Religion, belief and faith identities in learning and teaching

Pen Portraits by Angela Drisdale Gordon

During the pandemic when all lectures and sessions were online, we found that promoting icebreaker activities was crucial to creating a sense of community, and understanding especially when students were so far apart.

One activity that we still use is the interactive map format on padlet, students can drop a pin on their location and talk about how where they’re from affects their practice. We haven’t really thought about religion in that way. Reading the case study has made me think we should include questions on faith as it can be just as important to some as to where they were they are from and in a number of cases both are very much intertwined.

‘Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education.’ Stimulus paper (Modood & Calhoun, 2015)

‘We don’t do God’? the changing nature of public religion. Professor Tariq Modood, University of Bristol

I do believe that to be a truly multicultural society the state must be secular. I found the concept of western secularism that Professor Modood Writes about to be interesting, where we have countries like the UK, where they have an established state religion, means that true secularism is very difficult to achieve, and that when we talk about secularism, we are really talking about the freedom for people to take part in their own religious beliefs rather than truly separating state and religion. There is a balance to be had and as with all these questions and concepts, it’s not clear cut, yes/no, true/false answers. When you look at the troubles in Northern Island and the way that faith intersects with nationalism, I think that secular schools are extremely important to help heal the rifts in that society. However, you can take it to a more extreme in countries like France, where they want to ban religious clothing on the streets, which to me is discrimination. Does this mean that while we have a state religion, does it get preferential treatment over other religions?

Kwame Anthony Appiah Reith lecture on Creed.

I found this lecture really interesting, as someone who was not bought up religious and is a firmly non-religious adult, I have the perception that religion is old, stayed and out of step with modern life, Kwame argues that this isn’t the case and that is fluid and changing and has to be in order to still be relevant.

Reflecting on this I think that my perception comes from what I see on in the media and this is primarily about a small, but vocal minority that conforms to my view of religion, the extremists from Christianity and Islam for instance. However, this is not the belief of the vast majority of people of faith. Certainly not the people of faith I know from many different religions.

I look forward to listening to the rest of the series

Terms of reference from SoN around Faith

Expanding the Conversation, Interview with Mark Dean

I thought that this was a really interesting article, the influx of foreign students who are bringing in different faiths is a really interesting concept. I think. That the Anglican Church is his ‘boss’ and that someone from the Christian faith works as an interfaith advisor to a student and staff community that is getting more diverse due to the influx of foreign students, I’m surprised we don’t have more representation of the different faiths available to the staff and students. Maybe we do, but it wasn’t spoken about here. Mark also answered a question on religions role in Socio-politics, which he feels is very important. Which reminded me of the fact that there are up to 12 unelected archbishops and bishops in the house of lords. As we are living in a multicultural society, surely these 12 seats should be a fair reflection of the make-up of faiths in this country?