Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education:
Having just gone through a bereavement of my father, I have found this section challenging. Faith means many things to many people and is entirely personal to them, being a relationship between what we call a soul, what we call the world and what we call the unknown- and many, many more things.
I recently discovered from one of my support practices, that UAL has a chaplaincy led by William Whitcombe; https://artschaplaincy.net/ It’s part of the UK University Chaplaincy Network, and provides help and support, with resect to faith, to staff and students. This was a surprise to me, and came to me just as I needed it to.
Religion is a public, not just a private good & The ‘vaguely Christian’ UK
I stated above that I believe religion is a private affair, yet that respect needs to be visible in the world, and everyone knowing that they have a private affair they can take to a publicly recognised organisation of similar ideas, is so important to allow us to make space for it. In the west, we have built this structure into our way of life, and is fiercely protected by the state.
Multiculturalism
The word ‘Multiculturality‘ first came up for me while watching the 2011 BBC comedy about the London Olympics, 2012, when there was a particular problem with the design of a temple, and the lead character playing the head of the olympic games, with a pretty stressed out architect, came to the conclusion that they could add a turret to a building to make it a multi-faith building. It’s a comedy, but as I believe comedy is one of the main communication methods of British people, I think this is where an institutional approach/standpoint of religion in this country is probably prevalent.
However, in the paper from Tariq Modood, Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education, Modood’s description of Multiculturalism is that it’s an unpopular term from a result of post-immigration ethno-religious minorities in Western Europe, a respect for difference, offering greater equality of spaces, creating freedoms for multicultural expression in public spaces, especially the recognition of distinct disadvantages and special needs. This term is saying that ‘minorities need to be included without having to assimilate, without having to conform to the norms and attitudes of the majority.’ This is one of the reasons UAL puts social justice at the centre of everything it does.
Creed by Kwame Anthony Appiah
A few years ago I started listening to the Reith Lectures on BBC Sounds out of pure interest. I was happy to repeat the series of lectures provided by Kwame Anthony Appiah, who not only points out that faith isn’t a set of beliefs/rules to be obeyed in order to live a holy life, but that it’s a set practices of constantly evolving interpretations of sacred scriptures, discussed over and with in a community/fellowships.
Disputes about where and when woman should cover their faces in different places, how sexuality fits into different faiths and debates of whether women can or should be faith leaders.
I think what Kwame is getting at, is that if faith is essentially a performance of traditional practice, conventions of interpretation and communities of worship, then we should be aware that our interpretations and practice will become part of the larger idea of faith, and recognise that as it evolves, we too become the ancestors of it, and have the power to change it, which he called both a burden and a blessing.
Our students too are in a community, with a set practice and some founding beliefs. Our job as a teacher is to help the students come to the best possible understanding of the belief/task at hand and help them through it.
Othering
In this post I have talked a little about how faith is both personal and private, yet we make space for it. Why do we do this? Well, until you need faith, it can be considered illusive. Life events happen and our lives becomes something new. Before this past few months I would have considered myself as one of the National Geographic’s 2014 survey’s 48.5%, who considered themselves as not having a religion. I’m not going to disclose here where my beliefs have taken me so far, but I can say, like it is for anyone else, it’s a journey, and can be life changing. Respect is due to anyone, at any stage who have a personal relationship to religion, including my late father, as it can be their guiding star to getting up in the morning and doing whatever it is they do, from a place of love.
Rest In Peace Adrian Jarvis, 1951 – 2023.