Relationship Building and Radical Inclusion: Why RE Matters More Than Ever

For much of my eighteen-year teaching career, I have been asked a familiar question: why does Religious Education matter? We often answer by pointing to religious literacy, examination success or knowledge of different faiths. All are important, but they do not capture the subject’s most distinctive contribution. At its best, RE teaches pupils how to encounter another human being: with curiosity, intellectual humility and a willingness to understand before judging.

This matters because radical inclusion cannot be secured through a diversity display or a single awareness day. Nor is it achieved by teaching pupils that religions promote inclusion and hoping the message transfers elsewhere. If RE is to shape school culture, inclusion must be present in both what we teach and how we teach it. The classroom itself should become a place in which pupils repeatedly practise listening, questioning assumptions, handling disagreement and recognising the dignity of people whose worldviews differ from their own. In this sense, RE does not simply teach radical inclusion; it rehearses it.

Tolerance can leave distance intact: I permit your difference, but I need not understand it. Radical inclusion asks more. It begins by recognising that no pupil, believer or community can be reduced to a label. Instead of asking only, “What do Muslims believe?”, good RE asks how and why Muslims may understand and live their faith differently. The change is small, but its effect is significant: pupils learn that traditions are internally diverse and that identity is complex.

Lucy Peacock’s study of a school-linking programme found that simply bringing pupils of different faiths together does not always remove stereotypes. If one pupil is treated as though they speak for everyone in their religion, stereotypes can become stronger. To be genuinely inclusive, pupils need to meet one another as individuals and recognise that people within the same religion may believe and live differently (Peacock, 2023). The aim is to meet a person, not a label.

This insight should shape everyday classroom language. Phrases such as “some Christians” or “within this Muslim community” are not nervous qualifications; they model accuracy. Authentic sources, lived testimony and carefully chosen stories allow pupils to see how belief is embodied in particular lives. The habit pupils can carry elsewhere is to pause before generalising. They learn to ask who is speaking, from which context, and whether another voice might complicate the picture.

We live in a world where information reaches pupils almost instantly, particularly through social media, and opinions can be formed just as quickly. RE creates space to slow that process down. Pupils frequently encounter beliefs that may appear strange, troubling or implausible when viewed from outside. Our task is not to discourage critical thinking, but to help it develop in the right order. Before asking whether a claim is convincing, pupils first need to understand what it means within the worldview and way of life from which it emerges. Wittgenstein’s account of meaning as use reminds us that religious language cannot be understood fairly when separated from the practices, stories and communities that give it meaning (Wittgenstein, 2009). Understanding is not agreement; it is the necessary groundwork for fair evaluation. In the next two articles, I will explore how narrative and curriculum depth can help pupils develop this habit in the classroom.

This is how difficult conversations become educational rather than simply risky. Pupils can be taught to separate a person from an argument, to challenge an idea without humiliating the person who holds it, and to revise a judgement when new evidence appears. Halafoff, Lam and Bouma (2019) argue that careful teaching about diverse religious and non-religious worldviews can challenge hostility, discrimination and tension between religious groups, while building religious understanding and social inclusion. Their work supports an important principle: inclusion is not created by avoiding disagreement, but by teaching young people how to disagree without dehumanising one another.

My recent Master’s research began as an investigation into curriculum design and pupil engagement. One finding repeatedly challenged my assumptions: pupils were not asking for less intellectual demand; they were asking for greater meaning. They valued RE when religious and philosophical ideas connected with questions of identity, suffering, purpose, relationships and how to live. They also valued discussion and shared enquiry—opportunities to test ideas, hear other experiences and locate themselves within the conversation.

That finding changed the way I understand belonging. An inclusive classroom is not one in which everyone thinks the same, nor one in which every claim is treated as equally persuasive. It is one in which every pupil knows that their contribution will be heard and examined with dignity. The teacher models this by asking genuine questions, resisting easy stereotypes and making room for uncertainty. Pupils, in turn, practise listening without preparing an immediate rebuttal, giving reasons for their views and representing an opposing position fairly before criticising it.

