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 The Merciful Humility of God

Jane Williams, 2018 London & New York. Bloomsbury Continuum

If chapter headings maketh the book then this book certainly attracts the passer by, whether in Chapter Three ‘How to win friends and influence nobody’, or Chapter Five, ‘Risen and Ascended into humility’. This book will turn heads. 

Jane Williams offers a practical manual to support the theologically interested believer in their journey into, and through, Lent. But be prepared for the road less tarmacked, as she is keen to go off-roading in her pursuit of a strong, narrative voice, within the well-trodden apologia.

Non-technical and ideal for a parish or similar group, this book is punchy and prepared to deploy more challenging agendas. Indeed, it’s discussion of the limitations in resurrection narratives, as well as the fallacy of diminishing the focus of Jesus’ death in favour of the ‘happy ending’, will be challenging for some who lack a more seasoned theological underpinning. No bad thing!

There is decent academic weight in this little book. The constant cross-referencing to Old and New Testament sources ,as well as theological insights, references to daily life and insights from Tradition acts to put a gas flame under the prose such that it often bubbles and is never turgid. Practical, prayerful reflections are the only endnotes and are relevant.

The unique selling point is surely Wiliams’ contention that we are challenged to see the humility of God-present-to-us not as a facet of his manifesting himself but, rather, as the cutting edge which will – if invited – strip away the pretentious affectations of the human condition and allow the possibility of redemption. It is the humility – the stark ordinariness combined with a daily ‘choice’ for God- whether in Mary, Joseph, the largely unknown childhood years of Jesus’ life, a mystic such as Julian of Norwich or a radical reformer such as Theresa of Avila – that carries the punch.  In this there is as much an affirmation of the lay vocation as there is a hagiography. (The occasional back-filling into the unknown lives of Jesus, Mary and others to draw out humility-as-consecrated-ordinariness is forgivable and powerful). 

This humility is no mere self-deprecation but is joyful, powerful and radical, exemplified by the life of St Francis of Assisi, or a Jean Vanier. Indirectly, Williams also helpfully and gently re-privileges the female voice within the discourse of salvation. Humility- the only way we are ‘ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven’ – lies at the heart of this soteriology, as does the clear belief that, as we embark on the journey through Lent, ‘we are starting out from a place of loving acceptance, not from one of rejection’ (p.13) Any other way is ‘of our own making’ (p.3), proffers Williams with the clarity of the benign schoolteacher, taking us gently, yet purposefully -and ready to disturb where necessary – along our Lenten journey.

Patrick Deneen [2018] Why Liberalism Failed 

New Haven & London:Yale University Press

This important and timely work can be mis-read in one of two ways:

First, as a simple critique of progressive liberalism, seeking to take us back to simpler days before metropolitan elites.  Secondly, an apologetic for the rise in contemporary populism in politics – the sort of ‘countries get the leaders they deserve’, approach. Deneen’s work is neither, even if there are a few generous nods towards a world which reminded this reviewer – rather fondly – of the Bedford Falls of George Bailey and ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, minus Clarence the angel.  

Drawing inter alia on Hobbes, Locke, Descartes and JS Mill, Deneen identifies a crisis of legitimacy in liberal democracy, that monolith which has been given almost metaphysical deference in the West for generations, and which, as recently as 1989, was seen by some [Fukuyama] as the end point of history. 

Deneen sees liberalism as privileging the powerful while ‘buying off’ the people with the myths that materialism is sovereign and ‘freedom from’ any sort of constraint amounts to real freedom. The result: ‘literal and moral obesity’ [p.126]. Liberalism [without forgetting communism and fascism] has been a dominant movement for over a century.  More recently, populist political outcomes [think US, Austria, Italy, UK?…] have manifested themselves not as mere symptoms of a malfunction within the erstwhile irreproachable apparatus of liberalism but, in fact, as the deep-seated flaws within the apparatus itself. 

Liberalism has operated as a form of ideological lubricant, flowing between established systems of social order which include cultural norms, religious traditions and certain elements of hierarchy. The apparatus was able to prevail for such a long time precisely because it was claiming to deliver what in fact was delivered by those older, constituent elements. As those elements have faded – deliberately or otherwise- the facade started to implode.

