Blog Task 2 – Faith

Resource One: Religion, Belief and Faith Identities in Learning and Teaching at UAL

Although there are not that many resources on this website, it was interesting to see how much emphasis was put on the intersectionality of faith – where it sits amongst discussions of diversity and social identity. In the ‘About’ section of the website it is one of the stated aims of the community.

“The group will consider the intersection between faith identity and other social identities (e.g. gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class).”

This focus on faith as a social identity, alongside those mentioned above, makes the website feel relevant and positions discussion around faith in the same space as discussions around diversity and inclusivity – which is obvious now the I’m writing this, but maybe wasn’t something I’d recognised before.

The case studies were interesting and the one titled Pen Portraits feeds into my idea for my artefact which will be about designing an ice breaking exercise that combines reflections on positionality with a portrait brief.

Resource Two: Religion, the public sphere and higher education, Professor Craig Calhoun, London School of Economics and Political Science

I read several headers of the section of this paper written by Professor Craig Calhoun. In the section “Religion and dissent in universities” he addresses gender segregation and sexuality intolerance in the Church of England. In one paragraph he writes:

“But today, gender hierarchies are often justified in religious terms and this is challenging to universities committed to equality. Anglican dithering over the appointment of women bishops is not the same as segregation of the sexes in meetings, but both raise concerns. As Modood notes, it is interesting and perhaps evidence of the embrace of the Church of England as a public institution, that its reluctance to appoint women bishops received a good deal more attention than outright exclusion of women from clerical roles in other religions.“

While I don’t necessarily disagree with him on this point, I found the language he uses in this paragraph extremely loaded. For example choosing the verb ‘dithering’ to describe the issue around appointing women bishops seems to deliberately downplay the deeprooted misogyny at the heart of this debate AND at the heart of the Anglican church – which in many countries still does not appoint female priests, let alone bishops. In the final sentence he points out that many other religions exclude women completely from clerical roles. So rather than debate the issue at stake he seems to swerve it by saying the Church of England is doing better than other religions in this area. This made me wonder if the author is inadvertently revealing a bias not only against women in the church, but also against other religions in comparison to the Anglican church.

Further down the article he moves on to discussing gender identity and sexuality. He touches on the homophobia that exists in many religions which he links to contentious readings of scriptures, then he concludes the section by writing: “At the same time, some religious congregations and student groups are specifically welcoming and supportive of sexual minorities.” I couldn’t help feeling that he was brushing over the reality of the damage done by the church and other faiths to LGBTQ+ community.

He finishes this section writing:

“Not least, religiously motivated students are active in efforts to secure harmony among different religious groups, and lead in efforts to promote greater knowledge of religions beyond their own. They often seek to provide public goods on campuses such as neighbourhood tutoring, peer counselling and mediation.“

To me this reads as a rather unconvincing attempt to offset the rampant homophobia at the heart of many religions. Calhoun does admit this, writing “Homophobia in particular is often visceral, and by no means limited to immigrants or adherents of non-Western religions.” But again the language that he chooses seems aimed at deflecting rather than acknowledging.

My positionality is as an atheist woman with a strong dislike of organised religion and I acknowledge that my innate hostility towards them means that I struggled to read this article with an open mind and without bringing my own bias into my reading of Professor Calhoun’s writing!

Resource 3: Kwame Anthony Appiah – Mistaken Identities – The Reith lecture

This is a long lecture that I’m having to listen to in chunks. I may not be able to add comments about it in time for the deadline, but I will certainly listen to it.

Resource 4: William Whitcombe, Chaplain and Interfaith Advisor for LCC and LCF interview, SON terms of reference, Faith

This article was interesting to me because I teach at LCC. Very few of my students openly talk about their faith, but for those who do, it often manifests itself in the work they produce, so this was a good opportunity to learn more about the chaplaincy and religious guidance that LCC offers.

William Whitcombe opens this interview by describing his role as being to support ‘the religious, the atheist and the unaligned’ and to be there for people no matter what their religious or ethnic background, and this made me immediately warm to him! He then goes on to create an eloquent metaphor for what he believes religion, spirituality and faith to mean. He talks about people riding a bus down a road in a desert and how that bus is operated by fallible humans which means that thing might go wrong or breakdown. He says people might get on or off the bus at different points in the journey. I particularly loved these words:

“There are also people in this picture. People who have a side to them that yearns, wonders, dreams, creates, loves. They have moments on that road in the desert when their vision is somehow extended, and they see so much more in and around them than they did just a few moments before. This is the spiritual side that I believe exists in all of us.”

I found this to be a very beautiful explanation of spirituality. Now that I have discovered William Whitcombe I would recommend him to students who are interested in discussing their own journey towards spirituality or who want to explore religion in their work.