Is Religion Good For Children? Jury's Out. But Sunday Mornings Are Good For Me

Ah, Sunday mornings: to the devout, they likely foretell worship; to the not so devout, the walk of shame; for Lionel Richie, they’re simply easy; for me, they herald a time sacrificed unfailingly and gleefully to post-noon lie-ins. To my parents, and to my grievance, they this week seemed to connote a time ripe for raucousness, saucepan-banging and door-slamming. Ergo, two mornings ago I could be found crabbily flicking through Sunday morning’s small screen offerings searching for something to numb the effects of a rude awakening.

Having not much explored weekend morning telly since the days of SM:TV, I admit I hadn’t heard of the BBC ethical discussion show “The Big Questions”, hosted by Nicky Campbell and now in its fifth run. Assuming you’re as clueless as I was: it’s a “Question Time” inspired quasi-debate show that tackles religious and moral issues as a priority. Becoming more clued up on the show since watching it, I discovered it recently underwent a format overhaul that meant scrapping its panel-of-experts element and becoming audience-driven. The moment I got to grips with the premise of the show I was interested (and infinitely less riled by my parents’ blaring). Part of why I’m such a proponent of daytime T.V is because it is its shows that tend to tackle current debates candidly and accessibly. They’re scoffed at for being choc-full of frivolity and cooking-segments, but slots like “This Morning” and “Loose Women” consistently take sensitive subject matter and talk about it in a way that provokes viewer thought and involvement. “The Big Questions”, then, makes these open discussions about contemporary issues its point of focus, and does away with the soap-talk and fashion-segments that puts so many people off sticking with Holly and Phil long enough to get to the good stuff.

Rather than focusing broadly on in-vogue news items, though, “The Big Questions” benefits from increased specificity: it’s attention to prickly subjects within the sphere of religion and ethics. Now I took school painstakingly seriously, but even a 16-year-old Declan perceived Religious Studies as an hour for minimal effort. Countless times I used my R.S. lessons during Year 11 as a revision period, randomly leafing through textbooks chucked on the desk when the teacher came snooping. The snag was the absence of enlivening debate used to make the content remotely engaging; teachers dared not inject controversy into the curriculum and students fresh from the P.C. of P.S.E. and didn’t venture to flag up points in the work they found illogical for fear of being branded xenophobic. What worked so seamlessly for “The Big Questions” is that it dealt with the show’s topic “Is Religion Good For Children?” in a strikingly frank and down to earth manner. Maybe because of its total inclusivity of different faiths and values (more on this in a second), the reign of political correctness was temporarily overthrown and the question was batted about without timidity.

By and large the main contributors to the discussion, and henceforth the backbone of the show, were the invited experts sprinkled amongst its audience. It’s customary to recruit two clashing and resolute figures when hosting a debate (“This Morning”, again: hats off) but “The Big Questions” didn’t trivialise its issue with such polarity. A rabbi, a reverend, a Muslim, a humanist, a psychologist and an atheist (this is reading like a complex “walk into a bar” joke, so I’ll leave it there) all had their chance to grapple with the opinions thrown forward. I’ve already spoken about how the show refused to be curbed by political hypersensitivity, and I think that invaluable quality stemmed from the diverse audience. Each and every contributor was putting his or herself, beliefs and all, up for discussion and the option of being pettily offended or flustered was void. Putting aside the question itself for a moment and at the risk of sounding cringingly clichéd, I found something poignantly uplifting about the eclectic mix of figures sat discussing an issue that, after all said and done, we all have a vested interest in: the future of the country and world in which we live.