Deneen’s point is that it is not the quest for a better system that will yield a better life but the living of a better life that will generate the better system:  

“only a politics grounded in the experience of a polis – lives shared with a sense of common purpose, with obligations and gratitude arising from sorrows, hopes, and joys lived in generational time, and with the cultivation of capacities of trust and faith-can begin to take the place of our era’s distrust, estrangement, hostility, and hatreds” [p.xv]

Deneen looks at U.S. education,but could have been looking at the UK, and sees in the demise of liberal arts the move towards privileging so-called STEM. As we genuflect evermore to technology, we head ever further towards losing the global environmental battles either unfolding or soon to unfold with ‘our carbon-saturated world’, a ‘hangover of a 150-year party in which, until the very end, we believed we had achieved the dream of liberation from nature’s constraints.’ [p.15]

The final chapter, looking not to bloody revolution or some anti-ideology but, rather, to small-scale action including the building of resilient new cultures against the anti-culture of liberalism, would welcome further elucidation. However, this scholarly, balanced and eminently readable account should be read by all, including those reflecting on the interface of faith and culture, as a contribution to a critical reflection of the status quo. Perhaps, I am left thinking, there is another way, with or without Clarence’s help!

The Church : Theology in History. (2018). Frederick J. Cwiekowski, Collegeville : Liturgical Press

Understanding the development of any academic discourse outside its historical context is always limiting – if not impossible.  When that this discourse is the development of an understanding of relationship with God then the role of history is front and centre. Add to that the historical sweep in which the author himself, developed his formative theology-in this case during the Second Vatican Council – and the role of temporality is even richer.

Aimed at the specialist and the educated generalist (the former benefitting from rich footnotes) this  highly readable book is written at a good pace by Cwiekowski, a Sulpician priest and scholar For example, within a few pages he charts the key themes of the exilic and post exilic period (‘Second Temple Judaism’) showing succinctly how these elements generated the narrative behind that expectation of Jesus’ birth.

The place and importance of naming is captured early on with early followers of disciples self-describing as inter alia ‘believers’ ‘followers’ non-gender specific ‘brothers’ and even ‘sisters. ’Other elements under the spot light and of particular value to the less specialist reader include examinations of baptism, Eucharist, Koinonia, prayer, temple worship, teaching, fellowship, breaking of breads and prayers (the Lucan quartet). 

Cwiekowski’s lively and never-intimidating style brings out the real politique of the early church caught up in its various binary positions [has anything changed?] Inter alia, Hellenist v Hebrew, circumcised v not circumcised temple worship v not so. In addition, the early meetings as precursors to later ecumenical councils are drawn in clear relief, such as the Council of Jerusalem in AD 49

Equally resonant to this day is the place of pragmatism and compromise, exhibited in the early Church. Examples include   Paul confronting Peter at Antioch [Galatians 2: 11 to 14] as well as a rich description of the development of ecclesia particularly in the Deutero-Pauline writings but also in Matthews gospel as a model for leadership in Catholic Christianity.  In particular, the signature powers to bind or loose in chapter 16 as well as the primacy of Peter and the keys of the kingdom. Continuity community and mission underpin the Lucan ecclesiology. 

Equally, time is once again crucial in locating the events of Jesus’ life in the Greco-Roman history of the day. Central Catholic notions of priesthood and a pilgrim or journeying people are set in the context of specifically priestly discourses such as the Letter to the Hebrews. Also, concern for the poor and the centrality of pastoral guidance are seen emerging in the Letter to St James. 

The book continues at a pace charting developments both East and West up to and beyond the Second Vatican Council. An interesting contemporary element is the importance of the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World and the landmark Medellin conference in Brazil in 1968 on the thinking of one Oscar Romero. A Church at one with the poor, centred on evangelisation and committed to justice. Very much in sync with Evangelii Gaudium, the fruit of another Latin American Bishop and, subsequently, Pope Francis.

