A Magpie Teaches Secularisation Theory

I am a magpie, a scavenger constantly surveying what I see around to identify what I can snatch and use. Oh, it's not anything physical that I'm on the lookout for it's things which I can use as teaching resources.  I do the same, to a lesser extent, with worship resources too.

Teaching secularisation to my A2 students this week I have been particularly aware of how knowing what is out there makes such a difference in teaching. I share this post to give encouragement to those doing the studies and producing such resources - they are being gratefully used. I also want to encourage some of them to perhaps produce resources specifically for Sociology, rather than just RE.

I also put this post up to try and encourage other teachers who may be wondering how to get good quality resources for their students without having to break the department budget.

Finally, I share the following to provide a guide to those who might be interested in exploring the topic but don't have the resources to invest in a range of texts and don't have access to an academic library. It relates only to one area of the syllabus and Sociology of Religion but it illustrates the vast array of resources available if you know where to look.

To give an outline of the secularisation thesis I used a 2012 Religious Studies Project podcast from Linda Woodhead. It didn't take that long to produce a set of questions to go with this and it took them through the debate.

I have also been using the material from the Church Growth Research Project with them to help them identify how things may be more complicated than some would argue.

With regards to getting them thinking about how the churches and denominations have been responding to secularisation I have referred to the Fresh Expressions movement. Cook @ Chapel is a Fresh Expression fairly local to where we are and so I was able to use their film as a resource which related to where the area they knew. This enabled me to refer back to our work on types of religious organisation and get them to think more about the problems with some of the definitions and categorisations of religion whilst helping them see what is going on locally.

The Office for National Statistics You Tube video relating to the 2011 Census Data on Religion in England and Wales is something else which provides excellent information and which the students can use to find information from.

To think about whether we have moved from being religious to being spiritual I have gotten them to explore the Kendal Project website. The Spiritual Revolution is a key text which the text books talk about and students can be guided to this website to do their own notes about the methodology of the research and key findings.

With regard to evidence to support Grace Davie and the Belief Without Belonging thesis I have been able to refer them to Guest et al; Christianity and the University Experience.

One of the resources which I am keeping a key eye on is the Westminster Faith Debates website. They produce some excellent teaching resources for RE via RE:Online and I hope they might consider expanding these teaching resources to also provide materials for the teaching of Belief in Society/ Religion modules in Sociology.

With regard to thinking about the changes which are occurring linked to immigration I am able to refer to them to a local example I am aware of. Whilst I do this on a worksheet for the students I am aware readers of this post may be interested in the example and so I refer them to two posts I have referred to it in (a) and (b).

Of course I know this is ethnocentric and I do get them to think about what is going on in other parts of the world too, taking the exam board point that many of what we do with our students is too Christocentric. However, the point I'm making here is there are some really great resources out there and they are enabling teachers to provide good quality resources to their students with the most up to date information.

We might complain sometimes about the current age and the move to technology but when I compare it to teaching the same topic a decade or so ago I am aware exactly how far we have come and how well resourced we are now compared to back then. So hurrah for the technology but greater thanks to those theorists who are taking public engagement seriously and giving us those resources in the first place.