From
Caesar Augustus to Lennon & McCartney: The Unseen Foundations of How We Think From Caesar
Augustus to Lennon & McCartney: The Unseen Foundations of How We Think From Caesar Augustus
to Lennon & McCartney: The Unseen Foundations of How We Think

From Caesar Augustus to Lennon & McCartney: The Unseen Foundations of How We Think

Beaulieu is often called a faith school because it is rooted in the Catholic educational tradition, but in its most basic (i.e. non-religious) sense, the word “faith” simply means “trust.” For example, we talk of placing our faith in someone, with more or less evidence (but never absolute proof) for doing so.  Beaulieu is called a faith school ultimately because it places its trust in the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Talking of God and religion, the historian, author and broadcaster Tom Holland self-designates as an “Anglican agnostic” - i.e. he was born into an Anglican family but is not sure what he believes about God’s existence!  Holland spent years researching the ancient world before arriving at a conclusion he had not been expecting: the Western mindset, including its ethical vision (e.g. our instinctive commitments to the dignity of the human person, equality of all people before the law, and care for the marginalised), is not a product of secular Enlightenment thinking alone, but is actually soaked through with Jewish-Christian assumptions.  Holland says that many of us no longer recognise the principles that underpin our culture as coming from a Jewish-Christian heritage precisely because they are assumptions - things taken for granted to such a degree that they have become pervasive, deep and almost second nature.

Holland points out that the first Christians told the Roman world that a crucified criminal (the lowest of the low in that world) was God and had risen from the dead.  They pointed out that if God could be equated with what the world despised, then even the lowest and most marginalised members of humanity were worthy of love.  The degree to which that proclamation has changed the world could be gauged by Lennon and McCartney telling us in 1967, “All You Need Is Love.”  Two scousers were singing something that Caesar Augustus would have laughed at two millennia previously.  Whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, the Christian worldview went on to transform the way the West instinctively thinks.  That is why Holland also self-designates as a “cultural Christian.”  Indeed, he claims that we all are, whatever our views about God and religion, because we have all been shaped by the claims of Christianity.  So I suspect that Holland would probably claim that all schools, whether self-consciously or unconsciously, are faith schools!  Why?  They place their trust in a vision/ethos which, like any vision/ethos, rests on a set of unproven assumptions that have been shaped by the Jewish-Christian vision.  The degree to which there is good evidence for those assumptions is something about which people disagree, but it is still true that they live in a culture shaped by those assumptions (be kind, look after others, all have dignity, etc)

It is in an increasingly complex world.  The issues that our students are dealing with - identity, justice, truth, suffering, purpose, meaning and the kind of society we want to build together - are the perennial human questions, asked since the dawn of consciousness.  In Beaulieu, we believe that Religious Education is not a subject merely for religious people.  Done properly, RE (Philosophy, Ethics and Critical Theological Reflection, to give it a more accurate title) can provide an education in how (not necessarily what) to think, how to live, and how to understand the world we have inherited and wish to develop. This opportunity to engage and grow is the right of every student, regardless of where they stand in relation to God and religion.  The question is not whether we have faith, but in what we have faith, since we have all inherited cultural assumptions in which we trust.  Also, how well-grounded is that trust?

Beaulieu is aware that not every family, and not all of the people within the same family, share the same convictions.  Some of us are committed atheists; some of us are agnostics; some of us are members of other world faiths (Muslim, Sikh, Jewish); some of us are Christians with varying degrees of commitment to the Anglican, Baptist or Methodist tradition; some of us are committed, or lukewarm (some prefer the term “resting!”), or angry and recovering Catholic Christians.  For some people, religious faith is central to daily life, for others it is peripheral, irrelevant or something they despise or hold in contempt. So this piece is written for us all, wherever our view of faith, religion, meaning, God.  Holland argues that even those who have never set foot in a church think in categories shaped by Christianity: most of us would sign up to the notions that every human being has inherent worth, that the weak deserve protection, that power (including religious) should be held accountable. Holland’s point is that these are not universal human intuitions that have come out of nowhere. They have a history (intimately connected to the Jewish-Christian tradition) and you cannot properly understand Western culture, its literature, its law, its politics or its art without understanding that history.

This is a decent academic argument for studying RE, and it comes from Holland, a man with no religious axe to grind. Beaulieu students do not study RE in order to be told what to believe. They study it partly to understand where they come from and why the world looks the way it does.