Simon Uttley

Wisdom from the Christian Mystics – how to pray the Christian Way David Torkington [2018], Winchester: Circle Books ISBN 978-1-78535-774-9

This beautifully constructed insight into practical mysticism, aimed at the general reader with an interest in Christian prayer, could just as easily have been entitled ‘wisdom from the masters of authentic prayer’.  In an eminently readable tour de force, Torkington shows us that the mystical tradition,  for many centuries a mainstream approach to prayer, received some considerable hits over the centuries: the Protestant Reformation and the rise of [Cartesian] Rationalism; the unfortunate conflation with esoteric, Neo-Platonist and Quietist elements; later, New-Age, renderings as well as the sheer decline in the number of ‘practitioners’ at and around the time of the Second Vatican Council, with its emphasis on New Biblical Theology. Interestingly, Torkington even includes a brief vignette rebutting the charge that Tridentine theology was also to blame, arguing this was, in fact, not at all the case.

Written with the substantial inclusion of the lecture notes of his eremitic friend, Peter Calver, Torkington’s experienced and reliable authorial voice runs strongly throughout and, indeed, there is a fascinating twist in the tale involving Torkington himself, though this would be something of a plot spoiler!  

introducing us to the mystical tradition with its stress on the –ing as against the ‘it’ of prayer, we see how pray-ing is not a finite, completed action but reflects the (over-) abundance of God’s love reflected – even enacted- as the crucified Christ gave forth blood and water. But, to our cost, our later Christian tradition has failed to recognise the rich prayer life of Jesus and his disciples that would have been proper to them as devout Jews. The many visits to the synagogue, the prayers five times a day. The ‘pithy and pregnant’ mealtime Berakah prayer, for example, celebrating not only the food on the table but the land, given to Moses, that produced it, is the precursor to the Eucharistic prayer. So much richness, obvious to Jesus’ contemporaries but lost on later writers. A reminder, if such were needed, that for the Christian, Judaism is no mere ‘other’ religion.

Notwithstanding the credible biblical scholarship and historical sweep, this book is, at heart, a call to Christ – to engage with the ‘most loveable person ever to have lived’. Whether in Theresa of Avila’s ‘The Interior Castle’, the ‘Cloud of Unknowing’, Catherine of Siena’s ‘House of Self-Knowledge’ or amidst John of the Cross’ ‘Dark night of the soul’ the common theme is not a desire for ‘an experience’ [qua Dionysius and the Neo-Platonists], but, rather, a yearning for love based on grown-up perseverance in the meditation and contemplation of the person of Jesus. God present as much in the ‘holy darkness’ as in the moments of light.

Simon Uttley

A Christology of Religions, Gerard O’Collins [2018] SJ, New York, Orbis Books, ISBN9781626982819

In seeking to offer a “Christology of religions that is Christian rather than specifically Catholic” [viii] O’Collins, a Jesuit theologian,  foregrounds the event of the cross as the prime means to understand the relationship of ‘other’ religions to Christian salvation, and Christ’s ongoing, and priestly, mission to all peoples.  This focus incudes the theology of the cross, Christ’s high Priestly ministry, the efficacy of his prayer for ‘others’ the mediation of his faith and the notion of a faith accessible to ‘others’ [viii].  

Whatever our differences, the drama of the cross, the fellowship of the crushed and forgotten drawn into communion, is primary [ubi dolor, ibi Christus….ubi crux, ibi Christus], even if it has too often been relegated in favour of more peripheral things we have in common [my italics]. In proposing a more vigorous pneumatology, O’ Collins wants to stress that Christ died in solidarity with all, for all; he is raised from the dead and present with all human beings in all times and places; and we receive the Holy Spirit (68), a Spirit whose reach and potency to all, and for all we understate at our cost. Quoting Pope St John Paul II, the Spirit ‘is mysteriously present in the heart of every person’. The ecumenical, interfaith locus par excellence.

Whether in Matthew 15:28, recounting Jesus’ extraordinary encounter with the ‘other’ – the Canaanite/Syro-Phoenician woman – or  Matthew 8: 5, the healing of the Centurion’s servant, Jesus is seen as the one who said, and meant: ’Whoever is not against me is for me’.  Eschatologically, O’Collins privileges the primacy of  practical acts of love as central to the outcome of the last judgement [‘anyone who welcomes you, welcomes me’, Matthew 10:40].

