I Communitarian/Christian values: the productivity of church schools and the co-imbrication of religion and secularity

In this section, I explore how aspects of social capital and communitarian theories that highlight the role of values, particularly those of church schools, have influenced governmental education policy. In doing so, I draw attention to the fact that although governmental discourse is seemingly in support of faith schools – or schools of all faiths – it is actually church schools and their values, as well as other schools that emulate them, that are held up as a benchmark for other non-Christian faith schools. Indeed, the education minister at the time, David Blunkett, stated, in a speech to the Anglican Diocesan Directors of Education in England and Wales, that church schools have an ethos that he wished could be bottled so that it could be distributed to other schools (Gillard, Reference Gillard2002; Parker-Jenkins et al., Reference Parker-Jenkins, Hartas and Irving2005, p. 109).Footnote ³³ I suggest that the government emphasis on church school values not only obscures the privileged and embedded role of Christianity, it also obfuscates the co-imbrication of religion/Christianity as de-theologised values with secularity, when these values are posited as universal and ‘common’ to all.

First, I turn to the role of values in social capital and communitarian theories relating to education, which, as a number of scholars have noted, have played a pivotal role in New Labour and current government policy on education and community cohesion more generally (Gamarnikow and Green, Reference Gamarnikow, Green and Vincent2003; Arthur, Reference Arthur and Bailey2000; Annette, Reference Annette, Gardner, Cairns and Lawton2005; Franklin, Reference Franklin2007; Driver and Martell, Reference Driver and Martell1997). Although social capital theory is diverse, Coleman (Reference Coleman1988), Putnam (Reference Putnam2000), and Fukuyama (Reference Fukuyama1995) are recognised as its key proponents, alongside Bourdieu (Reference Bourdieu, Halsey, Lauder, Brown and Wells1983), who provides a different and more critical analysis of the concept to these others (Gamarnikow and Green, Reference Gamarnikow, Green and Vincent2003, p. 212; Franklin, Reference Franklin2007, p. 1). As Gamarnikow and Green highlight, the ‘traditionally recognised ingredients’ for all these theorists of social capital are ‘norms of trust and reciprocity, networks, civic engagement’ (Reference Gamarnikow, Green, Gardner, Lawton and Cairns2005). Without unpacking these terms in detail, social capital theory can mainly be associated with the idea that individuals benefit from associations or being in social networks (Franklin, Reference Franklin2007).Footnote ³⁴ This view is similar to the communitarian perspectives, where values such as trust and reciprocity, embedded within social or religious networks, are viewed as resources to support individuals. Although communitarianism covers a diverse range of perspectives, it broadly revolves around re-establishing the importance of community in order to curb the emphasis placed by key liberal thinkers such as Rawls (Reference Rawls1971) or Dworkin (Reference Dworkin1978) on individualism and individual rights (Etzioni, Reference Etzioni1996; Arthur, Reference Arthur and Bailey2000, pp. 5–26; Delanty, Reference Delanty, Isin and Turner2002, p. 163).Footnote ³⁵ Etzioni, a key proponent of a communitarian approach within education, and particularly influential on former Prime Minister Tony Blair, views the ‘rights culture’ as ignoring the need for individual responsibilities and social obligations (Etzioni Reference Etzioni1996, p. 163).Footnote ³⁶ He and other key communitarians argue that these ‘values’ would better facilitate members of society working towards the ‘common good’, in turn creating a more cohesive and productive society (p. 163).Footnote ³⁷

This communitarian element is evident in New Labour education policy. For example, Stephen Timms, the former schools secretary, stated in a speech on ‘Values in Education’ that:

Communitarians have proposed different forms that ‘public’ values might take. For example, in the US context, Bellah (Reference Bellah1992) discusses the notion of a value system that would act as a ‘civic’ or ‘public religion’, which again would serve to counter the rise of individualism and ‘community breakdown’ (discussed in Annette, Reference Annette, Gardner, Cairns and Lawton2005, p. 191).Footnote ³⁹ Arguably, Bellah's vision echoes government thinking on the importance of community in dealing with what they view as ‘the wreckage of our broken society’, articulated by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, (Blair, Reference Blair1996, p. 68) as well as current Prime Minister David Cameron.Footnote ⁴⁰

