Michael Kelly: The importance of faith formation in our schools
THE Government’s decision to effectively downgrade religious studies in secondary schools is a dangerous experiment-at-a-time when religion is increasingly a lens through which to see and fathom the world. Making the subject optional also deprives emerging generations of valuable tools to understand what makes the world go round.
The 21st century has proven that far from being irrelevant, more and more people across the globe are becoming religious, and faith is an important backdrop to many challenges facing the world. Add to that the fact that the majority of immigrants coming to Europe – including Ireland – describe themselves as religious, and ignorance of religion means ignorance of the world around us.
Nothing good comes from ignorance. One doesn’t have to be religious to understand religion and know its importance in global affairs. I’m not talking about faith formation, or preparing children for the sacraments – but rather the body of basic religious knowledge that everyone should have.
How many Irish teenagers, for example, leave school having the slightest notions about distinctions within Islam? Do they know the difference between Sunni Islam and Shia Islam? What of Sufis and Salafism?
So what, you might say. What’s the big deal? Religion is a private matter, and sectoral interests within Islam (or any other religion) are of little interest in modern Ireland.
But, it is a big deal – to fail to understand some of the competing interests at the heart of contemporary Islam. How can you grasp the central thrust of movements such as Isil or al-Qa’ida without an awareness of religion, distorted though it may be. To miss the fact that rivalry between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran is at the heart of many of the lingering conflicts in the Middle East is to be ignorant of the volatile geopolitics of the region.
In seeking to exclude specifically Catholic faith formation from the curriculum, Education Minister Richard Bruton has missed a golden opportunity for the education establishment to embrace modern pluralist Ireland and show younger people that religion plays a vital role in a diverse society. It’s not about trying to make people religious, but it’s about helping young people understand that many people are religious and faith plays a guiding role in many world affairs.
In the UK, for example, religious studies is a compulsory subject until the age of 16.
Schools are required by law to teach the subject and students are examined on it. The syllabus is a mix of a focus on the place of religion in society, the theological underpinnings of the great world religions, the importance of religious festivals and observances, and the faith-based dimensions of ethical debates. In reality, the situation in Ireland was somewhat similar. Talk to recent schoolleavers, they’ll tell you about religious classes dominated by interesting debates rather than indoctrination.
The study of religion does need to be separated from faith formation. In the UK, if a school is Anglican, for example, that ethos is catered for quite apart from the religious studies department where the subject is treated as an academic discipline, alongside other subjects like history or geography. While Anglicanism is nominally the state religion of the UK, Britain could hardly be described as a confessional state.
It is one of the most secular places in Europe, though it is a complex mix of people from many religious backgrounds and none. But what policymakers there understand is that religion plays an important role in society and in the lives of individual citizens – to fail to get this is to be tone deaf to something which means a great deal to many people.
So while the Government might trumpet the new decision as reflective of a more diverse Ireland, it is actually only pandering to a very small but vocal lobby of secularist organisations who are stuck in a time warp of believing that over time the world would move beyond religious beliefs.
Nietzsche, Marx and Freud all thought that religion would wither and die in the 20th century. They were on the wrong side of history, and the undoubtedly apocryphal story of a theology student scrawling on the bathroom wall “Nietzsche is dead – God” points to a growing confidence among theists
Christianity is rising so rapidly in China, that by 2030 there may well be more church-going Chinese than Americans – a prospect that points to the ongoing relevance of religious faith on the global stage
that their faith has risen to the challenge.
They have reason to be confident. Religion is experiencing a global boon.
Christianity may be on the retreat in Europe, and some people even predict that it is dying – North America may go the same way.
But, what is actually happening is that the global centre of gravity is shifting towards Africa, Latin America and – increasingly – towards Asia.
That’s why the Vatican’s current overtures towards China are fascinating.
Statistics from the communist state show that Christianity is rising so rapidly that by 2030 there may well be more church-going Chinese than Americans. It’s an enchanting prospect and one which certainly points to the ongoing relevance of religious faith on the global stage.
If we’re serious about understanding the world and having mature and well-formed opinions about what is happening in the world, religion has to be part of the picture. Rather than relegating religion to the margins, the Department of Education should prioritise its non-devotional academic study among students.
Faith formation should be reserved for those who want it, but a worldview which doesn’t take religion into account is a very impoverished and one-dimensional outlook.