The Jesus who pours out himself, in anticipation of the Cross, in his ministry to the other – the outsider – is also seen feeding the hungry, helping the diseased and the disempowered in a manner almost predicated, and enabled by, the forthcoming event of cavalry.  An event where all was given. His ‘high priestly intercession’ allows for an ‘open account of faith’ [39], recognising that his salvific power cannot be limited by one group – Christians – to one group. Identifying the Logos as being understood by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and the early Church to be universal in its impact, if only understood in fragments outside of the Church,  [60], he concludes  ‘It seems weirdly arrogant to claim limited possibilities in the case of divine presence and activity’ [58].

In asking how authentic faith can be discerned among those beyond the bounds of Christianity, O’Collins develops four criteria of discernment [127ff]. Genuine faith will 1) display profundity of life rather than superficiality; 2) result in modified behaviour; that 3) has a Christological shape which includes Christ-like love for others and solidarity with those who suffer [especially those who are badly treated] and 4) a trinitarian face, that is, bearing signs of the Trinity in concrete experience and life. 

O’Collins concludes this readable, undergraduate-friendly book, by applying this approach, in particular, to Jews and Muslims.

Simin Uttley

Recognising the shift from ‘knowledge is power’ to ‘power is knowledge’, this book introduces the history and practice of delineating and validating what ‘education’ should be taught and how – a practice as politicised and subject to error and abuse as was the Berlin Conference which carved up the colonised map in the early nineteenth century and whose colonial practices are also seen by the authors as retaining an influence on contemporary Northern (particularly U.K.) education.

Knowledge is ‘owned’ and its delivery mechanism validated or indicted by the political class (and other sometimes less clearly defined neoliberal bogeymen) who effectively control the delivery of curriculum, assessment and inspection. ‘Subjects’ are (particularly in secondary education) kept in silos (the curriculum and timetable) and ‘delivered’ by ‘subject specialists’. The contrast is made between this apparatus on the one hand and how people actually learn on the other. Specifically, experientially , in collaboration and, crucially, because it ‘means’ something to them. ((Being picky I might have liked an element on rhizomatic learning after Deleuze and Guattari).

The contrast between education ‘done with’ as against ‘done to’, Unwin and Yandell bring out eloquently in their case study of a highly participatory approach to learning a piece of history- involving role play, artefacts, varying spaces and, critically, an emotional engagement with the ‘actors’ whose stories are being ‘played out’. The point is that ‘real’ education happens when it ‘matters’ to the students; when it draws from them an affective (as well as cognitive) response and engenders a hunger for more.

However the ‘done to’ remains a feature at national level with school reorganisation, selective education and the inability of successive U.K. Governments to get vocational education ‘right’. (The recent headline push on grammar schools post dated publication) Perhaps a greater recognition on the part of the authors of parental collusion in promoting selection and stratification in their child’s school would have been helpful. It’s not just neo-liberal bogeymen and, when it is, it is because they have a constituency of support backed up by a powerful media.

The paucity of importance given by our essentially Victorian ‘factory- model’ schools to ‘context variables’ – the hooks that children need to anchor learning to their experience -is a central theme. It’s absolutely key and the authors nail this effectively both at a theoretical and practitioner level. For example, they argue that effective ‘literacy education’ is not just understanding words- as – things (the ontological model, though not their phrase) but words as meaningful (existential, authentic). The danger, not said by the authors but rightly implied, is that we maintain and validate a system where, to paraphrase Wilde, children know the definition of everything but the value (meaning) of nothing. Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘when I look back on all the crap I learnt in High School’ resonates not as some utopian dream of the dismantling of education à la Pink Floyd, but rather a reminder of the extent to which what we teach is not ‘just in time’ – on demand, meaningful and engaging – but very much ‘just in case’. Established. Authorised. Dry? We teach ‘worthy things’ (my phrase), irrespective of investing time or resources in making these things meaningful to children. We teach worthy ‘things’ but no one can quite recall why they are worthy. What makes them essential is that they are assessed and Unwin and Yandell offer a brief but trenchant critique of the myths of assessment towards the end.