Social capital theory also reflects these communitarian ideals, but it emphasises the role of social structures and social relations in benefiting the community as a whole. This benefit is attributed to a cycle in which greater economic productivity results from individuals who have benefited from the community in the first place and therefore, in turn, have themselves become more economically productive (Fukuyama, Reference Fukuyama1995; discussed in Gamarnikow and Green, Reference Gamarnikow, Green and Vincent2003, p. 93). David Lammy – MP for Tottenham (one of the main sites where the summer 2011 riots in London took place) and minister for higher education at the time – defined social capital and its relevance to New Labour policy as ‘the norms, networks and relationships which create trust and social cohesion, and enable communities to address problems for themselves’.Footnote ⁴¹ Emphasising the role of public social structures, he stated:

It stands to reason then, that (church) schools are viewed by ministers influenced by social capital and communitarian theories as key to the formation and maintaining of networks/communities that produce social capital through their values. This role for ‘public social structures’ is also reflected more recently in David Cameron's ‘big society’ idea, which also involves community organisations working together to build ‘a bigger, stronger, more active society’.Footnote ⁴³ Both governments have also highlighted the importance of education and schools as a social structure, particularly where, as Etzioni describes it, there is a ‘parenting deficit’, and schools are seen as a ‘second line of defence’ in functioning as the main education network for children (Reference Etzioni1997, p. 92).Footnote ⁴⁴

Yet what role does religion – specifically Christianity – play in these debates on the strengthening of community, citizenship and engendering more social responsibility amongst young people? Etzioni and other avowedly secular communitarians view Christianity as an exemplary resource, both in the social structure of the schools and in the values and norms that they embody and promulgate throughout the community. This is also explicit within the social capital theory of James Coleman, in particular, namely that Christian faith schools are viewed as the exemplars of social capital production.Footnote ⁴⁵ From his study of Catholic schools in the US, Coleman concluded that disadvantaged children in these schools attained better results than their ‘similarly disadvantaged peers’ in community schools (Coleman et al., 1982; cited in Gamarnikow and Green, Reference Gamarnikow, Green, Gardner, Lawton and Cairns2005, p. 91). As stated above, for Coleman, the benefit of these schools and the social capital they produce is ‘a cohesive, well functioning society with improving socially desirable outcomes and fewer negative ones, such as crime and social exclusion’ (Gamarnikow and Green, Reference Gamarnikow, Green and Vincent2003, p. 212).

This vision of community and the productivity of values, whether reflected in Coleman's social capital theory, New Labour's ‘third way’ application or David Cameron's ‘big society’, reflects the role of Christianity in education.Footnote ⁴⁶ In particular, I suggest it might explain why and how it is that church schools are viewed as the benchmark of values and standards, of citizenship and cohesion, by which other schools are judged. I am not suggesting that, for example, Muslim schools might not be viewed as potentially producing social capital. Footnote ⁴⁷ It is merely my contention that this potential has barely been articulated in government discourse, as compared to church schools. Rather, the perception of Muslim schools is mainly one of requiring regulation to be brought in line with the ‘common values’ of Britain so that they are not a potential threat to the nation's social cohesion. This is evidenced, for example, in the former Schools Minister Stephen Twigg's comments urging Muslim schools (rather than any others) to ‘promote tolerance and harmony’, and warning that religious segregation in schools should not put the nation's ‘coherence at risk’.Footnote ⁴⁸ As I explore in more detail in the next section, this sentiment is also apparent elsewhere in relation to Muslims more generally, as well as in relation to Muslim children and young people in English education case-law. However, the point I wish to explore further here is how the discourse of ‘common’, universal or secular values also obscures the normative Christian framing of these values within ‘character’ education.

