From ‘We don’t do God’? the changing nature of public religion

By Professor Tariq Modood, University of Bristol

Western European Moderate Secularism

What I have learnt:

• Given its expression in public ceremonies, cultural heritage and its close relation to political issues, organised religion is just as public as it is a private matter.

• Given its power to unite people and act together toward a common goal (driven by the religious belief), organised religion can be a public good as well as a public bad

• The interest of the stage is not theological, in fact it is toward the ‘secular’ public good.

Questions/provocations:

• If religion can be a public bad, how can we encourage students to question whether to follow it at all? Is it not better to be independent from such a strong and potentially dangerous drive?

• Given how the state could potentially use its link to religion, should we not aim at a complete secularisation of the state?

Multiculturalism

• Multiculturalism: a new way of categorizing minority-majority relations, connected to post-immigration ethno-religious minorities.

• New concept of equality: not just equal rights despite of difference, but equality as accommodation of difference, i.e. respect of difference, not just acknowledgement. “We acknowledge that […] equality requires the abandonment of the pretence of ‘difference-blindness’ and allowing others, the marginalised minorities, to also be visible and explicitly accommodated in the public sphere”; need to recognise distinct disadvantages and special needs.

Questions/provocations:

• Where does the fine line break between wanting to know how to best support ‘special needs’ and invading people’s privacy?

• Is there a different approach for the above depending on what aspect of multiculturalism we are approaching (gender, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation)?

• Should disability fall within the definition of Multiculturalism?

From Religion, the public sphere and higher education

By Professor Craig Calhoun, London School of Economics and Political Science

Religion and dissent in universities

What I have learnt:

• Gender is framed in religious terms. Gender segregation and differentiation in rituals is a practice of different religions, like “in rituals like washing before prayer [and is not] necessarily associated with deeper social inequality”.

• Gender bias is often “of customs appropriated from specific cultural contexts. Religiously expressed gender bias may fade with social change – or it may be renewed as a marker of cultural distinction”.

• Gender hierarchy justified by religion is a challenge to universities that advocate equality

Questions/provocations:

• Is there a hierarchy in social justice? Is intolerance acceptable when it defies inequality?

Reference

Modood, T. and Calhoun, C., 2015 Stimulus Paper Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education at http://www.tariqmodood.com/uploads/1/2/3/9/12392325/6379_lfhe_stimulus_paper_-_modood_calhoun_32pp.pdf Accessed on 21st May 2022