Side by side: Reverend Janina Ainsworth, the chief education officer for the Church of England, with Rania Hafez of Muslim Women in Education

Thanks for the show’s topic development goes to Nicky Campbell, who has monumentally upped his game since “Watchdog”. What he especially excelled at was giving the views put forward (bear in mind they were expostulated by people who dedicate their entire lives to them) some bearing within the everyday experiences of viewers as religiously nonplussed as I. When the talk honed in (again, thanks to Nicky) on faith schools specifically he fuelled the discussion by mentioning the recently documented King Fahad Academy in East Acton, the private school thought to have taught forms of Anti-Semitism and Creationism over fundamental scientific principles. I might be naïve, but his only half knowing the ins and outs of the scandal, and the way he had to rely on Andrew Copson of the British Humanist Association to fill in the blanks, lent him an air of spontaneity, genuine involvement and not a whiff of having pre-meditated subjects. Nicky deftly plucked the relevant expert opinions as discussion twisted in various ways, spotting opportunities to enliven the debate a mile off and lining up the most pertinent individuals in time for their arrival. He was tangibly eager to launch himself, come what may, off the fence of indifference and into the sticky issues, regularly challenging the contributors on what they had said and demanding they clarify potential hazy points. Crucially, Nicky kept the talk at high octane levels for the entire hour slot, openly preferring provocative and implication-laden language (“Muslim child”, “Christian child”) to enrage his experts and dexterously returning to topics that got the biggest audience jeers. Why haven’t “The Voice UK” tried to poach him yet?

The Ringleader: Nicky Campbell directed the debate with ease

The non-expert majority of the audience provided yet another asset, especially considering the all-key accessibility factor that makes shows like “The Big Questions” indispensable. Nicky ensured the focus was kept on the debate’s spectators from square one by announcing that not one of those who defined themselves as religious were raised outside of a faith. It steered the discussion down one route and I’ll bet silenced some of the experts’ pre-considered points.  Towards the latter part of the discussion a young woman made the argument that religion can be taught in schools without that making them faith schools per se, and therefore that religious and moral lessons can be learnt without enforcing measures of exclusivity. The comment followed a period of the debate I wont degrade by trying to squeeze in, but suffice to say her offering was a refreshing and frank wake-up call to the fairly abstract surmises being hurled around by the experts. Equally welcome were the “they were like”’s and “he were like”s of a former Catholic school Head Boy who had announced his atheism during a school leavers’ speech. Hearing him articulate his reasons for doing so, and watching devout religious figures respectfully do the same, made me feel that these were issues I too could participate in debating. Accessibility: check.

I’ve already alluded to how absurd it would be to force into a nutshell the sentiments of the debate’s esteemed contributors, but I wouldn’t be doing “The Big Questions” a trifle of the justice it deserves if I didn’t back up how legitimately contemporary, arresting and impassioned the talk became. Nicky, shrewdly picking up a comment by Evangelical Christian Mark Mullins that Christianity is the weakened “glue” that gives our society cohesiveness, directly asked Jenny Taylor of the Lapido Religious Media Centre what the effects of a dwindling sense of religion would be on the U.K. She readily responded that religion underpins strong and assured identities, and that without it children are more vulnerable to the “rampant sexuality being taught in some schools.” Whether Ms Taylor imagines Year 8 maths being taken by Rihanna while Russell Brand heads up the geography department was, unfortunately, left unanswered, but author Stephen Law contested that morality and identity can be fostered independent of religion. Rania Hafez, of Muslim Women in Education, gave her interpretation that morality has become so exclusively imbibed in religion that we need to use religious tools in order to expose children to ethical rights and wrongs, whereas Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain controversially claimed that during the recent austere times it has principally been religious people manning the soup kitchens. Copson, the aforementioned humanist, belittled the idea that only religious people can feel a sense of obligation and commitment to their fellows and cited his own philanthropic involvement as evidence. Phew, all this and more before my customary Sunday surfacing time…

After just one hour viewing of “The Big Questions”, it was arduously hard to get it out of my head; it is, as far as I can guess from my infantine experience of it, one of those shows that stubbornly sticks with you. Whether you’re accustomed to spending Sunday mornings in a comatose state or not, whether you’re a political and philosophical buff or not, the program makes zero distinctions and achieves more in ten minutes than R.S. would have taken years to execute. Watch it.