SACRE NEWSIssue 29

FROM THE CHAIR ...

What is school for? How rarely do people involved in education get the opportunity to explore this question, yet it is and always will be of vital importance. Governments of all political and national compositions place a lot

of weight on the value of education because it is the foundation

for the creation of the future society. We have had targets, strategies, community cohesion, wellbeing, subject knowledge, concepts and pedagogy…..’the’ National Curriculum.

But what is it all for?

Some years ago, I was involved in a school review. I was lead on Personal Development and Pupil Voice. As part of this I was talking to a group of pupils ranging from Y3 to Y6, and the subject of homework came up. I asked how much

homework they get. A lovely Y3 girl responded in shopping list manner that she had literacy, reading, numeracy, science and history (no RE!) that week. “Gosh,” I said, thinking back to when I was 7 or 8 and I had ‘looking at clouds’ for homework! “That’s a lot, isn’t it.”

Almost as if I hadn’t spoken the same girl piped up, “I think reading is the most important!” “Oh, and why is that?” “Well, without reading, you couldn’t do the other things, could you!” Good thinking, I thought. I struggled to find a really good question to tease this out further with them all, when, thank goodness, she again took control of the discussion.

“Well, reading is sort of the most important, I suppose. Apart from life and love!”

From the mouths of babes……and I was silenced. I wanted to take this 7 or 8 year old to all

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In this Issue

From the chair p1

Survey of SACREs p3

REsilience - why RE should be involved p3

AGM p7

Celebrating RE - an update p8

It was the best of times - it was theworst of time p9

Obituary - Karl D’Cruz p11

Book Reviews p13

Back Page p15

the schools and LEAs (as they were then) across the country finishing at 10 Downing Street. I would still like to. What is school for if not to teach children how to cope with life and to provide them with positive values by which to live together (the ‘wows and ows’ as one Primary School refers to it)? Yes, there is a body of knowledge, a range of skills and even competencies, but there also needs to be a conceptual values framework into which these fit to enable people to live with each other and with themselves. RE, as all other subjects, has an important body of knowledge and range of skills. However, more than any other subject, RE also helps children and young people to develop the conceptual framework by which they make sense of ‘life and love’.

SACREs have a key role to play in this. We know that under the current cuts in services both budgets and support for SACREs are threatened. It would appear that RE is going to remain both statutory and locally determined, so we have to ask clearly and with vigour, how SACREs can fulfil their statutory function if they are not adequately supported by specialists?

I am most grateful to all of you who responded to my questions over the summer, and the brief summary of the results can be seen below. It did not make for good reading, with March 2011 the key time for uncertain futures. We are already hearing of more posts disappearing.

Given how important RE is and that it is locally determined, NASACRE has developed suggested approaches for you to make with your LAs. NASACRE is also writing to all Executive Officers.

We hope you will take advantage of this and that all groups, but especially Group D, will work diligently to influence LAs to see

the value of RE, the key role of SACREs in promoting this and the need for specialist and effective support, both financial and personnel, that is required to enable SACREs to function. Please take this guidance (which is also on our website) and adapt it to use with your LA. We hope you will combine the advice contained with the vision of and for RE to be able to make a good local case for SACRE support. We wish you well in this.

Preparations for the National Celebration in March move on apace and I hope you are accessing the excellent website ( www.celebratingre.org.uk ) with all the information and competitions. NASACRE will be holding a conference on Thursday

31st March in Birmingham on the theme of ‘Whose RE is it anyway?’ More information will follow.

The subject SEF is now live on the BetterRE website (http://betterre.reonline.org.uk/lead_manage_sef/index.php ) and we would encourage you to promote this with your schools and to get them to share it with you. It is an excellent tool and will help schools and SACREs in partnership to improve RE for all children and young people.

There are difficult times ahead. We know how important RE is and what good educational Collective Worship can offer to schools and pupils. We know how central to this a well-supported and effective SACRE is, with a specific clerk and specialist advice. I can only wish you all well from the Executive and assure you that we are doing all we can to influence those in authority and to shape events as they unfold.