As stated above, Etzioni, one of the most vociferous and influential proponents of values in education, explicitly views schools as having a role in the character development and even formation of children (Reference Etzioni1995, p. 8).Footnote ⁴⁹ He and others, such as Haldane (Reference Haldane and Almond1995) and McIntyre (Reference Mcintyre and Haydon1987), believe that ‘the purpose of education is the reinforcement of values’ (Etzioni, Reference Etzioni1997, p. 92). Although Etzioni views himself as a secular communitarian, he nonetheless views religion, like natural law, as a source of universal values that make up the common good (Reference Etzioni1996, p. 163).Footnote ⁵⁰ He contends, however, that these common or ‘overarching values’ – such as ‘thou shalt not kill’ – can be understood as secular when derived from ‘deontological normative factors’ such as ethics (p. 164).Footnote ⁵¹ However, Minogue claims that Etzioni's conception of the common good and traditionalist views on the family and education, whilst not derived from belief in a transcendent, have much in common with Catholic social teachings (Reference Etzioni1997, p. 163). Moreover, Etzioni's examples (such as ‘thou shalt not kill’) tend to be explicitly biblical or couched in biblical language. Even his argument on the secular sourcing of these values, by virtue of the fact that all people ‘are basically the same’, is backed up in reference to Christianity: ‘This notion is well captured in the refrain: “We are all God's children” and in the religious ideal of condemning the sin but reaching out to the sinner’ (Reference Etzioni1996, p. 166).

I suggest that this fusion of faith based, and what Etzioni refers to as ‘deontological normative’, (Reference Etzioni1996, p. 164) factors, is not easily separable. Or, as Minogue puts it, Etzioni's values discourse is ‘Old (communion) wine in new bottles’ (Reference Etzioni1997). Etzioni's brand of values discourse may be understood as part of the co-imbrication of the religious and the secular, or what de Vries has referred to as the ‘post-secular’, where the two are or have become indistinguishable from one another (de Vries, Reference De Vries2008; Jakobsen and Pellegrini, Reference Jakobsen and Pellegrini2008).

This co-imbrication is also analysed by Arthur (Reference Arthur and Bailey2000) within education, who argues that the expectations/ethos of church schools reflect the goals of the avowedly secular communitarian education movement in Britain, which advocates for a restoration of ‘civic virtues’ through moral education in schools (p. 49).Footnote ⁵² This argument is perhaps best reflected by the forum on ‘values in education and the community’, established in 1996 to come up with a statement of values commonly held by most people (Keast, Reference Keast, Gardner, Lawton and Cairns2005, p. 214). The agreed statement was sent to ‘the main religious groups in England’, who endorsed it, and it was used in the review of the National Curriculum in 1999 (p. 214).Footnote ⁵³ As a result, the 2002 National Curriculum included the first ever statement of the aims, values and purposes of the school curriculum (p. 214).Footnote ⁵⁴ Alongside this, as part of what Keast describes as the ‘social curriculum’, namely, adding a social inclusiveness dimension, citizenship was introduced for the first time into the national curriculum for secondary schools.Footnote ⁵⁵ As Keast notes, these measures were viewed as part of having some more control over the ‘potentially divisive’ effects of faith schools (p. 214). Arthur goes further, arguing that the incorporation of values into the national curriculum was a continuation or re-emergence of a ‘character education’, seeking to instil children with morality and notions of good citizenship (Reference Arthur and Bailey2000, p. 24). He contends that this kind of education has always explicitly been part of the British education system, stemming from the fact that most public education had traditionally been provided by churches (p. 24).Footnote ⁵⁶ Arthur also cites as evidence for this argument the fact that schools must provide a social, moral, cultural and spiritual education throughout the curriculum, as well as pastoral support and guidance for all pupils (p. 24), activities which he believes to be either inspired by, or remnants of, Christianity's historic and privileged role in education.Footnote ⁵⁷

Both communitarian and social capital theories not only reflect a Christian normative framing of religion, they also in essence posit children as potentially productive citizens, and schools as social structures that aim to shape that potential. Gamarnikow and Green view this as a ‘contemporary governmentality through education policy’,Footnote ⁵⁸ which impacts upon the formation of children's identity (Reference Gamarnikow, Green, Gardner, Lawton and Cairns2005, p. 93). I would add that this governmentality also impacts on how we understand and regulate acceptable forms of religion, and indeed those that would constitute ideas of ‘civic’ or even civil religion. Indeed, Edge has argued that in regulating the granting of charitable status to mosques as part of the wider anti-terrorism ‘Prevent’ strategy, there is ‘a creeping establishment of Anglican Islam’, namely, that Islam is being delimited through an Anglican model of religion, policed by the Faith and Social Cohesion Unit of the Charity Commission (Edge, Reference Edge2010, p. 362). In short, this regulation might be viewed as effectively producing a state-sanctioned and arguably somewhat engineered version of Islam and religion more broadly.

