Religious / faith literacy

Joanna Cox of the CofE's adult education unit sent the following out in her regular Friday mailing.

A concept being discussed increasingly recently is that of "Faith Literacy" / "Religious Literacy" (and, of course the reverse case of illiteracy in these areas - a brush that you may have heard used to tar various bits of officialdom!). While the issue has been the source of much debate in school based religious education for some time, a variety of concerns are now bringing the matter into a much wider arena - not least because of concerns about community cohesion and social exclusion.

Issues around this are likely to come increasingly 'onto the radar' of those with a range training / development briefs in the church - and it could be useful to liaise with diocesan inter-faith advisors particularly. I gather that a couple of interfaith organisations are thinking about developing faith / religious literacy "curricula" - partly to encourage officialdom / service providers etc to work sensitively. Our training networks could potentially have useful input here - both in terms of educational / learning processes, and in relation to Christian input .

The following description of "religious literacy" comes from ACT - The Association of Christian Teachers.

A religiously literate person is one who:

(a) Demonstrates an awareness of what life looks like from both theistic and atheistic points of view;
(b) Knows and understands the central determining features of certain religions (e.g. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism) and secular ideologies(e.g. humanism);

(c) Recognises religious and secular worldviews in practices and ideas (e.g. relating to the natural environment) and has some grasp of what makes each religion/belief system what it is;

(d) Appreciates the principal effects of each religion/belief system in terms of the values, attitudes and impact it generates in individuals, families and communities;

(e) Values the development of their own religious insight;
(f) Values the development of religious insight for other people.

However there may well be other definitions / understandings of the terms in use, and it would be interesting to hear from any of you who are aware of / working with different perspectives or approaches.

The ACT definitions (which seem to be from this paper -the email didn't have a reference) are very interesting and my first reaction was to think them right and proper as parts of a definition. Then I began to think ... actually I think it's possible that quite a number of clergy and ordinands would fail to be religiously literate by the standards of part (c) and might mainly touch (d) in terms of negative impacts. Many, I suspect would struggle also with (f) if it meant that religious insight kept the person in their own religion. Now recall that ACT is an evangelical organisation, so this is doubly an interesting list. I do think that the list is probably about right; but it indicates to me that we have a way to go even with 'religious professionals'. Part of the task is to be able to make a robust biblical case for evangelicals to take this seriously. Unfortunately the ACT seems not to do this and as it stands I would anticipate some responses to write it off. However, I think that the longer perspective of loving others as ourselves, valuing human freedom of conscience, leaving room for the work of the Spirit and general realpolitik of good neighbouring demands that we take such an approach seriously.