Bill

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Survey of SACRES

September 2010Based on questions into the continuance of specialist consultant or adviser support

Based on questions into the continuance of specialist consultant or adviser supportBased on questions into the continuance of specialist consultant or adviser support

Deleted or made redundant 1

Under threat of deletion / redundancy 3

Secure until at least [date] [mostly March 2011] 61

Currently uncertain 13

No support since ... 11

Total (from a possible 154) 89

Note: This was correct at the end of September 2010. We recognise that the situation is in continual flux and it is likely that we will repeat this in early 2011 to gain a more accurate picture.

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REsilience - why RE needs to pick up this challenge

Lat Blaylock: Editor RE Today. The last decade has seen a major shift in the readiness of politicians to acknowledge the significance of religion in the

contemporary world. It might have been 9/11, or an effect of increasing exposure to ‘otherness’ in the neighbourhood and through global tourism, both actual and virtual. Within Europe, it has led to the Council of Ministers promoting inter-religious dialogue, even in education. In the UK there's funding for faith community capacity building and national inter faith weeks. Party election manifestos were not shy of making positive references to

religions. Over three successive years the RE Council of England and Wales has been grant aided to develop an RE Action Plan, plus - most recently - the REsilience project

www.re-silience.org.uk.I’d like to argue that the strategic significance of this is as follows:

Pupils deserve an education which will enable them to make sense of the world in

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which they'll soon be adults. That world is both complexifying and convergent. They need opportunities and companionship to help them develop their sense of fairness and oughtness and to refine the deepest beliefs by which they will live. Schools and public RE have a special part in that process.

Nationally we have a tradition which has come to appreciate ethnic and religious plurality. It has been slow and painful, as Irish and Blacks, Jews and Roman Catholics know too well. But the BNP is not flourishing and religious diversity is apparently more comfortable for minorities here than in most other countries.

It is no coincidence that the presence of RE in public education has been inclusive in intent since schools first became afforded from taxes in 1870. The Bible was the common ground across Christian religious differences; this predominated for the next 100 years; but divisions persisted to the extent that by the 1930s several county councils started to develop SACREs and 'agreed syllabuses' . The national desirability for such was reinforced by the potent threat from the pseudo religious force of Nazism, hence the 1944 requirement for such agreement in every local area. By 1988 wider ecumenical horizons were formally acknowledged in the new requirement that RE must be attentive to all the principal religions of the UK, with direct implications for future agreed syllabuses and the composition of SACREs. RE has concern for common humanity.

So far, in theory, so good. But in practice there have been two debilitating flaws. The first relates to teacher education and the second to curriculum development. The extent and quality of RE provision in initial teacher education and training, whilst generous and excellent for a minority of students, has been thin and poor for most. This condition has been even worse in

respect of CPD. The REC has documented this repeatedly since 1979. Over the 30 years in which an exclusive secularist voice (not just a properly open secular one) became loud in society at large, teachers generally were not immune to the uncertainties and suspicions associated with religion amongst their

peers. In the absence of good CPD on this front, not least for head teachers, appreciation of RE wavered in the profession at large.

Secondly, syllabuses appeared dominated by content perceived as irrelevant and unchallenging by pupils. Religion in national and global human experience is actually intrinsically compelling, but only if mediated by good teaching. Effective learning from religious traditions presupposes teacher understanding of that content, interpreted with imagination and enthusiasm. Without this, instead of living up to its potential to inspire appreciation of human diversity, an impoverished RE can be contaminated by the very shortcomings which properly equipped it exists to overcome.

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In spite of the richness and relevance of RE as demonstrated in particular schools, it has been a blind spot for politicians and administrators. The silence about religions and RE in DfES advice to schools in the immediate aftermath of the London bombings, in much of the curriculum development on Citizenship, in management training for senior staff, and in creating funded and totally separate LA structures for community cohesion can only be explained by ignorance.