Following this analysis, I suggest that religion needs to be understood not just as a predominantly theological concept, but also as something that comes to be produced, demarcated and authenticated through law and policy. Moreover, as I discuss further in the next section, religion, in the faith schools context, must also be understood as being implicated in the sociopolitical work of engendering children with cultural citizenship and belonging in the nation, as well as delimiting ‘acceptable’ forms of religion.

II Racial upliftment, community cohesion, citizenship and belonging

Drawing on the work of scholars who have attended to the racialised representation of non-Christian others within Euro-Atlantic juridical discourse, I suggest that the focus on Muslims as a key cause of the divisiveness of faith schools needs to be understood within the broader post-9/11 political context and the ‘war on terror’. Whilst not wanting to reify 9/11 as a historical moment, it highlights the resultant increase in fear about immigration and lack of integration or citizenship within some European/Western nation-state(s). For example, Razack, commenting on the ‘casting out’ of certain political subjects within the nation, describes how a certain narrative has emerged in which allegorical figures such as ‘the dangerous Muslim man’ or ‘imperilled Muslim woman’ circulate in the popular consciousness (Reference Razack2008; see also Mamdani, Reference Mamdani2005). These narratives, she argues, provide a ‘scaffold’ within which the debates around, for example, the banning of ‘the headscarf’ in France, or the question of legal recognition for elements of Shari'a law in Canada and the UK, have come to be received (Bano, Reference Bano2008).Footnote ⁵⁹

I would contend that singling out Muslim schools as having to ‘promote tolerance and harmony’ in itself seems to signal a fear of the ‘home-grown’ terrorist; ‘grown’ perhaps in closed-off communities or schools within the nation.Footnote ⁶⁰ As Razack argues, even Muslim children are becoming objects of fear, and this is certainly reflected in the discourse surrounding the ‘race riots’ in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley, from where much of the fear of ‘Muslim youth’ as a threat to community cohesion has arisen (Reference Razack2008, p. 11). Indeed, these fears of children becoming or having the potential to become the ‘youth’ that constitute a threat to cohesion, are explicitly articulated in cases involving the wearing of religious/Muslim dress in British schools, as well as elsewhere. The most notable British cases involve the wearing of the jilbab, as in the Begum case,Footnote ⁶¹ and the niqab in R (X) v. Y.Footnote ⁶² Judicial concern for the role of the schools in promoting community cohesion, as well as Muslim girls exercising autonomy and choice, were explicitly deliberated upon in both these cases, as was the notion of ensuring that children grow up to be tolerant of each other.Footnote ⁶³ As Bhandar notes, there is a wider political context which is at play in the discourse within these judgments, particularly around the issue of social cohesion, British values, tolerable religious behaviours, and those that are a threat to children's security (Reference Bhandar2009, p. 314).Footnote ⁶⁴ Part of this wider context, specifically in relation to the niqab, was the controversy that resulted from comments made by Jack Straw, former Labour Party foreign secretary, about his discomfort in not being able to see the faces of women visiting his constituency office, and asking them to remove the niqab.Footnote ⁶⁵ As Bhandar argues, there is an anxious desire to protect social harmony from religious extremism in both these cases, as well as from Jack Straw's comments and the wider political values discourse.Footnote ⁶⁶ She argues:

This anxiety about ‘religious extremism’ has perhaps most recently been expressed by David Cameron in his speech marking the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, mentioned earlier.

Wendy Brown, in relation to the banning of religious symbols and in particular the headscarf in France, has discussed how a governmental discourse of ‘tolerance’ and values has come to regulate ‘aversion’, namely unwanted or deviant behaviour, which comes to be predicated on the civilisational discourse of ‘why we are civilised and they are barbarians’ (Reference Brown2006). Similarly, Razack argues that the narrative of minority religion, or Muslims in particular, has become marked by ‘race thinking’, or racialisation and orientalism, which is often underpinned by the idea that people in the West ‘must protect themselves from pre-modern, religious peoples whose loyalty to tribe and community reigns over their commitment to the rule of law’ (Reference Razack2008, pp. 10 – 11). As Razack goes on to argue:

