‘Shallow and meaningless?’ RE in the age of cultural Christianity
Famously, Richard Dawkins has recently described himself in a radio interview as a “cultural Christian”. Given his status as a notorious atheist, this may have been received (especially if only the headline was seen) as a positive development, perhaps an indication of a shifting in his world view. Christians rejoice to welcome converts, and where that person is particularly widely known, visions of Saul of Tarsus pop into the believer’s mind.
The reality is that he has not left his atheism behind, and he won’t be disavowing his evolutionary convictions any time soon. What, then, does he mean, in calling himself a “cultural Christian”?
The term betrays an error common in the secular world, that there is a way to be a Christian aesthetically or morally only. That the enjoyment of certain traditions and espousing of particular convictions is on a sort of spectrum of Christianity, where you can choose just how Christian you want to be.
Now, given the goodness of God in the natural law, any movement that finds Christianity of value culturally, is better than one that doesn’t. For many, the impact of Christianity on our culture – law, music, art, architecture – is a positive, and far superior to the contributions of other faiths. Dawkins, for example, said that Christianity is a “fundamentally decent religion”. But Christians know that Christianity demands the proper noun, not just the common. A christian (small ‘c’) may be one who likes some things that are a product of Christian truth – a cultural christian – but a Christian (capital ‘c’) is a follower of Jesus Christ, which demands repentance and faith.
So what explains this lack of awareness in the world of the true nature of Christianity? What allows an intelligent person to think that they can self-label with a faith that they deny in its fundamental sense?
Providentially, this comes at a time when OFSTED has just released a subject report into factors that influence the quality of religious education (RE) in schools in England. ‘Deep and meaningful? The religious education subject report’ finds that schools need to add depth to their RE curriculum – you can view it here.
Parents expect that their children are receiving lessons in religious education (RE), and assume that what is being taught offers an accurate and informative overview of the basic tenets and incidents of the faiths covered. The OFSTED report ‘dug down’, to uncover the content and substance of the RE curriculum. Unlike other subjects, the RE content is not nationally defined, and this offers both a caution and an opportunity for parents. There is considerable scope for latitude in schools deciding locally what will be taught. What the OFSTED report concluded was that “The RE curriculum often lacked sufficient substance to prepare pupils to live in a complex world.” That lack of substance – a “superficially broad curriculum” – is failing to deliver the depth of knowledge required for future study. The overwhelming and oft-repeated conclusion of the Report was that RE, as presently delivered, is not enabling children “to systematically build disciplinary knowledge or personal knowledge”. In other words, as far as the very small amounts that they remember go, children aren’t learning anything that is proving useful to them in life. This is not a good outcome. The picture painted was that RE seems to be falling between the cracks, lacking the necessary dynamic of teaching priority and impactful learning required to render it an enduringly helpful experience.
For Christian parents, this means that there is every reason to expect that whatever is offered as teaching on Christianity may be sorely lacking – what the Report terms, “over-simplistic assertions about religious traditions”. This is instructive for Christian parents, and may suggest that there is an opportunity to offer a more informed supplement to what is presently available. While OFSTED recognized that some teachers receive subject-based professional development in RE, the overwhelming majority do not. Thus, they are simply not equipped to speak on Christianity – what the report termed a lack of “strong teacher subject knowledge”. Have Christians considered asking their school if they might contribute to the instruction from the perspective of a right understanding of who Christ is and what the Bible says to us? On Christianity, Christians have vast amounts of strong subject knowledge!
If one had to sum up the Report in plain terms, it would be that RE just doesn’t matter very much to schools these days (in general). The result of this is a generation (‘another’ generation) of children illiterate in what Christianity is, with no basic understanding of the vital truths of our faith. It is this that gives rise to notions such as “cultural Christians” with its cartoonish misapprehension of what being a Christian really is. Could it be this that permits a prominent atheist to wrongly think that one can rubbish the virgin birth and the resurrection without ruling oneself well outside of the Christian ‘tent’?
A call to action for Christians? Step up, help out? Consider the danger in inaction by Christians. Not only was the RE teaching considered generally inadequate, a very significant criticism of OFSTED is that, due to a confusion about what unbiased or neutral means, the secular is being promoted: “There was a profound misconception among some leaders and teachers that ‘teaching from a neutral stance’ equates to teaching a non-religious worldview. This is simply not the case.” Meaning, the very best that Christian parents can hope for in the teaching of RE may be its superficiality, since many educators who are delivering RE are doing so to counter faiths, and push secularism instead.
It is said that the best lies are those that have some elements of truth. The enemy is sowing deceit in schools via a superficial understanding of Christianity that only undermines the core truths of the Christian faith. This leads to confused notions such as cultural Christianity, or nominal Christianity. A Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ, with all the discipleship that entails. Nothing less.
CViE prays that the Church might be used of the Lord in schools, in a world very much guilty of despising the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? (Romans 2:4)
