Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wtssw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-16T02:33:58.692Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2013

Suhraiya Jivraj
Suhraiya Jivraj*
Affiliation:
University of Kent
*
s.jivraj@kent.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Faith 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.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 9 , Special Issue 3: Complex transformations – gender, religious subjectivities and the new politics of belonging , September 2013 , pp. 318 - 342
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anghie, A. (1996) ‘Francisco de Vitoria and the Colonial Origins of International Law’, Social & Legal Studies 5(3): 321–36.Google Scholar
Annette, J. (2005) ‘Faith Schools and Communities: Communitarianism, Social Capital and Citizenship’, in Gardner, R., Cairns, J. and Lawton, L. (eds), Faith Schools: Consensus or Conflict? London: Routledge-Falmer, 191–201.Google Scholar
Archbishops' council (2001) The Way Ahead: Church of England Schools in the New Millennium. London: Church House Publishing.Google Scholar
Arthur, J. (2003) Education with Character. London: Routledge-Falmer.Google Scholar
Arthur, J. (2005) ‘The Re-emergence of Character Education in British Education Policy’, British Journal of Educational Studies 53(3): 239–54.Google Scholar
Arthur, J. (with Bailey, R.) (2000) Schools and Community: The Communitarian Agenda in Education. London: Falmer Press.Google Scholar
Asad, T. (1993) Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Asad, T. (2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Asad, T. (2006) ‘Trying to Understand French Secularism’, in De Vries, H. and Sullivan, L. E. (eds), Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-secular World. New York: Fordham University Press, 494–526.Google Scholar
Bakht, N. (2004) ‘Family Arbitration Using Sharia Law: Examining Ontario's Arbitration Act and its Impact on Women’, Muslim World Journal of Human Rights 1(1): 1–24.Google Scholar
Bano, S. (2008) ‘In Pursuit of Religious and Legal Diversity: A Response to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the ”Sharia Debate” in Britain’, Ecclesiastical Law Journal 10: 283–309.Google Scholar
Bellah, R. (1967) ‘Civil Religion in America’, Dædalus 97(1): 1–21.Google Scholar
Bellah, R. (1992) The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bhandar, B. (2009) ‘The Ties that Bind: Multiculturalism and Secularism Reconsidered’, Journal of Law and Society 36(3): 301–26.Google Scholar
Blair, T. (1996) New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country. London: The Office of Tony Blair and Westview Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1983) ‘The Forms of Capital’, in Halsey, A. H., Lauder, H., Brown, P. and Wells, A. S. (eds), Education: Culture, Economy and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1997), 46–58.Google Scholar
Bradford district race review panel (chaired by Sir Herman Ouseley) (2001) Community Pride not Prejudice. Making Community Work in Bradford. Bradford: Bradford Vision.Google Scholar
Brown, W. (2006) Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Burtonwood, N. (2003) ‘Social Cohesion, Autonomy and the Liberal Defence of Faith Schools’, Journal of Philosophy of Education 37(3): 415–25.Google Scholar
Casanova, J. (1994) Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Choudhury, T., Malik, M., Halstead, M., Bunglawala, Z. and Spalek, B. (2005) British Muslims – Discrimination, Equality and Community Cohesion. Budapest: Open Society Institute.Google Scholar
Coleman, J. S. (1988) ‘Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital’, American Journal of Sociology 94(1): 95–120.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. L. (2001) ‘Colonialism, Culture, and the Law: A Foreword’, Law and Social Inquiry 26(2): 305–14.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. (1997) Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cristi, M. (2001) From Civil to Political Religion: The Intersection of Culture, Religion and Politics. Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.Google Scholar
Cumper, P. and Lewis, T. (2008–2009) ‘“Taking Religion Seriously?” Human Rights and Hijab in Europe – Some Problems of Adjudication. Journal of Law and Religion 24: 599–627.Google Scholar