Although the ‘disciplining’ that Razack is referring to does not relate specifically to education, her words nonetheless echo the communitarian ‘disciplinary’ ideas discussed earlier, in which children are shaped through Christian/secular/universal values in education, towards becoming good citizens.Footnote ⁶⁷

As mentioned earlier, the New Labour government responded to the concerns over the divisiveness of faith schools by asserting the role of religious education and citizenship education in promoting common values and community cohesion. As a number of commentators have noted, ‘community cohesion’ became the official New Labour government strategy for ‘managing diversity’, particularly after the north of England riots in 2001 (Fortier, Reference Fortier2008, p. 3; Choudhury, Malik, Halstead, Bunglawala and Spalek, Reference Choudhury, Malik, Halstead, Bunglawala and Spalek2005; Malik, Reference Malik2008). An independent review, led by Ted Cantle, on the cause of the riots, recommended that ‘mixing’ should be institutionalised and placed at the core of managing the diversity in local communities (Home Office, 2001b).Footnote ⁶⁸ This recommendation was taken up by the Local Government Association (LGA) in 2002. In its guide, Faith and Community: A Good Practice Guide for Local Authorities, it defines cohesive communities as founded upon a shared sense of belonging and positive intergroup contact (LGA, 2002; cited in Annette, Reference Annette, Gardner, Cairns and Lawton2005, p. 194). The guide states that:

As Fortier notes, this LGA guidance came to inform both local and national government policy, including within education (Reference Fortier2008, pp. 194 – 95). For example, the Department for Children Schools and Families guidance to the 2006 duty placed on schools to promote community cohesion, similarly to the LGA guidance, describes it as where there is a ‘common vision’ and all communities have a ‘sense of belonging’ (DCSF, 2007b, p. 3).Footnote ⁶⁹ Choudhury et al. view community cohesion as a way in which ‘a greater sense of citizenship’ can be achieved which in turn brings about political stability (Reference Choudhury, Malik, Halstead, Bunglawala and Spalek2005, p. 46).Footnote ⁷⁰ In relation to citizenship as a National Curriculum subject, David Bell, chief inspector of schools, in 2005 stated that:

Indeed, one of the new Free Schools – another coalition government education initiative – includes the Collective Spirit school in Oldham, which is designed to be a ‘faith sensitive’ school ‘that does not select on the basis of religion but aims to build community cohesion’.Footnote ⁷² Thus, we can trace a developmental journey of the concept of ‘social cohesion’ from the riots on the streets of Oldham, Bradford and Burnley, to religious education and citizenship education in the classroom as well as in the establishment of new Free/Academy schools where the religious element may not be immediately obvious. Given this background, it is not surprising that government discourse highlighted the need for Muslim schools to ensure that they promote community cohesion. Perhaps the increased prominence of citizenship education and the development of the concept of ‘common values’, to complement or replace religious education as the vehicle through which social cohesion can be promoted, should also be understood in this context.Footnote ⁷³ I am not suggesting that all Muslims schools have been viewed as a threat to social cohesion, although clearly there is an overwhelming criticism of Muslim schools from various quarters, including the former inspector of schools. Nonetheless, it is my contention that Muslim schools are disproportionately highlighted as the threat to social cohesion, particularly when compared with church schools, promoted in particular by the former New Labour government as the exemplary conduit of values, social capital, high standards and responsible citizenship.

As Yuval-Davis (Reference Yuval-Davis, May, Modood and Squires2004, Reference Yuval-Davis2006) and Fortier (Reference Fortier2008) have argued in relation to New Labour discourse on immigration and citizenship more generally, the notion of ‘British’ values has been used as a way to establish ‘belonging’ within the nation, a key element of community cohesion. This discourse is apparent, for example, in Gordon Brown's Green Paper, The Governance of Britain, where he outlined his ideas on citizenship and national identity as well as ‘our common values’ (2007, p. 53).Footnote ⁷⁴ Tony Blair also stated in a 2006 speech that it was a duty for ‘them’, namely foreigners seeking citizenship within the nation, to embrace the nation's values, such as tolerance, ‘because that is what makes Britain, Britain’.Footnote ⁷⁵ He explicitly articulated the ‘anxiety’ around issues such as forced marriage, but also madrassahs, or Muslim supplementary schools, which he stated were to be brought under a National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education that would encourage best practice around tolerance and respect for other faiths.Footnote ⁷⁶ Moreover, he stated:

