"Without doubt the constructive working and mutual understanding between faiths in this country is one of our greatest strengths. Educating children about different faiths is of immense importance in leading children to understand the history that has helped shape the values and traditions of this country, and of other countries and cultures. The extended Inter Faith Week... this year gives even more opportunity for schools and young people to participate, and I hope they will take advantage of this to build new partnerships and celebrate the diversity that exists across the UK." - Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education
The sentiments are excellent. Many would wish the actual commitment of government to the education of children about different faiths was equally excellent. In February of this year lecturers, teachers and backbench Conservative MPs were reacting to the news that the same Mr. Gove was excluding religious education from the core elements making up the new English Baccalaureate. It was apparently not an "essential academic" subject.
There are outstanding committed religious education teachers working in Britain, not all of them in faith schools. They would be the first to say that religious education was not as high on the government set of priorities as it sounds above. Nor does current and forthcoming cuts in the quota of students given teacher training in religious education bode well for the future.
The teaching of religion in a predominantly secular society is a contested area which in reality is unlikely to be given the "immense importance" of the teaching of other subjects by governments. Religious education now feels like a football team recently been relegated to a lower division. In addition, without specialist teachers, some personal baggage is likely to influence attitudes to the subject. And let's be realistic: people who talk about, think about and act about religion in the same way that they would about, say, immunology , in a completely objective way - in accordance with principles of a liberal education - are rare.
The Rev. Giles Fraser of St. Paul's fame spoke on the BBC's Thought for the Day about this year's Inter-faith week reflecting on the tendency to teach and make cosy assumptions that "the different faiths are really all the same". The diversity of different faiths can easily be turned into the religious equivalent of mushy peas, an easily digested pap for children and those not quite up for spicy guacamole. Quests for a global ethics, compassion as the highest common denominator of faiths, cuddly interfaith coffee mornings, are fine as far as they go, as long as they protect and respect genuine difference. A word, even the word "compassion", can carry very different weight and connotations in different faith traditions. It is diversity that is socially enriching not putting the richness of our religious traditions through the blender and the "blander".
It was good to hear Giles Fraser's warnings on prime time radio. It was particularly good because the contribution that the Tony Blair Faith Foundation hopes to make in all its interfaith work is blender-free and blander-free in its approach. Our universities programme, the Faith and Globalisation Initiative aims to analyse the distinctiveness of different religious approaches to globalisation and the impact of globalisation on them. Our schools programme, Face to Faith, takes deeply seriously the fact that children grow up in different religious traditions so that our responsibility is to make dialogue a way for them to deepen their understanding of their own tradition, as well as understanding better that of another. The links we make by videoconferences between classrooms around the world, in nineteen different countries, are made to enhance communication, young people telling their stories, relating their religious experience, and listening to those of others, building respect and comprehension of what matters to people of other faiths.
So have we given up on any commonality, any shared vision? Absolutely not. Our starting point is that dialogue is always a trialogue; the conversation takes place implicitly within hearing of the many with a secular mind-set, or at least a spirituality that wants nothing to do with institutional religious structures. Underlying all these conversations, behind the reality of our religious pluralism and secularity is a common humanity and a common humanism. This is the one word that cannot and must not be left in the sole custody of the different enlightenment traditions.
Put "humanism" after the name of each of the world faiths and see what you get. I would hope a peaceful and justice society. Provided, of course, we can operationalise this humanism by asking common questions and solving common problems from the richness of our religious traditions: questions about health and wellbeing, parenting, global warming, the existence of dire poverty in the mist of affluence. It will take a bit longer than one extended interfaith week to achieve that. But it is worth trying.