Clive A Lawton, Chair SHAP Working Party on Education in World Religions
 Hardly anyone in the country over the age of about 40 has a clue what RE is. Many have vague - and not particularly enlivening - memories of Bible stories and loosely connected discussions on moral subjects by some poor teacher forced to teach the subject because they had been known to go to church. Not surprisingly then, many in positions of power and influence can't see why the subject shouldn't just wither and die in our new technological, rational, materialist, multi-cultural age.
But how myopic! How ill-informed! RE is now perhaps the most relevant subject on the curriculum for the 21st century that faces us. Hardly a day goes by without evidence in the media that a more informed understanding of religions and the motivations and passions they arouse would be a boon to all of us. It is now clear that far from the much vaunted 'Death of God', he's very much alive in the hearts and minds of the vast majority of the world's populations. Key geo-political movements rest on people's understandings of the religious, spiritual and moral perceptions that they learn in their religious traditions.
How stupid then it would be to neglect or downgrade this field. Luckily the doughty band of RE teachers, specialists and enthusiasts are doing just the opposite. RE at its best today is vibrant, thought-provoking, relevant and constructive. It is wide-ranging and challenging and spans the macroscosm of human civilisation and the microcosm of the innermost corners of the human heart like no other subject. Time to celebrate its contributions and to work ever more determinedly for a system of schools in our country that takes the subject everywhere as seriously as its taken in the best.
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