Amongst other things, a key point this statement elides is the regulatory implications of the ‘unifying’ force of British values.Footnote ⁷⁷ Blair's sentiment also masks the particularity of the purported universality of values that are deemed to be ‘common’, as I have discussed in relation to the communitarian values discourse above. In terms of conceptualisations of non-Christianness, it seems that, through an implicit racialisation, minority religion becomes ‘evicted from the universal, and thus from civilisation and progress’ (Fitzpatrick, Reference Fitzpatrick1995).Footnote ⁷⁸ In short, whilst the normative Christian underpinning of universal, secular values circulates as a discourse of good citizenship, ‘values talk conceals the hierarchy’, racialisation and orientalist configurations expressed about non-Christianness (Razack, Reference Razack2008, p. 8; Goldberg, Reference Goldberg1993, p. 63).Footnote ⁷⁹

As Isin and Turner (Reference Turner, Isin and Turner2002) highlight, citizenship as a concept itself emerged from a racialised and orientalist formulation, for example in the work of Weber (Reference Weber and Parsons1920/1930).Footnote ⁸⁰ Isin states that Weber ‘mobilised images of citizenship as a unique occidental invention that oriental cultures lacked’, and in which the citizen was both secular and universal (2002, p. 117). This reading of Weber's work highlights the Weberian notion that ‘developing societies would eventually evolve or modernise’ once their irrational values came to be eliminated and replaced with democratic forms of citizenship and modernisation. For Weber – in Isin's reading – these values would come to constitute the measure of the ‘universal citizen’ (p. 122).

As Turner (Reference Turner, Isin and Turner2002), Fitzgerald (Reference Fitzgerald2000) and Goldberg (Reference Goldberg and Quayson2002) note, there is a clear etymological as well as political relationship between notions of the civil, civility and civilisation and, of course, citizenship. From Edward Said's work we know that this configuration featured heavily in the orientalist view of the Christian West as the ‘apex of civilisation’ (Reference Said1979/1994) and, later, universal values and standards. Cristi, in particular, draws out these connections in her book From Civil to Political Religion (Reference Cristi2001), where she explicitly charts the interrelationship of Christianity and notions of civil religion in the works of Rousseau and Durkheim, as well as their influence on current communitarian thinking on ‘civic religion’ as key to citizenship and social cohesion. As Fortier argues, New Labour policy envisages community cohesion to be achieved through the ‘rising above’ of ethnic and religious differences through the ‘glue of values’ rather than ‘the glue of ethnicity’ (Reference Fortier2008, p. 5).Footnote ⁸¹ Whilst the scholars discussed here do not highlight the role of values in education within their analyses, Goldberg nevertheless charts the historical role of education in the colonial era when native subjects were civilised through the education meted out by colonial rule and civilising missions (Goldberg, Reference Goldberg and Quayson2002; Comaroff and Comaroff, Reference Comaroff and Comaroff1997). For example, colonial administrators in India, such as James Mill and his father John Stuart Mill:

John Stuart Mill's ideas justifying the regulation of non-Europeans on the grounds that they lacked rationality were representative not only of the late seventeenth century and Enlightenment thinking in the eighteenth century, but also beyond (Goldberg, Reference Goldberg and Quayson2002). In short, Lockean ideas of autonomy and equality – that came to characterise the Enlightenment – not only came to be delimited by racialisation or race thinking, they also justified colonial regulation as part of the project of what Goldberg refers to as ‘racial upliftment’ (p. 88). The uncivilised character of the non-European, non-Christian, was seen to be rectifiable through, for example, missionary work or education; the latter was the ‘principal mode’ through which ‘natives’ were ‘civilised’, so that they could acquire the customs and learn about the values of the colonisers and thereby cease to be ‘native’. (p. 89).Footnote ⁸² For example, within the Australian context, Goldberg notes how Merivale, a colonial administrator, commented on how natives should be amalgamated, so that they could potentially be regarded as citizens and, if possible, be connected by intermarriage, which he viewed as resulting in the improvement of inferior races once influenced by their European superiors (p. 89).

