Interrogating religion: Christian/secular values, citizenship and racial upliftment in governmental education policy

Abstract

AbstractFaith schools have (re)gained an increasingly prominent place within the public education system in the UK. Whilst the former Labour government expanded the number of state-funded faith schools during its terms in office, they continue to be supported by the current coalition government. The expansion of faith schooling has continued despite widespread opposition attributing much of the religious divisions and lack of community cohesion within society to faith schooling, particularly after ‘race riots’ in the north of England in 2001. This article does not seek to contribute to the largely polarised debate arguing either for or against faith schools. Instead, I explore how religion circulates in governmental discourse supporting faith schools and the sociopolitical work it does through law. I focus on the key contention put forward particularly by the former Labour government that faith schools, contrary to being divisive, can actually play an important role in the promotion of community cohesion, precisely because of the values and ethos of these schools. I examine how this governmental discourse is influenced by social capital and communitarian theories that highlight the role of Christian or church school values in fostering citizenship and community cohesion through education. I suggest that the influence of these theories on government policy has led to church schools becoming a benchmark for other schools to emulate, especially where they embody state/British values which are sometimes posited as being universal and secular. Rather than the expansion of faith schools being a policy that supports schools of all faiths, Muslim schools in particular have been singled out as posing a potential ‘threat to the nation’ and the social cohesion within it. In addition, I argue that the often invisibilised normative influence of de-theologised Christian/secular values plays a role in regulating the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ religion. The potential effects of delimiting religion through the discourse of values, coupled with the engendering of citizenship and belonging of children from minority religious/ethnic backgrounds within the education system, might also be viewed as effectively resulting in a form of ‘racial upliftment’. My analysis draws on critical religion and race perspectives that remain largely absent within socio-legal scholarship on law and religion and indeed citizenship. One exception is more recent scholarship on gender and the banning of Muslim religious dress in schools and other public spaces, and the recognition of certain areas of Muslim family law within Western legal systems. However, analyses that attend to the contingent ways in which religion can circulate and be produced through law relating to children are urgently needed alongside those attending to gender.