While they are right to see the bogeyman of neoliberalism as a factor in promoting the ‘factory’ model of education – looking for ‘outputs’, promoting performance management and a surveillance culture – it’s not a bogeyman (if you happen to think of it in that way) which is going to evaporate anytime soon. Not least as it’s mantras of ‘every school a good school’ (however defined – and banal) plays well with much of the UK population. They are fundamentally trusting. This isn’t I don’t think because the UK population are generally idiots, but because most of parents do not wish either to gamble with their children’s future or, even more so, to use our children to perform ‘social engineering’ for the ‘common good’. All politics is local and there is nothing more ‘local’ than our own kids.
Perhaps a sharper focus on where it (‘neoliberalism’) fails to ‘deliver’ would be helpful and the UKs woeful place in international ‘league tables’ of children’s happiness might have been a great starting – or finishing -point.

Technology in education gets a good and timely seeing-to, particularly to the extent of its none- or phoney- use as classroom ‘furniture’ (think of the interactive whiteboard which is essentially used as a flashy blackboard). Though they don’t use the expression, Unwin and Yandell pick out the ‘Concorde Syndrome’ – that sense of educational technology being wrongly viewed as an unending upward stairway to pedagogical heaven. Technological innovation is not linear in its ‘success’ and it has rarely been ‘transformational’ in the richest meaning of that overused word. Empirically, since, for example, its emergence in U.K. schools in the 80s, that dream of ‘transformation’ has blatantly not happened. Teaching and learning and the organisation of classrooms would be instantly recognisable to a Victorian school teacher in the vast majority of cases, give or take a few ‘magic boxes’.

The final section on alternatives to the current educational landscape is very brief – perhaps too brief- and the choice of examples, while understandably resonating with the readers of the New Internationalist in whose publishing house this grand little book sits, are unlikely to seduce middle England’s parents. (With Lyotard, I fear most grand narratives and this includes the benignly Marxist!) What it does do, however, in its lucky dip of international examples as well as a heartfelt call to reimagine the (UK style) classroom, is to reinforce one of the central themes: it is the the extent to which education is meaning-making that is the extent to which it is efficacious. With the increase in reportedly unhappy children, a stubbornness to move on the part of the socio-economically disadvantaged and a broken child and adolescent mental health service, this book seems even more important.

Rethinking Education isn’t a reheated ‘attack-the-government-on-education-policy’ treatise but an effective and heartfelt call to climb the mountain, on behalf of children and the adults they will become, to take both the wide view and the long view. Unwin and Yandell care about kids and getting things right for them and it is this moral purpose as much as the lively and easily-readable style that make it essential reading for all who share thiis care whether as professional, policy makers or parents.

Simon Uttley

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Flint, J. and Pelm, N. [2012] Rethinking the Education Improvement Agenda  London: Continuum

Around £25

‘Rethinking the Education Improvement Agenda’ is a book that has the power to challenge, motivate, chasten, not only students of culture or applied continental philosophy, but every educational practitioner who wishes to look below the surface of the ongoing, often political debates. Adopting a well researched historical and philosophical style, Flint and Pelm challenge the status of, and relationships between, ‘child’, ‘policy maker’, ‘state’ and ‘education’. Eschewing a ‘Punch and Judy’ debate about who is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong’ the book takes the reader beyond binary arguments to identify the rich, multifaceted and so often hidden drivers which impact on education in a world which, following Heidegger, is always already thrown. The practitioner may need to take the odd deep breath as the writers take him or her on a journey of exploration into the often challenging world of ‘applied’ Derrida, Heidegger, Foucault and the rest, but my advice is ‘stick with it – it will be worth it’!

