Church Schools - critical friendship

Big Bulky Anglican is a thoughtful parish priest who is not afraid of commenting on the church and its mission and place in public life. He has posted recently on the role of church schools in a multifaith and post-Christendom society and provides some worthwhile reflections here. The post effectively encourages a stepping back from unqualified support of faith schools and, noting comments by Simon Barrow and Jonathan Bartley of the Christian think-tank Ekklesia suggests that we should be putting some clear blue water between ourselves and the self-serving agendas of government.

Now I speak as a parent and governor of a church school in a mixed faith, multicultural area. Nearly half of the school's in-take is Muslim yet it provides a distinctly Christian ethos to its education; education that  genuinely sees every child and member of staff as significant and valued. Other faith celebrations are acknowledged, taught and shared while there is a weekly Christian act of worship. The key thing is, though, no assumptions are made about the allegiance of pupils and in every explicit Christian story or prayer, a lesson or application that can be owned by everyone is provided. Indeed, every prayer is prefaced with a, "if you agree, you can say "Amen" at the end". The church is distinctive, but inclusive. Not one pupil is taken out of the collective worship and the local community, of decidedly other faiths, value the school partly because it "does God".

Now, after this eulogising, I have to go back to the posts mentioned above. The challenge to us is that faith schools are often NOT like this. The critique of society that they are elitist and self-aggrandising can so often stick. There are genuine issues too about the unfairness of the privilege enjoyed by CofE schools that I too am concerned about. The argument is not, "should faith schools exist?" but rather "how should their respective faiths inform their role in the schools in an age of diversity?"

I would commend to you the booklets published by my friend Smeeee, "Top Tips for Welcoming Children of Other Faiths" which you can link to on the sidebar of this site and also the latest edition of Colin Chapman's "Cross and Crescent" book. The latter has some case studies in the back of the book, one on faith schools where I was kindly invited to publish some thoughts. Let's not spin the success of some faith schools; dare I say it that in a post-Christendom, cynical society, we should have no truck for spin by the church anyway, but let's take a long hard look at what we can and ought to be in society. The public square is there for us to serve, not to conquer.

Comments

[Tom Allen]

Hi Richard
Would heartily endorse what you say about your school which is precisely the kind of school where the Church should be putting it resources and energy and we have them in my deanery. I have had some intriguing responses from education professionals and teachers about the literacy issue - and whether we might focus on that across all schools in a particular area - being closer to The National Society's foundation document in the process. I have placed a link to your blog on Ruth Gledhill's blog in response to some virulently anti-Muslim comments.

Your ministry would gladden the heart of my CMS colleagues of the late 70s and 80s and Leslie Newbiggen in particular who was one of mentors of that era.

Blessings

Tom