This aspect of ‘racial upliftment’ and ‘mixing’Footnote ⁸³ through intermarriage, the forcible taking and adopting of Aboriginal children by White families and educating them according to European Christian values, has been the subject of scholarship on the ‘stolen generation’ within Australia (Haebich, Reference Haebich1999; Read, Reference Read1981), as well as indigenous peoples in the Americas (Anghie, Reference Anghie1996). Goldberg notes how the assimilation of these children stripped them of family and culture and in a sense ‘de-racialised them so they could be recreated, racially configured – as white … in terms of custom, habit, culture, practice’ (Reference Goldberg and Quayson2002, p. 88 ).Footnote ⁸⁴ Goldberg further highlights, as I have discussed above, that the imposed aspirations to universal ideals were ‘embodiments of European, Christian virtue and practice, morality and truth’ (p. 92).Footnote ⁸⁵

Within the European context, according to Turner, the idea of ‘upliftment’ was also present in Weber's articulation of citizenship, which, as he saw it, would ensure that the European medieval city could evolve without the divisive complication of ethnic identity in the post-Reformation era (2002, p. 263). In examining this history of the ‘racial upliftment’ and subsequent de-racialisation of non-Christianness, I suggest that current citizenship and values discourse may also be understood as potentially having similar regulatory effects upon children and the formation of their identities.Footnote ⁸⁶ Particularly, as mentioned above, children from these backgrounds – as well as their families and communities – are also subject to citizenship discourse circulating beyond education, for example, in relation to immigration. In the US context, Ong discusses what she terms the ‘engendering [of] religious modernity’ by church groups in the US, ‘converting immigrants into acceptable citizens … in sponsoring, helping and socialising newcomers to Western culture’ (1999, p. 277). Ong views the citizenship process as a form of subjectification through which ‘cultural citizens’ are made in Western democracies (p. 263); giving ‘unitary and unifying expression to what are in reality multifaceted and differential experiences of groups within society’ (Corrigan and Sayer, 1985, cited in Ong, Reference Ong, Torres, Mirón and Inda1999, p. 263). By ‘cultural citizen’ she specifically refers to:

In the British context, Yuval-Davis argues that citizenship has been a key element in the discourse of belonging (2004). She contends that citizenship can be based on (the myth of) common descent, or common culture and/or language (2006, p. 211).Footnote ⁸⁸ However, in pluralistic societies it can also be based on common values and a projected myth of common destiny (p. 211).Footnote ⁸⁹ Thus, ethical and political values can become ‘the requisites of belonging’, as those relating to social locations such as origin, ‘race’ or place of birth – being the most racialised, according to Yuval-Davis – would be the least permeable (p. 211). Using a common set of values – such as citizenship values – as the signifiers of belonging can be seen as having the most permeable boundaries of all (p. 211). As she argues, both the New Labour White Paper Secure Borders, Safe Haven (Home Office, 2001a) and the Cantle Report on the race riots (Home Office, 2001b),Footnote ⁹⁰ ‘construct cultural diversity as a direct result of migration and thus link the need to contain it with the need to train the immigrants in English and civic values’ (2004).

So while ‘belonging’ can be construed racially – as a genetic link between particular ethnic groups – as I have discussed elsewhere in relation to same-race and religion-matching policies in UK adoption policy and practice (Jivraj, Reference Jivraj and Herman2009), the notion of belonging in the faith schools context is somewhat more complex. The nation-state comes to be challenged with a seeming tension between a child's belonging to their ‘own’ particular racial or ethnicised religious family/community, and at the same time belonging to and within the nation.Footnote ⁹¹ Indeed, the 2010 religious education guidelines state that religious education: ‘makes an important contribution to a school's duty to promote community cohesion … promote shared values' at four levels: firstly, at the level of the school community; secondly at the level of the ‘community within which the school is located’; thirdly the ‘UK community’; and finally the ‘global community’ (DCSF, 2010).Footnote ⁹²

In short, children should not only belong to the families in which they grow up, but this racial/religious and/or cultural belonging must also be tempered to ensure their national belonging and citizenship. This added dimension of belonging, as Fortier (Reference Fortier2008, Reference Fortier2010) argues, manages the ‘national unease’ or anxiety about the belonging of the children of immigrants who are citizens by nationality yet still ‘strangers’ within the nation.Footnote ⁹³ It seems unequivocal then, that the making of nationhood, through the regulatory effects of universal values and citizenship described above, are at work. This is both through religion circulating as Christian/universal/secular values – or in Casanova's terms ‘acceptable’ forms of non-Christian religion, namely where they produce social capital and promote good citizenship.

