny, this is because they, like many progressives, ‘still take
their bearings from the secularist ambition of removing religion from state and public
square, and the unquestioned premise that religious belief is only ever a source of
division within the body politic’.265 This is an educational and political issue of global
proportions. It has been argued, for example, that a partiality towards secularism in
the European context could be leading potentially to the complete removal of the
religious dimension from public education.266 Meanwhile, it has been suggested that
democratisation in the Arab world may depend upon a re-conceptualisation of the
relationship between democracy, religion and secularism.267
The relevance of our historical research on RI/RE in the 1960s and 1970s to the
above contemporary issues is clear. While Secularists and Humanists were
successful in disclosing the Christian assumptions embedded within the sometimes
hidden curricula of fully publicly-funded schools in England, they were often less
259
Cooling, Doing God in Education, 22 and 39.
M. Felderhof, ‘Secular Humanism’, in Debates in Religious Education, ed., L. Philip Barnes
(London: Routledge, 2012), 152.
261 Ibid., 153.
262 Z. Cooper and G. Lodge, eds., Faith in the Nation (London: IPPR, 2008), 3-6.
263 Ibid., 5.
264 M. Kenny, ‘Conclusion: Secular or sacred? Towards a new settlement between faith and
the public realm’, in eds. Cooper and Lodge, Faith in the Nation, 62-4.
265 Ibid., 64.
266 J. Arthur and M. Holdsworth, ‘The European Court of Human Rights, Secular Education
and Public Schooling’, BJES 60, no. 2 (2012): 129-149.
267 B. Watson, ‘Democracy, religion and secularism: reflections on the public role of religion in
a modern society’, JBV 32, no. 2 (2011): 173-183.
260
30
adept at redirecting this critical lens upon the conceptions of reality and truth which
underlay their own proposals.268 Through their use of terms such as ‘objective’,
‘rational’, ‘neutral’, ‘unbiased’ and ‘impartial’, many Secularists and Humanists
promoted the idea that educational theories, policies and practices could be divorced
from ontological assumptions and that supposedly value-free ‘secular' education
could guarantee absolute freedom of thought, conscience and religion. On such
bases, pluralist arguments in favour of faith schools or religiously-differentiated
curricula were deemed illegitimate. Our research cannot resolve philosophical
debates about such issues. It does suggest, however, that the promotion and
institutionalisation of inter-faith cooperation, as well as interaction between those with
and without a religious affiliation, to ensure faith-sensitive deliberative policymaking,269 will not thrive unless all participants genuinely value plurality and, in the
context of education, are mindful of the institutional, curricular and pedagogical
implications of their ontological and epistemological assumptions, as well as the
potential ideological implications of pragmatic methodological decisions. The history
of RI/RE theory, policy and practice is littered with examples of partiality towards
religious or secular worldviews. Honing the historiographical record is one method of
bringing these to the fore, whether the lessons extrapolated are used to justify
rapprochement or retrenchment has yet to be seen.
Conclusion
The religious history of education, and of RI/RE in particular, should gain a higher
profile in debates about secularisation or de-Christianisation in England. None of the
existing accounts, for example, identify the concerted and organised educational
campaigns of Secularists or Humanists, or the responses of Christians, academics or
professionals associated with religious education, as being of significance. Perhaps
the campaigns have been perceived as accidental effects, rather than deliberate
causes, of secularisation or de-Christianisation. Maybe their instigators wished to
play down their involvement, preferring to present secularisation or deChristianisation as unavoidable consequences of modernisation and/or intellectual
progress. Yet our research has unearthed evidence of premeditated attempts by
Secularists and Humanists to bring about the ‘institutional marginalisation’ of
Christianity within the life and curricula of fully state-maintained schools in England.
This was justified on the basis of arguments from fairness and objectivity, but also
with reference to ‘institutional attenuation’ within the churches and the ‘cultural
displacement’ of Christianity. Indeed, in the public and political discourses concerning
religious education, the often erroneous or simplistic generalisations made by
Secularists and Humanists, as well as by their opponents, about the religious or
secular identity of England can be interpreted as rhetorical devices by which they
sought to promote or prevent secularisation or de-Christianisation.
At the same time, on the basis of the ‘common ground’ they had identified between
them, many Christians and educationists collaborated with Humanists to develop
approaches to religious and moral education that were divorced from explicit religious
commitment, thereby helping to dismantle some of the mechanisms by which fully
state-maintained schools endorsed Christian principles. It was a vision which
cohered with that of many academics and professionals associated with RE and was
evident in some mainstream policy documents. These collaborations and
congruences militate against any simple binary opposition between Secularists and
Humanists on the one hand and Christians and religious educators on the other. The
complex relationships between these sometimes competing and co-operating groups
evidence ideological similarities and differences both within and between them. The
268
269
Priestley, ‘Religion, Education and Secularization’, 16.
Kenny, ‘Conclusion: Secular or sacred?’, 68.
