Dear Colleagues,
I have followed with much interest the discussion on religious and cultural diversity in the past few days. In particular, though I do not agree with everything said, I found the exchange among Mannie, Ged (apologies for not knowing your full name), Barry Dicker and Geoff Smith to be enlightening - I'm pleased that the inevitable subject of secularism was raised and the need to safeguard the positions of the humanist, agnostic (though this may be difficult) and those who profess no religious faith. I myself would not use 'non-believer' as I think everyone believes in something.

First of all, I am grateful to Naseem of JMU for making so readily available his creditable EO Policy on Cultural and Religious Diversity - I'm sure that both HEIs and other public sector institutions could meaningfully adapt it for their individual situations. And thanks for the timely reminder that we should acknowledge where credit is due.

Although I have no strong objections to guides on religious and 'cultural' communities, I am generally wary about producing and using them. Historically, and I speak from recent experience of the health service with its fairly voluminous production of these 'factfiles', the link between the information in these 'factfiles' and improvement in attitude, behaviour and service delivery is at best tenuous. The information in these 'factfiles' are basic and if one is not careful, they give the false impression that that is all one needs to know. Hence, the likely situation is engendered whereby faiths and communities are conveniently compartmentalised. The information in each section is deemed all-sufficient. In reality, this reductionism simply means that the information serves little purpose except to pigeon-hole people into neat categories and attendant behavioural patterns. Reductio ad absurdum?

Hence, Naseem, I hope you would not mind my saying that I personally would not recommend your 'factfile' on the different religions - it does require much more thought and work. The sections under each religion is quite artificial. Eg. is the Prophet Muhammad really the founder of Islam? Under Christianity, I'm not sure if the (essentially Roman Catholic) Immaculate Conception is a theological doctrine subscribed by all Christians. There are far better guides in the market which we can use, and we need to use any guide/'factfile'/resource alongside appropriate and rigorous cultural awareness training, tailored for each particular context as far as possible. This is not to discount the value of generic training.

[Having said that, I did contribute to the development of a religious resource folder primarily tailored to the needs of Birmingham Women's Hospital. Having produced them, we constantly contact the wards and departments to see what they have done with their folders and offer training/briefing sessions on their use. If you do produce a resource pack, make sure they do not sit and collect dust on the shelves!]

In the course of the past few days' exchange, we have somewhat veered from Virginia's original questions. Yes, I do think that terminology is crucial and hence as EO officers, diversity advisers, etc., we ourselves need to be both confident and careful in our use of language. I personally would not use 'ethnic' or 'non-ethnic' and would simply use religious minorities to designate as many groups as possible. This would therefore include the occasional Brahma Kumari or the Wiccan or even the Norwegian Pentecostalist Christian. But clearly a difficult question is where do we draw the line as far as diversity of religious groups is concerned. I have no easy answers on this.

However, a more basic question concerns categories and monitoring. Bearing in mind my earlier points about not neatly compartmentalising people and groups, there is nevertheless a need to produce a system which is manageable. The underlying principle is diversity within a group. Again, taking my previous health service experience, there is currently a Patient Administration System which until very recently had 25 or more different Christian categories but one each for Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, etc.! In fact, until recently, you cannot even find the categories Baha'i or Jain.

This won't do from equality and diversity perspectives - we need to accord the diversity that is inherent in one group to the others. While I would like to have reduced the number of Christian categories to a decent minimum, I would like to see eg. under Buddhist (Mahayana, Theravada, Tibetan, etc), under Jewish (Orthodox, Reform, Progressive, Liberal) and under Muslim (at least a basic recognition of Sunni and Shi'i).

This leads to my next point and that is, we have a very long way to go before attaining any semblance of a level playing field. In reality, in most of our public institutions, the Christian Church (especially the Church of England/Anglican) is dominant. Yes, historically, owing to the established church and so on, we still have the Anglican Church as primary religious gatekeepers in our public services, and this is clearly manifested in the traditional forms of chaplaincies as we have them. Most chaplaincies in the NHS, prisons and universities are predominantly CoE/Anglican. Although we have seen the development of ecumenical Christian chaplaincies, religious care for other religious groups (be it among patients, prisoners and students) is far from developed. But there are signs of hope - we are beginning to see eg. Muslim chaplains in hospitals (and I myself was instrumental in getting my former NHS Trust in mainstreaming part-time Muslim chaplaincy) and prisons. But the way they have come about is far from ideal and by far, Christian chaplaincies still retain much of the financial cake.

What I'm trying to say here is that we can have the best policies on paper but the reality is far from the rhetoric. What happens everyday at grassroots level does matter though - to the patient, prisoner or student. And I do not wish to give the impression that chaplains are the sole purveyors of religious and spiritual care. This matter is further compounded by the fact that religious care or chaplaincies are settled in different ways - the NHS provides the money and employment (hence there's room for drastic change) while in the universities (except for Kingston University I think), chaplains are appointed by their respective churches. As for prisons, we wait for the day when the Prison Act of 1952 is amended!

It certainly behoves us in the modern secular university to accord religion its rightful place and not pay lip service, alongside the other key dimensions of equality.

Last but not least, if you have not come across her research (on the Church of England and civic life, on prisons, etc.), I would recommend Sophie Gilliat-Ray. She has also published a small booklet entitled:
"Higher Education and Student Religious Identity" (1999)
Published by the Department of Sociology, UNiversity of Exeter, in association with the UK Inter Faith Network. ISBN 1 871597 01 3. £4.95

I've glossed over much detail and I've gone on long enough. Apologies for making statements rather than engaging some of your views! (I'm new to HE - excuses, excuses!!) Many thanks for your patience.

Andy Lie
Assistant Registrar (Equality and Diversity)
University of Salford
Humphrey Booth House
The Crescent
Salford M5 4WT
tel 0161 295 2840

e-mail  [log in to unmask]

Formerly Multi-Faith Facilitator, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust, and Birmingham Women's and Children's Hospitals.
Abandoning modesty (!), for those who may be interested, please see my article:
"No Level Playing Field: The Multi-faith Context and its Challenges" in
Spirituality in Health Care Contexts, Helen Orchard, ed.
(London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2001)