While these may well be desirable outcomes for a nation, and legitimate policies for a government to pursue, there is nonetheless an urgent need to attend to the racialised thinking that underpins the representations of non-Christianness, here particularly Islam, as needing to be yet more ‘civil-ised’ towards full citizenship.Footnote ⁹⁴ There is also a need for (legal) scholars of religion to interrogate the multiple and contingent ways in which religion comes to circulate and be deployed within sociopolitical and juridical discourse.

III Concluding remarks

I have discussed both the former New Labour and current coalition's governmental discourse on the role of faith and values within education, and particularly in the promotion of community cohesion. In doing so, I have highlighted how the ethos and productive work of church schools, as well as Christian values, have been explicitly and implicitly viewed as a universal benchmark for other (faith) schools to follow. At the same time, Muslim schools have been posited in the discourse as a source of concern because of their potential divisiveness and radicalisation; they have therefore been singled out as in need of regulation. I have argued that this discourse can be understood as both racialising non-Christianness on the one hand – as divisive and conflictual – and yet also de-racialising on the other, by seeking to shape children's identities through education to meet the Christian/universal standard of citizenship and behaviour within the nation. Thus, within citizenship and community cohesion discourse, and through the application of social capital theory, Christian – albeit de-theologised – state values come to play a role in drawing the parameters of acceptable non-Christian religion. This produces an educational mode of civilising non-Christianness through education law and policy. It is perhaps ironic then, if not disturbing, that New Labour's move towards the expansion of state-funded faith schools was spurred on by the Commission for Racial Equality's report Terror in our Schools, identifying the racism and discrimination faced by children from ethnic/religious minorities in British schools; particularly when non-Christian religion has so often been conceptualised in the governmental discourse through a racialised and orientalist lens. Indeed, the coalition's pursuance of Academies / Free Schools seems to be only entrenching the lack of insight into the socio-economic factors that can lead to marginalisation within communities.Footnote ⁹⁵

Of course, I am not suggesting that there is no place for ideas of citizenship and social cohesion to play a part in public policy, whether in relation to education and children or elsewhere. Indeed, there are a number of scholars who seek to work through the complexities of religious/ethnic belonging within Western nations and the proper role of law, particularly in regulating gender, and more recently, sexual equality. Maleiha Malik (Reference Malik2008, Reference Malik2010), for example, following Tariq Modood's work on ‘progressive multiculturalism’, argues for notions of ‘complex equality’ in which religion might be understood, both in equalities policy and cases such as Begum, more in terms of personal identity rather than predominantly in terms of choice to manifest one's faith. I have also explored complex notions of religious identity both in relation to children and in relation to queer religious subjects through the notions of affect or habitus (Jivraj and de Jong, Reference Jivraj and De jong2011). Moreover, there is a significant scholarship and ongoing international debate on the different models of ‘inclusive’ citizenship that attends to the dynamics of racialisation of minorities within Western nations (see, for example, Isin, Reference Isin, Turner, Isin and Turner2002b; Yuval-Davis, Reference Yuval-Davis, Denis and Kalekin-Fishman2009; Malik, Reference Malik2010).

There are, therefore, knowledge tools for government to take account of the racial thinking underpinning law and policy that potentially disproportionately regulates minority religious/ethnic communities, when in fact seeking or claiming to address discrimination. Moreover, there is also a more fundamental point about the concept of religion itself, which as I have argued, should not only be predominantly viewed in onto-theological terms, as a transcendental and ahistorical concept. Rather, as de Vries (Reference De Vries2008) and Asad (Reference Asad2003, Reference Asad1993) highlight, religion's many instantiations need to be studied in their context. Religion must be understood as a contingent concept that is often deeply imbricated with politics, particularly through the discourse of normative universal and secular values. These terms too often obscure their own historically embedded normative Christian framing of religion within law and policy relating to religious/ethnic minorities. Although, under the current coalition government both the co-imbrication of Christian thinking with state values and its agenda to influence and regulate (children's) citizenship is becoming increasingly clear.