This is why the RE Action plan seeks to:

clarify the legal obligations on

schools regarding RE

strengthen the supports for RE

teachers through NATRE

strengthen SACREs through

NASACRE’s training programme

review classroom teaching

resources and under the

leadership of AREIAC and AULRE

develop an on-line CPD

handbook

raise public awareness of the

importance of RE.

It is against this background that the REsilience project needs to be seen. The case was initially made by representations from NATRE and the REC to the then DCSF Community Cohesion team for a CPD initiative in RE. Though the case applies also to primary and FE staff development needs, the immediate DCSF preference was to concentrate on maintained secondary schools and academies, and especially 11-16 teachers. A contract was awarded to the REC to design, develop

and deliver the REsilience programme, working collaboratively with its member organisations and others. This is reflected in the range of professional representation on the Executive Delivery Group, the inclusion of religious and belief community representation in the Advisory Group, and the recruitment as REsilience mentors of individuals from schools and university teacher training institutions, as well as from the adviser and consultant communities.

Initially conceived as an English initiative,

negotiations with Welsh Assembly Government, DCELLS, the CLG and DSCF widened the project.One of the novelties of the project design is its determination to start with where individual schools and teachers are at in their needs and thinking about RE. What help do they want to boost confidence and capacities for tackling contentious issues and for countering appeals to religious justification of extremist violence?

Mentors meet with senior management as well as heads of RE on school visits, encouraging the recognition that REsilience is relevant to the whole school not just the RE specialists. Starting with a school self evaluation of confidence,

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schools and their teachers are individually supported in their use of Gateway documents which directly address what are seen as priorities. By obtaining commitment from each participating school to engage institutionally with this CPD in RE, the goal is for a fifth of English and Welsh secondary schools to become tuned into a longer term commitment to

supporting further CPD in the subject, even in schools previously ambivalent about RE provision.

If this is as successful generally as it was in the pilot schools, the likelihood is that other schools besides the original fifth will ask for a similar exercise. More significantly, once the appetite for more RE CPD is aroused, the regional framework for providing such which John Keast is co-ordinating as part of the third year of the RE Action Plan will come into its own.

A century ago a much loved Lancaster doctor killed his unfaithful wife, removed identification marks, and spread her dismembered parts across the Scottish regions. He was a Parsee: moral iniquity must be punished and all its recognisable features extirpated.

70 years ago Nazi propaganda turned Jews into germs to be eradicated to preserve the purity of the human race,

using the language of traditional Christian propaganda that had justified pogroms throughout Europe over 1500 years.Such distortions of the Zoroastrian and Christian faiths are repeated across nations and religions. The targets may even be inanimate but still powerfully symbolic as the statues of the Buddha exploded by the Taliban, or ancient stone circles buried or bombed by religious zealots. The point about all of these is that they offend the logic of autonomous moral reasoning. They are also against the internal logic of globally inclusive religious traditions. Just as the language of humanisms prohibits partiality of preference within humankind, so any talk of the godness of God which is more restricted than ‘Lord of the universe’ or ‘the breathing of all life’ is a contradiction in terms.

Without such reasoned understanding of religion and beliefs, our common humanity is in dire peril. Good RE can build that discernment and respect. Religious Education with that ambition and capability will be valued. It’s what the REsilience programme promotes.

This article first appeared in RE today. NASACRE is grateful to Lat Blaylock for permission to reproduce it for SACRE News.

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Celebrating RE - update

Sarah Smalley: REC professional officer

Preparations for Celebrating RE are gathering pace. Many of you have talked about

plans in your SACREs and with your schools. Some have already uploaded details to the events calendar on the Celebrating RE website (www.celebratingre.org).

Major events include a symposium on ‘What’s worth fighting for in RE’ at the Conway Hall in central London, a day of exhibitions and performances at the Forum in Norwich, Pilgrimage days at Wells Cathedral, a lecture by Joyce Miller in Thurrock, an exhibition of children and young people’s art from across Cornwall on RE themes in Truro Cathedral, an evening of pupil performances and presentations at the Zoroastrian Centre in Harrow, a series of RE walks in Portsmouth, a ‘Sacred Neighbours’ Inset Day at Manchester Buddhist Centre and Manchester Cathedral, a major event in Cardiff and much, much more.