31
number of individuals who belonged to both the NSS and BHA, for example, also
prevent clear distinctions being made between their respective campaigns.
Nevertheless, an understanding of what motivated Christians and religious educators
to co-operate with Humanists would engender deeper insight into the secularising
and pluralising trends within RI/RE theory in the 1960s and 1970s.
It is possible, for example, that some Christians, motivated by missionary zeal, had
such confidence in the Christian message that they believed its veracity would be
recognised by their supposed antagonists during the course of open dialogue.
Alternatively, perhaps some were influenced by radical secular theology which
embraced ‘secular society’ or by moderate Anglican reformism which supported the
secularisation of the state and its law in order to differentiate it from, and thereby to
protect, the Church and Christian morality.270 In this sense, it may have been partand-parcel of ‘trends to reform, liberalism, and radical political and theological
thought within the Christian churches which … constituted the effervescence of a
benevolent humanistic Christianity’.271 From these viewpoints, Christian dialogue with
Humanists and the development of supposedly non-confessional multi-faith
approaches to RE could be interpreted positively as part of a re-positioning of
Christianity and the churches within the new secular and religiously plural context.
Then again, the collaboration could be interpreted negatively as a fearful response to
the threat of legislative change resulting from persistent charges of indoctrination
and/or a potentially exaggerated sense of the progress of secularisation or deChristianisation. In this vein, for some, it could have been a deliberate strategy in
which concessions were made in order to retain the predominant role of the churches
in the control and organisation of voluntary schools, RE and Collective Worship. The
retention of some religious influence over fully publicly-funded education would have
been all the more important bearing in mind the extent to which ‘institutional
attenuation’ within the churches had weakened their ability to take sole responsibility
for Christian socialisation. Overall, it is clear that further research on this matter is
required.
In conclusion, the history of RI/RE has, at worst, been represented as a logical and
uninterrupted sequence of theoretical developments based upon the literature of
selected academic writers and ignoring wider intellectual discourses, professional,
public and political debates, and the multiple contexts, complexities and
contestations that influence curriculum change.272 This historiographical deficiency
has an analogue in broader religious and ecclesiastical history. According to Callum
Brown, ‘[m]uch of the historical writing about the religious crisis [of the 1960s] adopts
a fairly strong “church gaze”’ in which ‘the church becomes the primary agent of its
own decline – an effect accentuated even more when the outcomes … are
determined to be “not necessarily bad” or, even more, actually “good things”’, for
example, liberal theology, liberal Christian assaults on social and political evils, and
‘the erosion of constraints upon civil liberties … through the marginalisation of
conservative Christian political influence’.273 He argues that such accounts fail to
analyse external challenges to Christian hegemonic culture and the wider
establishment (i.e. state, judiciary, church, landed classes and others), such as from
the religiously apathetic and affluent young whose desire for liberty engendered a
rejection of church and parental controls.274 Our article has taken seriously the
religious, ecclesiastical, theological, legal, cultural, philosophical and other contexts
Grimley, ‘Law, Morality and Secularisation’.
Brown, ‘What was the Religious Crisis of the 1960s?’, 469.
272 Parker and Freathy, ‘Context, complexity and contestation’.
273 Brown, ‘What was the Religious Crisis of the 1960s?’, 473-4.
274 Ibid., 475.
270
271
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in which RI/RE curriculum theories developed, and focused on specific factors,
namely, the campaigns of Secularists and Humanists. We conclude, following Brown,
that the internal impulses to reform RI/RE in the 1960s and 1970s in a moderate,
liberal, ecumenical and in certain respects secular direction are inexplicable without
an understanding of the external threats which enabled those reforms to succeed.
Notes on contributors
Dr Rob Freathy is Director of Taught Programmes for the College of Social Sciences
and International Studies and Director of Education for the Graduate School of
Education at the University of Exeter. His research interests include religious
education, education for citizenship, the historiography of twentieth century education
and the application of historical methods in educational research. He is the Book
Reviews Editor of History of Education and a member of the History of Education
Society (UK) Executive Committee. He has published articles in History of Education,
History of Education Researcher, Oxford Review of Education, Religious Education
(USA), British Journal of Religious Education and Journal of Beliefs and Values.
Dr Stephen Parker is Head of Postgraduate Studies and Research Degrees
Coordinator at the Institute of Education, University of Worcester. His research
interests include the cultural, political and ideological history of religious education,
religious education in the broadcast media, RE teachers’ lives, and the effects of
religious education on students’ values and worldviews. He is a Fellow of the Royal
Historical Society, a member of the History of Education Society (UK) Executive
Committee, and a Book Reviews Editor for the Journal of Beliefs and Values. He has
published articles in the Journal of Beliefs and Values, History of Education, British
Journal of Religious Education and Midland History.
Drs Freathy and Parker and are undertaking two research projects on the history of
religious education funded by the British Academy and the Westhill Endowment
Trust. With Leslie J. Francis, they are co-editors of Religious Education and Freedom
of Religion and Belief (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012).
33