THERE is a requirement in schools to teach religious education (RE).

Now that’s often contentious. Some people think that it’s unnecessary or even harmful and others that it’s a soft option lacking academic rigour. Still others think that it’s simply wrong to take what is essentially private, one’s religious belief, and use it for academic study.

But I’ve come to see RE as a foundation stone for living in a society that contains people of many faiths and none.

Although UK society may be increasingly secular, in reality nearly 85 per cent of the world’s populations have an active faith – not one which they put on when it’s convenient and fits in with the secular world, but where, borrowing a phrase from a Muslim friend, it’s a living robe that they never take off.

Unless we really want to reject the world around us, knowledge about faith – and I make a distinction here between knowledge and belief – is imperative.

Being religiously literate is for me as important as conventional literacy or numeracy.

I think that it’s become increasingly important to know what other faiths do in practice, what they believe, what’s important to them and above all how their faith affects their lives.

That doesn’t mean I have to agree with them, but I do have to know what it’s all about.

We learn other languages, eat strange foods, look at the local sights, learn other customs of manners and discourse, and more.

It seems totally illogical to reject learning about religions and practice. And in a multicultural Britain, the full range of employment, statutory services, and cultural, artistic and physical endeavours are improved when participants are religiously literate. You’ll be a better doctor if you recognise that faith and culture will affect the interaction between you and your patients, a better journalist if you know what makes the people you are investigating tic, a better entrepreneur if you know what’s important to your customers. Even though some scientists reject the necessity of religious education, there are many – even Nobel prize-winners – for whom faith is integral to their lives, happily living between the ambiguities of faith and science.

An event occurred last week – largely unreported – which will impact on the lives of most of the children and young people in Oxfordshire.

It was the launch of the new Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education in Oxfordshire which acts as a framework for RE across the county.

I am continuously amazed by how much the subject has changed since I was at school.

Then it was called Scripture and often acted as a vehicle for Christian missionary activity.

Now it teaches about all the principal faiths of this country: Christianity as the country’s established faith and also Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.

But it is not in any way a vehicle for indoctrination or conversion by any faith.

It’s one of the main areas in the current system in which young people can be taught the principles of critical thinking; the capacity to make an objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement is valuable in any context.

My hope is that the new Oxfordshire Agreed Syllabus will guide RE teachers in their quest to instil religious literacy in our young people.