Negotiating Religion and Non-religion in Childhood

“I am genuinely delighted to be able to write of the qualities of this very distinctive contribution to the field of religion and education. It addresses the question of worship– one of the most contested and arguably controversial areas of UK education. It makes thoroughly distinctive inroads into the nature of worship in schools from the perspectives of children. There is not really any other book like it.” —Liam Gearon, Associate Professor of Religious Education and Senior Research Fellow, Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford, UK This book explores how and if the mandate for children to worship in schools can be justified within the context of declining church attendance and increasing nonreligious identification in British society. Shillitoe asks what place compulsory worship has in an increasingly diverse and plural society, and what the answer means for the relationship between religion, the secular, and education more broadly. Through in-depth ethnographic fieldwork from across three schools in southwest England, the book reveals how examining the significance of children’s experiences expands our understanding of both collective worship in schooling and religion in social life more broadly and demonstrates that adult-centric anxieties and assumptions in this area do not always reflect the experiences of children. Rachael Shillitoe is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham, UK.