Meet the Christians

Tom is studying GCSE RS. A significant part of his course involves an in-depth exploration of Christian beliefs and practices. He has to show that he understands a whole range of ideas including that Christians have diverging views. His teacher, the textbooks and online sources use a range of adjectives to describe Christians: words such as Catholic, Evangelical, Charismatic, quakers, Liturgical, Trinitarian, Orthodox, non-conformist, Pentecostal, Protestant, nominal, committed/devoted, liberal, unitarian, fundamentalist, Jehovah's Witnesses, Methodist, Mormons, Christadelphians, Literalists, Baptist, Latter Day Saints, United Reformed, born again… and many more. Tom doesn’t really understand some of them but notices that he seems to get more marks when he uses these in his answers. He aims to remember a couple of them for each sub-topic. When he gets confused he will throw adjectives randomly and hope for the best.

Gemma is an RS examiner. Tom’s paper is midway through the 200 or so scripts she is marking. Tom's script is not unusual. She notices that different names are assigned to different Christian positions sometimes accurately, sometimes not but the belief or practice is more or less correct so, to some extent, this can be overlooked. Whilst Tom clearly understands some things about Christianity, his understanding of the big picture seems a little lacking; the Quakers in particular seem to be accused of all sorts of beliefs and practices!

The above is not intended to cast blame. As teachers, our curriculum is very full: we will inevitably omit certain things and even if we have done a wonderful ‘Christianity overview or big picture’ at some point in Key Stage 3 they may have forgotten it by GCSE. It was tempting for me in my later years as a sixth form college teacher to wonder about what had gone on at key stage 4 - probably very good things in most cases - but Christian beliefs taught at the start of year 10 was often a distant memory for my students doing DCT half way through year 12. So, just how do we get our students to understand Christianity and write about it clearly in their GCSEs and beyond?

The Key Conundrum

• How can we help our students understand Christianity and write about it it a clearer way? AND

• How can we ensure that they reflect the richness of the different Christian traditions?

These questions pull in slightly different directions - there is a need not to overload students for very good educational reasons - I’m not convinced having 20+ different adjectives (all of which I have seen as an examiner) is helpful. Equally there is a need not to dumb down so that the richness and diversity of the Christian faith is not misrepresented or oversimplified.

Types of questions

First, it is important to think about the type of question we are asking in order to get the right label for our boxes: just as we know that ‘tall’ ’hardworking’ or ‘female’ answer different questions that we might ask about persons, so too it may be worth thinking about the different types of adjectives in our list above and how we sort them:

• most of the adjectives are denominational groups which are helpful for certain questions.

• Other adjectives tend to only come into play when we are asking specific questions.

• If we are looking for a general way of writing about Christianity, then a lenses/worldviews approach might help us most of the time.

  
  

Denominations: Where do they worship?

The easiest way to sort groups is to use denominations - essentially 'Where do they go to worship?' This will give us a list of denominations and groups such as Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Church of England, Methodist, Baptist and Pentecostal etc. Some of these will divide even further. There are 3 broad families: Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant. Some churches are independent and don’t have labels. In the UK the ones in bold above are likely to be the key ones - and 6 is probably too high a number. Whilst denominations may help us to some extent with practices and beliefs, it is not always straightforward - the rural church with 10 elderly regulars and the inner city church with full rock band that meets in a warehouse both have Church of England over the door but are otherwise very different. Members of denominations often differ greatly in their beliefs, even if the official church has a position on something individual members may or may not follow it - particularly when it comes to Philosophical and Ethical issues.

courtesy of Christianityinview.com

Some Other Specific questions

How do they read the Bible?

Another way of categorising Christians might be their approach to interpretation of the Bible. So we may have Liberal, Conservative and Fundamentalist/literalist views based on how literally to take certain passages. This is probably best thought of as a line or a continuum rather than completely separate boxes

What is their attitude to social issues?

Related to this, we can also categorise Christians in terms of social attitudes - this may relate to their views on the Bible above - so liberal or progressive Christians on one hand vs Conservative or Traditional on the other.

What do they believe?

We might also divide Christians according to specific beliefs. Most Christian groups are Trinitarian - one God 3 persons - whereas other Christians are Unitarian and do not believe in the divinity of Jesus or the Holy Spirit. This may be the moment that we refer to different groups such as Seventh Day Adventists or Jehovah's Witnesses that we don't often bring in.

How do they worship?

We could also have a couple of boxes based on how Christians worship. There are those whose services are liturgical and those who are not. The non-liturgical may also have a subcategory to include Charismatic services. The words traditional and modern might also apply respectively.

How seriously do they practice?

The census reveals that around half of the UK population identify as Christians, including Tom whose parents tick that box having had him Christened at some point. We might refer to this type of Christianity as being quite nominal- perhaps attending church at Christmas or only praying when a bus is speeding towards them. Others view their Christianity more seriously, it is a more regular feature of their everyday lives; the adjectives committed or devoted might be used. Some might view Christian commitment as something you choose for yourself, that marks a completely fresh start from their previous life. They are born again Christians

Worldviews and Lenses: Catholic, liberal, evangelical

All of the above can have their place. But probably the most helpful categories I used in my later years teaching and my writing for a GCSE textbook (OCR GCSE RS Christianity and Islam: Eyre, Waterfield and Ahmedi) was to group Christians into 3 broad worldviews/lenses. I hadn't really appreciated until quite recently how much the wonderful work of the much missed Dawn Cox had seeped into my brain as I started to work in this way [See Dawn's original blog here]

Catholic, Liberal and Evangelical as 3 Christian lenses

To ground the analogy a little, I would introduce the 3 lenses via 3 characters: Linda, a Catholic Christian, Alice, a liberal Christian, and Rodrigo, an evangelical Christian. I would explain that the churches they attend (RC, C of E and Pentecostal respectively perhaps) but their denomination may be a red herring. It is more about how they might talk about themselves and their faith - for example how each of them understands the Bible and what their answers might be to some of the 'other questions' above. So we have

• Linda - our Catholic Christian with traditional conservative views, accepting the authority of the church as well as the Bible, believing in infant baptism and transubstantiation

• Alice - a liberal Christian, who is modern and progressive in her moral views, more flexible in her reading of the Bible - less worried about its literal truth. She is comfortable with her doubts but also has a sincere faith

• Rodrigo - an evangelical Christian views the Bible as God's word, it is the one source of authority. He believes that you become a Christian through personal choice and believes in adult baptism. He holds conservative views on a number of moral issues.

Once each of the characters has been introduced, a list of statements as a sorting exercise then provides a fruitful discussion - there aren't always right answers here but we can begin to think about what each of these Christians might believe or do. These 3 labels can also be used in response to most of the specific questions above on Biblical interpretation, social attitudes etc. As far as boxes and categories go, they tend to work more often than not.

As with any model, there are limitations - I think 2 main ones here: I have not considered the Orthodox lens, and it is a generalisation, it errs on the side of simplicity and I would admit as much repeatedly to GCSE and A level students so the words 'most' 'many' and 'some' will be needed. That said it should suffice for high grades at GCSE.