Reimagining Religion and Belief in the Public Sphere

The renewed visibility of religion and belief at the start of the twenty-first century challenges the expectations of twentieth-century secularisation theory, which predicted the gradual withdrawal of religion from the public sphere. Policymakers are therefore often ill-equipped to accommodate religion within formerly secular paradigms governing the provision of education, security and cohesion, equality and human rights legislation and social welfare. This article asks how secular publics and faith communities alike might imagine policy provision which can come to terms with new ways of thinking about religion in a society that is simultaneously religious and secular, Christian and multifaith

What is a ‘faith community’?

This article asks ‘what is a faith community?’ This is important because of a re-emergence of faith and the ‘faith community’ as a public category in many Western countries. This is reflected in the United Kingdom in a public policy interest in faiths as repositories of resources for ‘strengthened community’. Thus faiths are understood as ‘containers’ of staff, buildings, volunteers, networks, values and skills which can be ‘harnessed’ in key community domains, especially the provision of welfare and social services, extended forms of participative neighbourhood governance, and initiatives for community cohesion. Resources in each of these areas are understood to reside in ‘faith communities’ and faiths are frequently seen as ‘good at community’ in these terms. But do we know what a ‘faith community’ is? Using communitarian ideas of community, this article explores the notion of the faith community and the implications of policies about them for faith-based practices in community settings. It argues for the application of community development values to understanding ‘faith communities’

Faith, Welfare and Social Justice

British Sociological Association conference, Glasgow Caldedonian University, Faith, Welfare and Social Justice Keynote in the Religion and Society panel April 201

Challenges of Multifaith Partnership

Derby University Multifaith Centre, Interfaith Week – Challenges of Multifaith Partnership Keynote, November 200

Is Faithism the new Racism?

Race and the Modern World conference, Goldsmiths, University of London – chair of a panel (with Ted Cantle and Maqsood Ahmed) on ‘Faithism as the new Racism?’ April 200

Public Faith and Religious Literacy

Annual Town and Gown lecture Public Faith and Religious Literacy Keynote York St John University, June 201

Religion and Belief in Universities

Higher Education Equal Opportunities Network (HEONN) – Religion and Belief in Universities Keynote, June 201

Multifaith Fora in the UK as a basis for ‘community peace’

Annual Peace Fellowship lecture Multifaith Fora in the UK as a basis for ‘community peace’ February 2010 University of Calgary, Alberta, Canad

The role of occupational standards in workplace religious literacy

This paper explores the UK National Occupational Standards to identify the breadth of occupations for which it has been determined that workers need some degree of religious literacy. A total of 465 standards documents which mention religion and beliefs relating to a diverse range of occupations were retrieved, of which 13 had a primary focus on religion and beliefs. Approximately 60 percent of these standards noted the need for knowledge about religion and beliefs, though only a quarter of these specified actual performance criteria. With some exceptions, most of the standards were vague as to what is meant by religion and its proxies, with very few attempts to define their terms. A lack of specificity renders the inclusion of references to religion largely tokenistic rather than reflecting a measure of religious literacy which could be practically operationalised