Introduction

Religion and belief continue in a public sphere that largely thinks of itself as post-Christian, post-religious and secular, while having limited understanding of either religion and belief or the secular. This makes it a particularly difficult subject for discussion and learning. As the previous chapters show, messages about religion and belief are messy and often contradictory within learning spaces, as well as between one learning space and another. While this might be said of all sorts of topics, this one has some particular features that single it out.

First, the woolly secular-mindedness at its root often stops the conversation before it begins. The UK is neither programmatically secular (ideologically committed to a public sphere that is neutral on religion or belief), nor procedurally so (bracketing religion or belief out in public practices and policy) (Williams, 2006). Yet, the public sphere widely acts on religion and belief as though both are the case. It also does so in starkly contradictory ways. On the one hand, religion and belief are, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, risky. On the other, they are repositories of resources for wisdom and social action, and the arbiters of an essentially Christian culture that cannot be escaped, even if it is forgotten. A constitutional monarchy, with the monarch as head of both church and state, is one part of this. The Equality Act 2010 is another, placing religion or belief at the heart of public life by making them a protected characteristic against which it is illegal to discriminate. Yet, as an idea, secularity proves to be one of sociology's greatest successes, at least in terms of how widely it is recognised and embedded, if not fully or widely understood. It results in a classically pragmatic space in which the relationship of religion and belief to the public sphere is left fuzzy at best. National rituals, like Remembrance Day, memorials and royal weddings – what Davie (2006) calls vicarious religion – will frequently take a Christian form, albeit with leaders from other world religions turning up, while the serious business of what is actually to be believed or done remains comfortably out of focus.