Simon Uttley

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Flint, K. [2015] Rethinking Practice, Research and Education  London: Bloomsbury

Around £32

In Rethinking Practice, Research and Education, Kevin Flint is a man on a mission. Passionate about taking on the many easy and potentially pernicious assumptions underlying contemporary research – not least to the extent that, in its commodification within the knowledge economy, it represents a considerable and, by no means necessarily benign, force – Flint employs a deconstructive approach to challenge the hegemony of current research methodologies and ‘guidelines’.In its role as self-styled ‘guardian’ and ‘arbiter’ of ‘truth claims’ Flint alerts the reader to the apparatus (Agamben) at work in the technology (Heidegger) of managing knowledge production, where such technologies, rather than being neutral and clinically ‘objective’ (a term belonging to a Cartesian world view which Flint roundly eschews), instead order and define ‘outcomes’ along teleological, Apollonian axes (such as the principle of assessment and the principle of the market), aligning itself with the politics and ‘ethics’ underpinning criteria set by various research funding agencies. Such a worldview enveloping research is, for Flint, locked into the ‘naming force and gathering powers’ characteristics of a metaphysical view which (contrary to Derrida and others) readily accepts ‘being as presence’. In eschewing the sovereignty of data-as-object in favour of the ‘event’ (of research) Flint starkly and helpfully reminds the researcher, the policy maker and the educationalist of the extent to which research must be alive to genuinely unknown and unknowable outcomes (understood in Derrida’s terms of futural undecidability, unconditionality and heterogeneity) rather than slavishly serving the oxymoron of the transient ‘certainties’ of many positivistic research outcomes, however easier they may be to publish and to fund. Flint’s work represents a significant contribution to a much neglected area, benefitting from rich scholarship and a tour de force review of relevant literature. For the researcher, the educationalist and the policy maker this represents deep and important reading.

Simon Uttley

MacMulllen, I. Faith in Schools? Autonomy, Citizenship and Religious Education in the Liberal State [2007] London & Princeton: Princeton University Press

Around £16-£17

Offering the perspective on faith in education that comes from being a Brit who has spent time in the US, MacMullen argues that liberal theory does not of itself necessarily support a strict separation of Church and State, and hence Government funding for schools with a religious character can be legitimate and positive. However this is more acceptable at the primary phase than the secondary where, in the case of the latter, there must be regulation and robust exposure to alternative views, including atheism.

Why is primary privileged? ‘before children have the cognitive capacity to engage in authentically autonomous rational reflection, their interest in developing autonomy may be best served by consolidating their sense of identity within a coherent primary culture and beginning to teach the practice of ethical reasoning within the framework provided by that secure cultural identity’. [203] [Interestingly MacMullen seems to reserve his positive views of primary schools to what he calls ‘nonauthoritarian’ [religious] primary schools. However,  given the ‘authority’ underpinning the narrative [e.g. Bible, teaching of the Church] and the religiously underpinned moral expectations – however tailored to small children – of the religious teaching, it is difficult to imagine an entirely ‘nonauthoritarian’ school with a religious character].

The State may see the promotion of responsible, autonomous individuals in possession of what one might call virtues – however defined – as a broadly acceptable goal. From a utilitarian perspective, this can surely help foster a functionally useful and non-sociopathic citizenry [my expression]. In eschewing an empirical approach, MacMullen recognises the near impossibility of tracking the independent variables to produce an empirical ‘test’ of effectiveness in this area. Hence, his methodology is theoretical-philosophical as against social scientific-empirical.

MacMullen sets out to understand these societal and private goals, the extent to which they [or anything ever] can be universalised, the implications on what he calls ‘religious schools’ [though I prefer to call ‘schools with a religious character’] and, finally, what normative force the goal has, especially when balanced against competing societal [and political, economic…] goals. MacMullen particularly takes aim at the US system’s allowance [subject to bank balance] to buy out of the publicly funded, secular system into a privately funded religiously-motivated education. [He cites Coons and Sugarman (1999):

‘the American double standard. Among those who can afford private school, society leaves the goals and means of education to the family;  for the rest of society, for the rest of society, the informing principles of politically determined and implemented.’

Provocatively and interestingly he raises the question that if religion has no place in the school room it cannot, by responsible decision-makers, be allowed to be bought – yet it is. Or, to invert it, if it can have a place in a bona fide education [reflected in the considerable number of privately-educated Americans going to Ivy League universities from private, religiously-underpinned High Schools] then surely, in a fair and open society, the ‘option’ of schooling with a religious character should be available to all.