If you haven’t yet seen the newsletter with more reports on plans across England and Wales, you can sign up for it via the website. Also available on the website are a presentation (to engage interest at your meetings), a poster blank (for publicising your own events) and an Animoto film. If you want leaflets in English or Welsh, just email

info@recelebration.org.uk and say how many you would like and the address they should be sent to.

At the start of September, 25 competitions were launched on the website – prizes range from artefact vouchers to visits to the London Buddhist Centre and the Holocaust Centre, from exam board cash prizes to sets of interactive whiteboard resources – there’s something for every age and stage, including teachers.

Materials on the website include articles on Celebrating in schools with a religious character; Celebrating in your local community; Celebrating with Learning Outside the Classroom; Celebrating through learning about inter faith activity and Publicising your events and activities; Celebrating RE in ITT and HE; Celebrating through inter-school activities; Celebrating RE in the 6th form and Fundraising for your event. There’s a wealth of material in the earlier articles too.

Please write in and let the planning team know what you’ve got in the pipeline! Contributions – even a paragraph - for the newsletter will be very welcome. It’s inspiring for everybody to learn about what others are doing. This is our golden opportunity to let the world know about the value of RE. One of the Celebrating RE planning group’s aspirations is to try to get 50% of England and Wales MPs to an RE event at some point during March 2011. Please prioritise this in your planning – it’s just one small thing you can do to help secure the future of the subject by promoting a greater public understanding of RE.

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”

RE and the future of SACRES - A personal view by Graham Langtree

Graham Langtree: RE Advisor for Devon.

The last ten years have seen a major growth in RE with record levels of students taking GCSE and ‘A’ level in the subject [see: www.gcsere.org.uk]. It has also been a lively time at a national level with two major reports from Ofsted (the most

recent being the controversial Transforming Religion), the publication of the non-statutory guidance on RE (which contains very useful guidance on the key functions of SACRE) from the DfE and the national non-statutory framework for RE (published by QCA in 2004). It has also been a time for growth for SACREs in terms of their role and activities, especially through partnerships with faith and belief communities and the new statutory duty for schools to promote community cohesion. The work of NASACRE has been critical in supporting SACREs and I highly recommend the new CD ROM from NASACRE as essential viewing for all SACRE members, especially in terms of understanding the key roles of a SACRE.

So in the light of the above issues why am I more worried about the future of RE than I have ever been in my thirty plus years of working in RE? There are a number of causes of concern which are outlined below:

The national void in the subject. The absence of direct curriculum expertise to the DfE in RE, the abolition of QCDA and the changes in Ofsted inspection arrangements which mean subject inspections in RE now only number sixty a year, collectively leaves a significant hole in national support for RE. When I left QCA in 2005 it never occurred to me that I would be one of only four people who would be known as QCA RE Adviser (and the RE community owes a considerable debt of gratitude to my successor Mark Chater for his unstinting support for RE in the last five years). It is vital that SACREs are kept fully informed of national initiatives in the subject. When I was writing the national framework for RE the key slogan in my head was “nationally agreed standards, locally enriched”. I still think that holds true and we need a national perspective for the subject.

After continual growth there are signs that student numbers entering for GCSE RE/RS are plateauing. More worryingly, actual and perceived ‘freedoms’ in schools are lessening the quality and time available for RE (look at the hard messages in the Ofsted report ‘Transforming Religion’ for some of the concerns about the misinterpretation in some secondary schools of the revised secondary curriculum). It is quite possible that ASCs will produce an agreed syllabus that no secondary school in the LA follows because they are all academies.