De Vries, H. (ed.) (2008) Religion: Beyond a Concept. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Delanty, G. (2000) Citizenship in a Global Age: Society, Culture. Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Delanty, G. (2002) ‘Communitarianism and Citizenship’, in Isin, E. F. and Turner, B. S. (eds), Handbook of Citizenship Studies. London: Sage, 159–74.Google Scholar
Department for children, schools and families (DCSF) (2007a) Faith in the System. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Department for children, schools and families (DCSF) (2007b) Guidance on the Duty to Promote Community Cohesion. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Department for children, schools and families (DCSF) (2010) Religion Education in English Schools: Non-statutory Guidance. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Department for EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT (DfEE) (2000a) National Curriculum Handbook for Secondary Teachers. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Department for education and employment (DfEE) (2000b) National Curriculum Handbook for Primary Teachers. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Department for education and skills (DfES) (2001) Schools: Achieving Success. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Driver, S. and Martell, L. (1997) ‘New Labour's Communitarianisms’, Critical Social Policy 17(52): 27–46.Google Scholar
Dworkin, R. (1978) Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Edge, P. W. (2010) ‘Hard Law and Soft Power: Counter-terrorism, the Power of Sacred Places, and the Establishment of an Anglican Islam’, Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion 12(2): 359–82.Google Scholar
Etzioni, A. (1995) Rights and the Common Good: The Communitarian Perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Etzioni, A. (1996) ‘A Moderate Communitarian Proposal’, Political Theory 24(2): 155–71.Google Scholar
Etzioni, A. (1997) The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society. New York: Basic books.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, T. (2000) The Ideology of Religious Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, T. (2007) Discourse on Civility and Barbarity: A Critical History of Religion and Related Categories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, P. (1987) ‘Racism and the Innocence of Law’, Journal of Law and Society 14(1): 119–32.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, P. (1995) Nationalism, Racism and the Rule of Law. Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, P. (2001) Modernism and the Grounds of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortier, A. M. (2008) Multicultural Horizons: Diversity and the Limits of the Civil Nation. Oxford: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fortier, A. M. (2010) ‘Proximity by Design? Affective Citizenship and the Management of Unease’, Citizenship Studies 14(1): 17–30.Google Scholar
Franklin, J. (2007) Social Capital: Between Harmony and Dissonance (Families and Social Capital ESRC Research Group Working Paper 22). London: London South Bank University.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, F. (1995) Trust: The Social Values and the Creation of Prosperity. London: Hamish Hamilton.Google Scholar
Gamarnikow, E. and Green, A. (2003) ‘Social Justice, Identity Formation and Social Capital: School Diversification Policy under New Labour’, in Vincent, C. (ed.), Social Justice, Education and Identity. London: Routledge-Falmer, 209–23.Google Scholar
Gamarnikow, E. and Green, A. (2005) ‘Keeping the Faith with Social Capital’, in Gardner, R., Lawton, D. and Cairns, J. (eds), Faith Schools: Consensus or Conflict. London: Routledge-Falmer, 90–101.Google Scholar
Gardner, R., Lawton, D. and Cairns, J. (eds) (2005) Faith Schools: Consensus or Conflict? London: Routledge-Falmer.Google Scholar
Gillard, D. (2002) ‘The Faith Schools Debate: Glass in their Snowballs. FORUM 44(1): 15–22.Google Scholar
Gillard, D. (2007) ‘Never Mind the Evidence: Blair's Obsession with Faith Schools’. Available at: <www.educationengland.org.uk/articles/26blairfaith.html>..' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Gillard,+D.+(2007)+‘Never+Mind+the+Evidence:+Blair's+Obsession+with+Faith+Schools’.+Available+at:+.>Google Scholar
