WMCFEC
Interested in starting a conversation about the place of religion/belief/worldview in the contemporary world? This collection of short films funded by Culham St Gabriel’s Trust, and featuring public figures from a variety of different faiths/beliefs, may be of interest.
We’ve been hard at work developing ideas for a suite of new interactive, flexible-format resources for 16-19s in college, exploring different aspects of Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development (SMSC). With the help of talented local resource writer Simeon Whiting, we have a prototype resource on ‘Cultivating Identity, Inclusion and Belonging’ which is ready for trialling in college. We’d love to hear from any colleges or chaplains who’d like to help us do this.
This week we also had good news that the St Christopher’s Educational Trust have made us a generous grant to help us complete a set of 6-8 resources on different topics, together with previous grants received from St Peter’s Saltley Trust, the Jerusalem Trust and the Friends Hall Farm Street Trust. Watch this space for more details!
Picture: Still from ‘The New Lad’, part of our new SMSC resource on ‘cultivating identity, inclusion and belonging’, by Simeon Whiting.
The 2016 BBC Reith Lectures by Prof. Kwame Anthony Appiah are a gold mine for anyone wanting to develop their religious literacy or find raw material for discussion on SMSC. The first three are on ‘creed’, ‘colour’ and ‘country’, exploring religion, ethnicity and nationhood.
From a sociology of religion perspective there is much to debate, as you’ll hear from the discussion following the lecture in each of the podcasts. But there are some important insights. The first lecture in the series (‘Creed’) explores how religious traditions and movements are as much about ‘practices’ (i.e., how they actually live) as ‘beliefs’ (statements of faith). That’s an important insight into understanding how things work in the religious sphere, and indeed for any body of belief or practice.
For more see the BBC Reith Lectures website.