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Palgrave Macmillan

Negotiating Religion and Non-religion in Childhood

Experiences of Worship in School

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

Authors:
  1. Rachael Shillitoe

    1. University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

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  • Contributes to debates about the significance of children and their agency in the study of religion
  • Explores how schools enact collective worship and religious education, and how these are embedded in school life
  • Advances analysis of the social, religious, and political context behind religion and nonreligion in education

Part of the book series: Studies in Childhood and Youth (SCY)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-vii
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  2. Introduction: The Contested Nature of Collective Worship

    • Rachael Shillitoe
    Pages 1-45

  3. Adult Anxieties and Generational Blind Spots: Re-centring Childhood in the Sociology of Religion

    • Rachael Shillitoe
    Pages 47-78

  4. On Concepts and Agency: Negotiating Religion and Non-religion in Collective Worship

    • Rachael Shillitoe
    Pages 79-110

  5. The School Family: Rituals of Solidarity, Belonging and Cooperation

    • Rachael Shillitoe
    Pages 111-142

  6. ‘Doing Good’: Children’s Ethical Formation Through the Everyday

    • Rachael Shillitoe
    Pages 143-179

  7. On Silence, Candles, Jelly Timers and Enya: Creating Sacred Spaces in Collective Worship

    • Rachael Shillitoe
    Pages 181-220

  8. Conclusion

    • Rachael Shillitoe
    Pages 221-228

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 229-262
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Keywords

About this book

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. 



Reviews

“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)

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Rachael Shillitoe

About the author

Rachael Shillitoe is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham, UK. 

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