Goldberg, D. T. (2002) ‘Racial Rule’, in Quayson, A. (ed.), Relocating Postcolonialism. Oxford: Blackwell, 82–102.Google Scholar
Goldberg, D. T. (1993) Racist Culture. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (2006) ‘Religion in the Public Sphere’, European Journal of Philosophy 14(1): 1–25.Google Scholar
Haebich, A. (1999) The Stolen Generations: Separation of Aboriginal Children from Their Families in Western Australia. Perth: Western Australian Museum.Google Scholar
Haldane, J. (1995) ‘Educating: Conserving Tradition’, in Almond, B. (ed.), Introducing Applied Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell, 73–88.Google Scholar
Halstead, J. M. and Mclaughlin, T. (2005) ‘Are Faith Schools Divisive?’, in Gardner, R., Lawton, D. and Cairns, J. (eds), Faith Schools: Consensus or Conflict? London: Routledge-Falmer, 61–73.Google Scholar
Herman, D. (2011) An Unfortunate Coincidence: Jews, Jewishness and English Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Home office (2001a) Secure Borders, Safe Haven. London: HSMO.Google Scholar
Home office (2001b) Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team Chaired by Ted Cantle. London: HSMO.Google Scholar
Isin, E. F. (2002) ‘Citizenship after orientalism’, in Isin, E. F. and Turner, B. S. (eds), Handbook of Citizenship Studies. London: Sage, 117–28.Google Scholar
Isin, E. F. and Turner, B. S. (2002b) ‘Citizenship Studies: An Introduction’, in Isin, E. F. and Turner, B. S. (eds), Handbook of Citizenship Studies. London: Sage, 1–10.Google Scholar
Jackson, R. (2003) ‘Should the State Fund Faith Based Schools? A Review of the Arguments’, British Journal of Religious Education 25(2): 89–102.Google Scholar
Jakobsen, J. R. and Pellegrini, A. (2008) Secularisms. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Jivraj, S. (2013) The Religion of Law: Race, Citizenship and Children's Belonging. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Jivraj, S. and De jong, A. (2011) ‘The Silencing Effects of the Dutch Homo-emancipation Policy on Queer Muslim Organising’, Feminist Legal Studies 19(2): 143–58.Google Scholar
Jivraj, S. and Herman, D. (2009) ‘“It Is Difficult for a White Judge to Understand”: Orientalism, Racialisation and Christianity in English Child Welfare Cases’, Child and Family Law Quarterly 21(3): 283–308.Google Scholar
Judge, H. (2001) ‘Faith-based Schools and State Funding: A Partial Argument’, Oxford Review of Education 27(4): 463–74.Google Scholar
Keast, J. (2005) ‘Faith Schools, Religious Education and Citizenship’, in Gardner, R., Lawton, D. and Cairns, J. (eds), Faith Schools: Consensus or Conflict? London: Routledge-Falmer, 213–21.Google Scholar
Kymlicka, W. (1989) Liberalism, Community and Culture Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Kymlicka, W. (1995) Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Local government association (LGA) (2002) Faith and Community: A Good Practice Guide for Local Authorities. London: LGA.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha (2008) ‘Toward a Globally Sensitive Patriotism’, Daedalus 137(3): 78–93.Google Scholar
Malik, M. (2008) From Conflict to Cohesion: Competing Interests in Equality Law and Policy. London: Equality and Diversity Forum.Google Scholar
Malik, M. (2008) ‘Complex Equality’, Droit et Societe, Revue Internationale de Theorie du Droit et de Sociologie Juridique 68(1): 127–52.Google Scholar
Malik, M. (2010) ‘Progressive Multiculturalism: Minority Women and Cultural Diversity’, International Journal of Minority and Group Rights 17: 447–67.Google Scholar
Mamdani, M. (2005) Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. New York: Three Leaves Press.Google Scholar
Masuzawa, T. (2005) The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mcclintock, A. (1995) Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mcintyre, A. (1981) After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Mcintyre, A. (1987) ‘The Idea of an Educated Public’, in Haydon, G. (ed.), Education and Values: The Richard Peters Lectures, Delivered at the Institute of Education, University of London, Spring Term, 1985. London: Institute of Education, 15–36.Google Scholar