The alarming decline in levels of professional and financial support for SACREs. At the time of writing I am hearing more-and-more stories about good friends losing

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their RE posts or having their core work for SACREs significantly cut. Without the necessary professional and financial support how can a SACRE possibly discharge its responsibilities effectively? Without professional support how can a SACRE impact positively on achievement in RE and the quality of collective worship? I would strongly urge all SACREs to use the clear and helpful guidance on the NASACRE website regarding the central roles and responsibilities of a SACRE as a key tool in dialogue with the LA. A phrase I have heard a great deal as my own LA makes significant cuts is, ‘we live in unprecedented times’. For RE we live in difficult, almost dangerous times. I would encourage all SACREs to lobby assertively for the following key issues:

ensure RE is included in the forthcoming curriculum review (of course the outcomes would be non-statutory but a national perspective for RE is helpful)

a review of the highly contentious Circular 1/94 clauses which dealt with collective worship.The DfE non-statutory guidance for RE, published earlier this year, updated RE details from 1/94; the same now needs to happen to collective worship, especially as currently legislative requirements are persistently broken without anyone appearing to worry too much about the consequences. There is a clear need to debate the legitimacy and validity of the daily act of worship which must “be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character i.e. reflect the broad traditions of Christian belief” in the world we now live in.

A strong message to both central government and local authorities about the critical levels of professional and financial support necessary for SACREs to be effective.

SACREs are absolutely central to improving both learning in RE and the quality of the learning experience in collective worship. Playing a vital role in social and community cohesion and building partnerships both nationally and with local faith and belief communities, SACREs are too important to lose their key sources of support.

(Graham is RE Adviser to three SACREs and a member of the NASACRE executive but this article is written in a personal capacity)

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Obituary - Karl D’CruzIt is with the deepest regret that we report the death of long serving member of the NASACRE executive Karl D’Cruz

The Executive and other members of NASACRE were saddened to hear about the death in the summer of one of the most articulate and passionate supporters of locally determined RE and of SACREs. Karl D’Cruz was already a long-standing and highly respected member of NASACRE when I joined in 2007, and I was often struck by his wisdom and humour. His sharp wit and total commitment made him a formidable advocate of good RE and effective SACREs. There follows a tribute to Karl drawn from a number of people who knew and worked with him in the context of SACREs.

Bill Moore Chair of NASCAR writes;

Karl was born on the 7th December 1943 in Kampala, Uganda and grew up in Zanzibar. As a young man he came to London to Middle Temple to study for the Bar. Shortly after this, following the revolution in Zanzibar, he was joined by his family in the UK.

Karl studied RE at Goldsmith’s College in the late 60s where he was elected as President of the Students’ Union. He subsequently became an RE teacher in London. Following this he was an advisory teacher and an inspector in the ILEA working on the Agreed Syllabus for RE, and the setting up of the RE Teachers’ Centre. After the abolition of ILEA he was an advisor and inspector in the boroughs of Greenwich, Lewisham and Hackney, helping to set up the SACREs to advise and resource the schools and work on Agreed Syllabi.

Karl served on the Executive of the National Association of SACREs from the 1990s until fairly recently. He was an active and passionate champion of locally determined RE and often voiced this view in public meetings. He represented the executive in several high profile meetings during the debates about local and national RE leading up to the feasibility study (2003) and subsequent publication of the non-statutory National Framework in 2004. Karl was also an active member of the National Association of RE Inspectors, Advisers and Consultants.

Karl died on the 10th August 2010, following a period of ill health. He is survived by his wife, Pauline, and their three children. He will be greatly missed by his family, his friends and colleagues, and respected and admired for his contribution to religious education in London and the UK.

Denise Chaplin ex Chair and Deputy Chair of NASACRE writes;

During my time as Deputy Chair and Chair of NASACRE Karl was an active and involved member of the Executive. He was passionate about the importance of the local work of SACREs and was involved in the establishment of the London and SE Regional SACRE networks. Karl prompted his colleagues always to be vigilant about the changing national

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and local contexts within which SACREs work and was an advocate of the power of the role of the faith community representatives on their SACREs.