Chapter 1 seeks to identify civic goals and quite rightly chooses not to see ‘autonomy’ in this light, therefore undermining the assumption that the State should impose a ‘protection from’ any perceived threat to autonomy to be either its role or self-evidently right. Autonomy, for MacMullen, is the capacity for critical-rational reflection about one’s ethical beliefs and values, including those that are foundational, and a commitment to practice this reflection on an ongoing basis [23]. It is authentic only to the extent that is ongoing; it is not earned nor is it a conferred ‘status’.

Chapter 2 interestingly critiques the idea that the flourishing liberal state and the functioning liberal state are identical and the product of public, liberal structures. Clearly the flourishing of the State remains a function of the impact on the individual [and group] of both the public ‘scaffolding’ [my term] of the liberal goal as well as the lively interplay of the private- the individual’s personal intellectual and cultural engagement with the societal.

In advocating ‘ethical autonomy’, a process of reflection and rational deep deliberation which is more nuanced, MacMullen argues this has a place throughout education and should not be seen as something that parents of religious children can opt out from. Ethical autonomy involves choosing from an array of goods, none of which is ‘immoral’ and is therefore to be contrasted with a Kantian idea of ‘moral autonomy’ where there is one answer.

Mac Mullen’s thesis can at times seem somewhat predicated on a view of ‘religious schools’ where critical reflection [my expression] is eschewed in favour of the doctrinal, suggesting a somewhat fundamentalist  ‘straw man’ view of religious schooling.  He highlights schools which are particularly ‘closed’ and dominated by faculty and students from one tradition and which so not teach the possibility of debating issues other than with regard to their faith tradition.  [The Wisconsin v Yoder (1972) case of Amish parents objecting to their child attending High School on the grounds that its worldly diversity would be corrupting is an interesting example of a very ‘closed’ model]. He does acknowledge – though perhaps not robustly enough – that there is a tradition of schools with a religious character – including where the majority of students and staff hail from a particular denomination-  which sees critical reflection and discussion as intrinsic to its very identity, and here I am minded for example of some of the excellent Catholic schools in the U.S. whose alumni have gone on to champion a range of democratic and, ostensibly, liberal causes.  Second, a school where all the students and most of the staff are of one faith is not automatically incapable of engaging in debate which chooses not to rely on tenets of faith to legitimise an outcome. Intelligent people running a school as a successful business, observant of laws and policy and equipping their alumni to get the best jobs across a range of disciplines will rarely be schools conforming to this ‘straw man’. Pragmatism and parent choice, if nothing else, will see to that!

MacMullen’s punchline is clear:  that moderate religious schools should not only be permissible but should be funded for the reasons he has outlined, namely that ‘ they have been shown to be both autonomy-promoting and effective instruments of civic education’ [181]. To do otherwise, he goes on, ‘ is either to grant which parents the right to buy their way out of requirements designed to advance the best interests of children and to advance the best interests of children and the state or arbitrarily to deny poor parents the opportunity to give their children and education in the faith that … coheres with the civic and autonomy goals of education. Neither of these options is acceptable in  a liberal state committed to defending the basic interests  of all its members while promoting their freedom to live according to their various conceptions of the good.’ [181]

MacMullen is, I believe, timely in his conclusion in seeing his work as an important reminder that schools are not, nor should they ever be, solely ‘about’ standards, outcomes and performance understood as public data. ‘[T]here is nothing wrong with the principle that schools should be held accountable for their performance, but if performance is defined and measured narrowly, and schools have an almost irresistible incentive to adopt a similarly narrow conception of their goals.’ [207] He goes on to make the point that the state is rarely a helpful contributor to the debate about what constitutes a ‘good’ life, which is why most liberal figures would wish this to be left to individuals and communities. At the same time, in the Rawlsian sense of ‘primary goods’, the state is engaged in promoting the good life to the extent that, for example, it promotes economic growth and [re-]distribution. MacMullen very much wishes to include ‘Autonomy’ as one of these ‘primary goods’  and therefore if a school with a religious character is seen in its teaching and practice to be strengthening individuals autonomy through that ethical through that ethical autonomous thinking then, in principle, why should not the state fund this?

This is an intelligently argued contribution to the debate regarding autonomy, public versus private ‘goods’ and the role of education per se and education within a religious tradition specifically.

Simon Uttley