Minogue, D. (1997) ‘Etzioni's Communitarianism: Old (Communion) Wine in New Bottles’, Politics 17(3): 161–68.Google Scholar
Ong, A. (1999) ‘Cultural Citizenship as Subject Making: Immigrants Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States’, in Torres, R. D., Mirón, L. F. and Inda, J. X. (eds), Race, Identity, and Citizenship: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 262–95.Google Scholar
Osler, A. (2009) ‘Citizenship Education, Democracy and Racial Justice 10 Years On’, Race Equality Teaching 27(3): 21–27.Google Scholar
Parker-Jenkins, M., Hartas, D. and Irving, B. A. (2005) In Good Faith: Schools, Religion and Public Funding. London: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Pring, R. (2005) ‘Faith Schools: Can They be Justified?’, in Gardner, R., Lawton, D. and Cairns, J. (eds), Faith Schools: Consensus or Conflict? London: Routledge-Falmer, 51–60.Google Scholar
Putnam, R. D. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Razack, S. H. (2007) ‘The “Sharia Law Debate” in Ontario: The Modernity/Premodernity Distinction in Legal Efforts to Protect Women from Culture’, Feminist Legal Studies 15(1): 3–32.Google Scholar
Razack, S. H. (2008) Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law & Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Read, P. (1981) The Stolen Generations: The Removal of Aboriginal People in New South Wales 1883 to 1969. New South Wales: New South Wales Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs.Google Scholar
Roberts, R. H. (ed.) (1995) Religion and the Transformations of Capitalism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rose, N. S. (1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rosenblum, N. L. (2000) Membership and Morals: The Personal Uses of Pluralism in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Said, E. W. (1979/1994) Orientalism. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Sandel, M. (1982) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Secretary of state for justice and lord chancellor (2007) The Governance of Britain. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Selznick, P. (1992) The Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and the Promise of Community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Short, G. (2002) ‘Faith-based Schools: A Threat to Social Cohesion?’, Journal of Philosophy of Education 36(4): 559–72.Google Scholar
Spring, J. H. (1996) The Cultural Transformation of a Native American Family and its Tribe, 1763–1995: A Basket of Apples. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Stychin, C. (1998) A Nation by Rights: National Cultures, Sexual Identity Politics, and the Discourse of Rights. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. (1989) Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, B. S. (2002) ‘Religion and Politics: The Elementary Forms of Citizenship’, in Isin, E. F. and Turner, B. S. (eds), Handbook of Citizenship Studies. London: Sage, 259–90.Google Scholar
Vakulenko, A. (2007) ‘“Islamic headscarves” and the European Convention on Human Rights: An Intersectional Perspective’, Social and Legal Studies 16(2): 183–99.Google Scholar
Walzer, M. (1983) Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Weber, M. (1920/1930) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Parsons, Talcott. London: Unwin University Press.Google Scholar
Werbner, P. and Modood, T. (eds) (1997) Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-racism. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Wing, A. K., Delgado, R. and Bell, D. (eds) (2003) Critical Race Feminism: A Reader. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Yuval-Davis, N. (1997) Gender & Nation. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Yuval-Davis, N. (2004) ‘Borders, Boundaries, and the Politics of Belonging’, in May, S., Modood, T. and Squires, J. (eds), Ethnicity, Nationalism and Minority Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 214–30.Google Scholar
Yuval-Davis, N. (2006) ‘Belonging and the Politics of Belonging’, Patterns of Prejudice 40(3): 197–214.Google Scholar
Yuval-Davis, N. (2009) ‘Identity, Citizenship and Contemporary, Secure, Gendered Politics of Belonging’, in Denis, A. B. and Kalekin-Fishman, D. (eds), The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology. London: Sage, 29–39.Google Scholar