Karl was a colleague of mine on the London and SE regional AREIAC group which he chaired for two years up to his retirement from the RE world. His sharp intellect and fearlessness in challenging colleagues when he felt they might be complacent will be greatly missed.

Geoff Teece ex secretary to NASACRE and SACRE news editor writes;

Karl was the best of colleagues. He was committed and passionate about RE: more than that he was passionate about integrity and truth in all his dealings. I knew him for the best part of ten years in my role as secretary to NASACRE. During that time Karl and I had many extremely lively discussions, which included disagreements, about the nature and purpose of RE. I think it would be true to say he was a bit of a Smartian phenomenologist who challenged me more than once on what he perceived to be the ‘Westhill approach’, the ‘Grimmittian Human Development approach’ and so on. Very often these disagreements included much laughter as we ‘went at it hammer and tongs’. Never have I enjoyed disagreements so much in all my life. Often we found that we didn’t disagree much after all! But the point is that intellectual jousting with Karl was a pleasure because of the kindness of his heart and the generosity of his spirit. My years with NASACRE were professionally enriching and happy and Karl D’Cruz’s friendship was a big factor in that. I shall miss him.

Robin Kanarek from Devon SACRE joined the executive about the same time as Karl and writes this appreciation of Karl’s qualities;

Karl and I joined NASACRE about the same time in the late 1990s. He was an RE specialist and I was not. I was the Jewish elected member from Somerset SACRE and Karl from Hackney and London. I like to think we became friends as well as professional colleagues during the course of our executive terms together. He had a rich sense of humour as well as being totally committed to his work. I learnt from Karl that there is more to RE than knowledge and just being ‘nice’. By example and questioning, Karl taught me to see below the surface of things and see the complex sides of an argument or an issue. He always saw the ‘minority’ side of RE and the children who did not easily or naturally connect with RE/RS. He recognised the secular society as well as those of faith and I think, valued the study of RE/RS as apposite and necessary for all students. Karl challenged, questioned and sometimes made us feel uncomfortable in the blunt truth of what he had to say. Karl spoke from a kind and loving heart and I believe wanted all children to engage in the ‘big questions’ of life regardless of geography, background or education. I always found Karl to be a seeker of truth and accepting of all our truths, in our time and in our individual ways. He made me think and laugh and what more can we ask for? Karl was kind and sensitive and worried about his insightful and challenging questions but I thought him a wonderful person and exemplar for the study of RE/RS. I do wish I had had more opportunities to know him outside meetings as I know we would have had much conversation about life, the universe and Hackney! (My husband was born and brought up in Hackney and as his American wife I always wanted to know more.)

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Book Review

Muslims in Britain: An IntroductionSophie Gilliat-Ray, Cambridge University Press 2010, 316pp, p/back

£19.99, ISBN 978-0-521-53688-2

A small, though growing number of books have been written specifically on the Muslim community in Britain. Well-known, for example, are the two books by Philip Lewis: Islamic Britain (1994) and Young, British and Muslim (2007). The addition to this list of Muslims in Britain: An Introduction by Sophie Gilliat-Ray, Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam in The UK, based at Cardiff University, is very welcome.

The book is divided into two major parts: part 1, ‘Historical and religious roots’ and part 2, ‘Contemporary dynamics’. There are four chapters in the first part: ‘The roots of Islam in Britain’, ‘The development of Muslim communities’, ‘Middle Eastern religious reform movements’, and ‘South Asian religious reform movements’. The second part comprises six chapters: ‘Profiling British Muslim communities’, ‘Religious nurture and education’, ‘Religious leadership’, ‘Mosques’, ‘Gender, religious identity and youth’, and ‘Engagement and enterprise’.

What distinguishes this book is not only its impressive research base and thoroughness but also its readability. It is thus an ideal aid both for the academic and for the informed general reader It contains many surprises: did you know, for example, that Offa, the Anglo-Saxon King of Mercia (757-796 CE) issued a gold coin bearing an inscription featuring the Muslim declaration of faith? It also seeks to clarify many of the ‘technical’ terms used in Islam like those related to educational provision (madrasah, maktab, dar’l-ulum) and religious leadership (imam, mullah, qari, ulama, khatib, shaykh, Ayatolah).

