A prayer written by Dr Stella Wood, the school chaplain of Sherborne Girls’ School prior to the start of the Spring Term.

‘Religions in general teach people not to think for themselves, but to be satisfied with handed-down, authoritarian, traditional wisdom never based on evidence. That’s not good educational stuff’

So spoke out the self-made hero of atheism, Professor Richard Dawkins, in an interview during the holidays. Whilst obviously I disagree with him, he was one of the intellectual ingredients which retained my sanity as I, like you, I expect, juggled a number of roles in the frenzy of Christmas.

I needed the challenge of the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ new book, The Dignity of Difference to cope with the crisis catalysed by the realisation that Father Christmas was using the same paper as I had wrapped presents from Mummy and Daddy in.

I needed the cerebral workout provided by the new Archbishop of Canterbury’s Dimbleby lecture to get me through the trek to Manchester with a children’s tape of Christmas music. How many times can one sing along joyously to Little Donkey or Rocking around the Christmas tree without going utterly mad? Or stop Deborah from singing about the ‘little old Jesus’ in Away in a Manger before the Christingle service, that nightmare combination of infants and naked flames?

And yet it is Dawkins’ claim that I kept pondering. He has become very influential, primarily because he is very loud and very opinionated,
And, as so often happens when you put these two together, very wrong. We are part of precisely the sort of school he loathes – one that finds its foundation in a religious tradition. He argues that to educate children into a faith-position is to indoctrinate them and make them intolerant.
I believe – pretty passionately – that it does the absolute opposite. Rooting education within a clear heritage of faith engenders identity, independence and tolerance. And these are the keys to our girls’ and our world’s future.

Doesn’t this seem a bit heavy for this time of term? you may be thinking, as you cope with the shock of being back, let alone the cold. Well yes, it is heavy stuff, but it’s important. The term that is coming is the most clearly Christian term of our school calendar. It holds Confirmation, the Lent Event, the Lent service, all of which point up specific Christian commitment. What they do not do, and this is something Dawkins seems unable to comprehend, is exclude the fact that there can be truth, beauty and wisdom in alternative viewpoints. The presence of these services is as an invitation, not as Dawkins and co. would have it, ramming religion down your throat.

But also, this term is going to be crucial internationally. The predicted date of the apparently inevitable and pretty dubious attack on Iraq is the day of our Confirmation retreat and Valentines’ day. We are likely to see war; and if we do, then we will need as a community to support people through that, whether that is staff or girls with family in the forces. Even for those indirectly related, it could be a time of immense vulnerability. Most of he girls have not experienced war before and it will be largely up to us to guide them through, to be steady for them, to hold on to a sense of perspective and see the events within the larger picture. It is likely to be within the context of Prayers and services that we comunally speak of it. We will need guides and perameters to feel able to cope. In short we will need to be sure of our identity.
Being part of a school community with a faith heritage helps us work out questions of identity.

All religions provide individuals with the larger stories, the cumulative experience in which their own lives find their context. Christianity (and the same could equally be said for Judaism) puts us in the context of eternity and a relation to God. However bad 2003 is looking according to the media and Tony Blair, the politics of Iraq and Al Quaeda is only part of the picture and we need to keep the broader picture in mind and be confident of who we are.
I was intrigued by Rowan Williams’ choice, just before Christmas, of his Desert Island Disks. I thought his choice ofThe Hedgehog Song by the Incredible String Band, was characteristically provocative and tongue-in-cheek until I heard the chorus, which went

O you know all the words
And you sung all the notes
But you never quite learned the song

This seemed to apply to so many people in the world, who don’t have a song to make sense of all the individual components;
No song to bring the words and the notes together. Educating within a Christian framework provides a song, for me the fullest and richest of songs. But in educational terms it is vital because it shows what a song is like. Of course, girls may eventually choose a different song to live their lives by. It might be religious or it might not. But I want them to know that having a song matters intensely for times when life gets hard, for when we share sadnesses such as Will Yates’ death last summer or James Harding on the rugby pitch. Whether it’s the loss of a parent or family breakdown, we need the song to help us make sense of it. Having a song anchors our identity.
It matters for all of us.

I said that being part of a faith tradition also brings independence. This may sound ridiculous to start with, since it seems to actually call on you to throw in your towel with a set of beliefs rather than stand out from them as an individual. But what Dawkins and co. don’t recognise is the larger understanding of independence. Knowing that your life isn’t dependent on a certain government or institution, even, dare I say it Sherborne School for Girls; Knowing that you are unique and immeasurably precious to your Creator, truths which Christianity, inheriting partly from Judaism, teach, allows you to stand out from being reliant on the here and now. Teaching the girls the traditions of Christianity makes them more and not less independent in that sense – because it makes them aware of the bigger agenda than the immediate. To quote the Dimbleby lecture: ‘A person with no skills of understanding the past and no framework for telling their own story will be at the mercy of whoever it is who is deciding what the options are going to be from which you’ve got to select’. But actually, thank goodness, it’s not Bush or Blair who decide all the options: for beyond is a loving God, who Christians believe is engaged, through Christ and the Holy Spirit, in ensuring that goodness and truth will ultimately prevail.

And finally, contrary to Dawkins’ intolerant rhetoric, I am convinced that educating in a specific religious tradition engenders tolerance. I know it hasn’t always in the past, especially when it was taught as if those who were outside were destined for Hell. But passed on sensitively, faith can become the greatest tool for tolerance. For once you can perceive how important to you, your song is, then you can empathise with how important someone else’s song is to them. You cannot do that if you dismiss all religions as mumbo-jumbo relativism, as Dawkins does, because you will not appreciate the depth of reality a religious faith can open. Whether the girls stick with the faith we’ve taught or not, then it’s akin to ‘it is better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all’. You don’t know the power of love until you’ve done it. You cannot understand why people are so passionate about their faith if you don’t have a glimmer of what it might mean. To quote the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, “The universality of moral concern is not something we learn by being universal but by being particular. Because we know what it is to be a parent, loving our children, not children in general, we understand what it is for someone else to be a parent loving his or her children, not ours. There is no road to human solidarity that does not begin with moral particularity – by coming to know what it means to be a child, a parent, a neighbour, a friend. We learn to love humanity by loving specific human beings. There is no short-cut.”

Tolerance is vital to this school.

It is the foundation for communal identity. And the truth which our Christian tradition can add to a boarding school is that people who are different can live together and appreciate each other without necessarily being in competition. Darwin’s survival of the fittest, taken up by Dawkins, would have all people as naturally set against each other in a win or lose competition – whether that’s in a market place or in education. Christian education can stand out against the jargon about efficiency and usefulness when talking about people and affirm that a community just doesn’t need to work like that. Indeed it works best when we value each person’s gifts and their beauty as who they are. People matter because they reflect God, not because they will get good results. With the way some sectors of education are going, that’s a balance I think we need.

As he finished his Dimbleby lecture, Rowan Williams spoke of the Church of England’s role as follows: “it’s obliged just to be there, speaking a certain language, telling a certain story, witnessing to certain non-negotiable things about humanity and about the context in which humanity lives.” In a term which will see pressures – internal and international, then I wonder whether that’s also what as a school we need to be doing – telling a certain story, witnessing to basic truths about the ways we treat people, upholding certain values of honesty, integrity and compassion, grounded in God, and saying that these are unconditional on the time we happen to live in. If we as a school can do that – and I think there’s a fair chance of it, If the wider Church can do it – and I think there’s a faint chance of that, then society and our world as a whole might catch the bug too – there’s a very, very slim chance of that – but if the basic layers we can contribute to are not there, then there’s no hope at all.

More articles by Stella Wood