Academic Rigour and Transferable Skills

RE/Religious Studies at GCSE and A Level (Philosophy, Ethics and Developments in Christian Thought) is among the most academically demanding subjects on offer in any school. It requires students to construct carefully evidenced arguments, engage with primary philosophical texts, evaluate competing ethical frameworks, and write with precision and nuance. Students will encounter two of the most formative influences on the western mindset in Plato and Aristotle, as well as key figures like Kant and Mill, Aquinas and Kierkegaard, Sartre and de Beauvoir, Arendt and Day  They will look at contemporary debates in ethics, bioethics, business ethics, political philosophy, anthropology (philosophy of the human person), feminism, and critically evaluate the positives and the nasty manipulative underbelly of religion, secularism and other worldviews.

Universities and employers consistently value the competencies that develop from engaging with these sources.  The ability to hold two or more positions in tension, to distinguish between the strengths and weaknesses of such viewpoints and institutions (religious and secular), to know the difference between a weak and a strong argument, to prepare a coherent written or oral analysis and deliver it to one’s peers under pressure - these are not soft skills, but precisely what rigorous academic institutions and employment sectors require.  They are also what RE/Religious Studies, done properly, can help a student develop.

Personal Development in a Pluralistic World

Beyond academic flourishing, there is also something more personal at stake with RE. We are preparing young people to live and work in a pluralistic world.  The world is round and so we cannot walk very far without meeting someone who will hold different views from ours.  Perhaps more importantly, these days, algorithms and continuous online interaction make exposure to different viewpoints (with different degrees of sanity) inevitable.  Students will meet people with different assumptions, worldviews, ethical frameworks and political outlooks. The student who has never seriously engaged with what a Muslim, a Christian, an atheist, a feminist, a capitalist, a socialist, etc., believes, or why a utilitarian and a deontologist reach different conclusions about assisted dying, or what it means to speak of human dignity and ethical value within a secular framework, is not fully equipped for life in our world. Tolerance that is rooted in ignorance is fragile, but firm views built on a lack of self-critique and an openness to the views of others are often intolerant and dangerous.  Understanding (including disagreement) built on genuine engagement is robust and often respectful and cordial.  RE in Beaulieu does not ask students to believe anything. It simply invites them to engage with and understand the complex world we inhabit and are inside ourselves.

A Catholic School: Rooted in a Tradition, Open to Dialogue

As a school in the Catholic tradition, RE (Philosophy, Ethics and Critical Theological Engagement) in Beaulieu is not an add-on, or some antiquated concession to the tradition of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception.  RE sits at the heart of education, which has always been concerned with the formation of the whole person, intellectually, morally, spiritually and culturally. We do not apologise for or try to explain away (somewhat embarrassed) that tradition. We are proud of it - but we also treasure it enough not only to make space for, but also to positively welcome serious questioning, honest doubt and genuine dialogue with all perspectives and all persons of goodwill.  We welcome all that is good, true and beautiful in those perspectives and persons, and we see them as our partners.

John Henry Newman, a patron of Catholic Education, believed that if something is to stay alive, it has to change.  He asks us to consider an animal walking around, changing its location, eating, drinking, breathing, taking things in from its environment - in other words, adapting.  Newman says that what keeps an animal itself is precisely its capacity to adapt and change. It needs to take risks, to be open.  An animal that can’t engage with its environment and adapt when necessary will pretty soon be a dead animal!  At the same time, however, if that animal simply and uncritically takes in anything and everything that it comes across in the world, well, once again it will soon be dead!  The creature needs to have its guard up, its ears or antennae twitching, and its eyes peeled if it wants to remain what it is!  It has to be critically discerning!

RE at Beaulieu, therefore, is rooted but open, conservative but liberal, and encourages our students to be open and critically discerning.  Beaulieu students are encouraged to ask hard questions about anything that comes to mind - about the existence of God, the problem of suffering, the ethics of artificial intelligence, about what could objectively ground human rights or ethical positions, etc. These are not questions with simplistic, glib answers. Some say they are questions worth spending a lifetime on. We want our students to begin that journey of a lifetime here in Beaulieu, in an environment that takes both faith (= the trust that life is objectively, and not just subjectively, meaningful and worthwhile) and reason seriously, seeing them not as enemies but as two ways of engaging with reality.

An Invitation, Not an Imposition

Whatever your own beliefs, Beaulieu invites people to see RE not as an ideological imposition but as an intellectual gift. The students who leave this school having wrestled with Augustine and Nietzsche, the ethics of just and unjust wars, the nature of the human person and the meaning or futility of existence, will not only be better exam candidates. They will be more thoughtful people, more curious, more confident yet humble, more capable of a genuine conversation across differences; they will be wiser, wider, deeper and richer; they will be citizens belonging to several communities, and equipped to make the world a better place and their own lives more fun, more joyful.  Fun and joy are in short supply, so RE seems at the very least worth a punt.