The information and ideas provided in the chapter on religious education and nurture will be of particular interest to SACREs. Perhaps some of them might even take up the implied challenge that the author sends out: that very little research has been carried out into Muslim supplementary schooling (mosque classes that Muslim children attend after day school, for instance) despite many thousands of Muslim children involved in this daily across Britain.

But beware. If you are looking for simplicity, look elsewhere, for this book continually reveals the diversity and complexity inherent in British Islam: in matters relating to Muslim identity, gender, social engagement and cultural activity, for example. If you are willing to take it on these terms, however, this book provides no better place at which to begin in trying to understand Muslims in Britain today.

Bill GentEditor, REsource, the journal of the NATRE

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What the executive have been reading?Darwin - a life in Poems by Ruth Padel

Ruth Padel is great great grand-daughter to the Darwins and this short book of poetry about Charles Darwin’s life was based on lengthy and deep research through his notebooks, diaries, publications and correspondence.

An interesting collection of poems, in my view this work is at its best when using some of Darwin’s own words. The poems take you through his youth, his work, his marriage, his family life, his lifelong search for meaning and his grief and loss of faith. It is not great poetry but it is poignant and at times captures the fascination Darwin had for the world around him. It also shows the warmth of Darwin the family man and his empathy for his wife as they struggle with adversity

and she struggles with her anxiety at his loss of faith and what that will mean for them both after death.

If you like poetry and are interested in Darwin, this is a fresh and interesting way of finding out more about the man behind the great work.

Denise Chaplin

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A  date  for  your  diary  Thursday  31st  March  in  Birmingham,  10.30-­‐3.30

A  conference  Talking  Heads

Whose  RE  is  it  Anyway?  

SACRE News: the newsletter of the National Association of SACREs, published termly. The opinions expressed in articles are those of their authors and not necessarily of the NASACRE Executive. For details see the website. Copies of this e-newsletter may be distributed to SACRE members but content may not be altered or adapted unless specifically stated. This Winter issue is edited by Geoff Teece and Paul Hopkins. Newsletter design by MMI web - www.mmiweb.org.uk

BACKPAGE

SOME DATES FOR YOUR DIARY ...

ON THE WEBSITE ...Do keep an eye on the website where you will find:

News updatesInformation about NASACRENews about eventsNews on projectsThe Newsletter ArchiveThe FAQ archiveAgenda items for your next SACRE meetingsA membership listExemplar documentation

Please also check your details and if necessary update the membership section and add to the exemplar documentation. Contact us at web@nasacre.org.uk

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Contributors

Bill MOORE

Lat BLAYLOCKSarah SMALLEYGrahame LANGTREEDenise CHAPLINGeoff TEECE

Robin KANAREKBill GENT

January

1st Christian Naming of Jesus

3rd Catholic Epiphany

5th Sikh Birthday of Guru Gobind Singh

6th Orthodox Christmas

6th Christian Epiphany

12th REC Board and think-tank meeting

14th Hindu Makar Sankrant / Lori

16th Buddhist Shinran Memorial Day

18th Christian Week of Prayer for Unity

20th Jewish Tu B’Shevat

25th Buddhist Honen Memorial Day

27th Holocaust Memorial Day

30th Zoroastrian Jashn-e Sadeh

February

1st Pagan Embolic

2nd Christian Presentation of Christ

3rd Chinese Yuan Tan (New Year)

3rd Japanese Setsubun / Bean Scattering

8th Buddhist Parinirvana

8th Hindu Vasant Panchami / Sarasota Puja

10th REC Board meeting

16th Muslim Birth of the Prophet (Sunni)

17th Chinese Tengh Chien

18th Buddhist Magha Puja

21st Muslim Bith of the Prophet (Shi’a)