For me, the encounters of Jesus offer a powerful example of this way of relating to others. Across the Gospels, he repeatedly notices people whom others have reduced to a status or reputation, restores their dignity through encounter, and crosses boundaries without pretending that difference is irrelevant. In a plural classroom, this is not a demand for pupils to share Christian commitments. It is an educational model: recognise the person before the label, relationship before correction, and dignity even where agreement is absent.

Religious literacy remains essential, but perhaps RE also develops a form of human literacy: the capacity to recognise how belief, culture, experience and community shape another person’s life. Pennington’s study of faith, belief and cohesive societies challenges a view of religion focused mainly on problems. It shows the practical contribution that faith and belief organisations make to communities (Pennington, 2020). Pupils therefore need to encounter religion not only as doctrine or conflict, but as lived service, shared purpose and belonging.

The implications reach beyond the RE department. A pupil who learns not to speak of a billion believers as though they were identical is better equipped to resist stereotypes elsewhere. A pupil who can articulate a position they reject before evaluating it has acquired a habit useful in English, history, politics and pastoral life. A pupil who can remain in respectful dialogue through disagreement is helping to create a healthier tutor group, playground and online community. The knowledge belongs to RE; the habits can be carried into other parts of school life.

This transfer should be intentional. RE teachers can name the habits being practised—curiosity, careful representation, evidence-based challenge, intellectual humility—and use a shared vocabulary that colleagues can recognise across school. Assemblies may proclaim that everyone belongs, but RE gives pupils the repeated, demanding practice through which that promise becomes behaviour. It turns the values a school expresses into habits that pupils repeatedly practise.

The present national conversation about RE makes this especially timely. NATRE’s response to the proposed inclusion of RE within the National Curriculum argues that every young person should have the opportunity to discuss different responses to life’s big questions in “an academic and respectful environment” (NATRE, 2025). Those two adjectives belong together. Respect without academic challenge becomes superficial; challenge without respect can become exclusionary. High-quality Religious Education requires both.

RE’s future should therefore be judged not only by the content pupils can recall, but by the kind of thoughtful learning community the subject creates. Are multiple voices represented meaningfully, rather than included only as a token gesture? Do pupils encounter diversity within as well as between worldviews? Can they question strongly without making one another unsafe? Are they learning that changing one’s mind is a sign of thought rather than weakness? These are not soft alternatives to scholarship. They are evidence that knowledge is being handled with rigour and humanity.

The most powerful RE lessons are not simply those in which pupils remember more. They are those in which knowledge enables pupils to see another person more truthfully—and perhaps to understand themselves more clearly too.

In a culture of rapid judgement and sharpened division, RE offers the rare discipline of intellectual patience. It teaches radical inclusion through religious and non-religious worldviews, but it must also embody inclusion through the relationships, language and enquiries of the classroom. When pupils listen before assuming, understand before evaluating and disagree without diminishing another person, they are doing more than succeeding in RE. They are rehearsing the habits on which an inclusive school—and a cohesive society—depends.

Halafoff, A., Lam, K. and Bouma, G. (2019) ‘Worldviews education: cosmopolitan peacebuilding and preventing violent extremism’, Journal of Beliefs & Values, 40(3), pp. 381–395. https://doi.org/10.1080/13617672.2019.1600113.

National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE) (2025) ‘“New era” for Religious Education as panel recommends subject added to National Curriculum for the first time’, 5 November. Available at: https://natre.org.uk/news/new-era-for-religious-education-as-panel-recommends-subject-added-to-national-curriculum-for-the-first-time/ (Accessed: 3 August 2026).

Peacock, L. (2023) ‘Contact-based interfaith programmes in schools and the changing religious education landscape: negotiating a worldviews curriculum’, Journal of Beliefs & Values, 43(4), pp. 496–510. https://doi.org/10.1080/13617672.2021.2004708.

Pennington, M. (2020) Cohesive Societies: Faith and Belief. London: The British Academy and the Faith & Belief Forum. Available at: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publications/cohesive-societies-faith-and-belief/ (Accessed: 3 August 2026).

Wittgenstein, L. (2009) Philosophical Investigations. 4th edn. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and J. Schulte. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.