Religious Literacy

Contents

Religious Literacy – NEED TO KNOW

Introduction

1. The shock of 9/11 and how journalism changed

2. Myth buster: Secularism has nothing to do with religion

3. Myth buster: ‘Dark’ Ages

Timeline of eras in European history

Timeline of significant events in world history

Religious literacy timeline

4. Myth buster: Religion is a career graveyard

5. Four biases of journalists

References and recommended reading

Index

NEED TO KNOW

NEED TO KNOW

Religious literacy is understanding that religion has social and political outcomes.

Secularization – the theory that religion is dying – is reckoned by academics to be – if not over – at least unrecognizable from earlier times.1

You probably have a cultural blind spot about that fact.

All societies are based on what they believe.

Not all religions are the same (and yes, we did once think that).2

The West uniquely privileges equality – for religious reasons.

Secularism is a religious idea.

‘Simply on birth rate, the world is becoming more religious’ – Biologist Steve Jones.

The word ‘religion’ most likely comes from the Latin religare, meaning ‘to bind’, the same root as ‘ligament’ and ‘legislation’. Society cannot bond – or even function – without it.

Around the world more people died for their faith in the twentieth century than in all the previous centuries put together. Most were the victims of atheism.3

Introduction

Jenny Taylor

RELIGIOUS LITERACY is understanding that religions have social and political impact. They are not just a matter of personal opinion, but of deep-seated beliefs that produce outcomes. They make the world, in fact.

For decades, societies in Europe and the US have been hard-wired to believe that religion was on the way out. There is even an academic theory about the decline of religion: secularization. It was not just the Rushdie fatwah, and then 9/11, that changed all that. The role of priests in popular protests from Nicaragua’s liberation theologians, to Desmond Tutu in South Africa and Pope Karol Józef Wojtyła in communist Eastern Europe, followed by the seismic worldwide Islamic uprisings, has brought that idea to an end. Globalization – the economically- driven ‘one world community’ – has brought ‘other faiths’ to the West in numbers significant enough to warrant more than a passing acquaintance with them, for faith affects politics, education, sex, international affairs and security: all crucial journalism beats. Yet the media largely still labour under the belief that belief does not matter, or should at least remain private. Alastair Campbell’s famous ‘We don’t do God’ – spoken in response to a question about Tony Blair’s faith at a press conference at the start of the Iraq War in 2003 – coincided with the moment much of the rest of the world was intent on ‘doing God’ very much indeed.

Journalists tend to believe that the secular space survives by ignoring the religious dimension. Or that religion is a dull, specialist area, best handled by and for those who like it. But Lapido Media’s popular World Media Watch column contradicts this. The media reflect Britain’s sense of its own religious exceptionalism: that the world is religious but we are not. Well, that perception changed with the advent of globalization. Anti-discrimination legislation alone requires a subtle grasp of religious facts to avoid pitfalls. And indeed the religio-political context in which this book has been put together is changing so bewilderingly fast that each statement looks stale almost as