John Hull’s death has deprived the world of one of a select few religious educationists of genuinely international stature. John’s rigorous advocacy and defence as a Christian educationist of a critical, pluralistic approach to religious education in schools in England and Wales was deeply influential and his joint founding with John Peatling of the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV) has proved to be equally influential on a global front. It was clear that this obituary to him in the journal which he edited with such flare and distinction for 25 years had to reflect the esteem and affection in which he is held by religious educationists not only in the UK but across the globe. Accordingly, it was decided at the outset that colleagues and friends from several countries would be invited to write their tributes to John.
What emerges from these tributes is a picture of a man admired internationally for his outstanding intellect and academic achievements and respected for his ability and readiness to perceive from his radical Christian theological stance the ‘sacred beauty’ which lay at the heart of all of the world’s major faiths. John was also a gifted creative writer conveying to the sighted remarkable insights into his world of total blindness; and a practical theologian making prophetic challenges to injustice and inhumanity. John is also appreciated as a man who loved the company of friends and colleagues and who was willing to spend as much time as necessary to assist and encourage students and younger colleagues in their ventures. In the words of two of the writers below, he was ‘a remarkable human being’ and also a ‘dear friend’ to many. Warmest thanks are due to all of John’s colleagues and friends who have contributed these appreciations of his life and work.
Professor Robert Jackson
University of Warwick, UK
John Hull was born in Corryong, Victoria, Australia in 1935. His grandfather, Walter, was an Elementary School head teacher from Leicester, England, whose son, Jack, had emigrated to Australia in 1915, aged 16. After working in logging, then meeting and marrying Madge Hutley, Jack Hull became a Methodist minister. John was the second of four children from their marriage. He suffered health problems, including eczema and asthma during childhood, and his eye problems began when he was 13. John trained to teach, and taught for three years in Melbourne, before taking up a place at Cambridge University in England to study theology. The experience of the course transformed his religious views, and he developed a progressive personal theology which was consistent with his developing stance on religious education. After a period teaching in Croydon, when he also studied for a part-time PhD in New Testament studies, John moved to Birmingham, initially to Westhill College and then to the University of Birmingham, as a religious education specialist. He became Britain’s first full Professor of Religious Education, and achieved many honours.
I first met John in the early 1970s when I moved from Nottingham to Coventry and from teaching into teacher education. He was an inspiring, thoughtful, witty and penetrating analyst of issues connected with the subject. We were both involved in what was then the Conference of University Lecturers in Religious Education (CULRE, now AULRE), and in various other activities, and I got to know him well when I joined the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV). After a decade or more of failing sight, John finally went blind in 1980, losing all perception of light three years later. We used to have periodic discussions in his office, and I was amazed and humbled by John’s adaptation to total blindness, while continuing his professional role. We talked about academic and personal matters, and about low periods as well as the positives. His office changed from being a room full of books and papers, to a desk with a bank of electrical equipment. But whatever our exchanges, there was always some laughter.
In an earlier obituary for John published in The Guardian (September 10, 2015, 43 http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/aug/16/john-hull), I included reference to John’s writings on blindness, spirituality, the money culture, and ‘religionism’ and cited his many honours. I will concentrate here on John’s outstanding contribution to this journal during his long and influential editorship. John edited the British Journal of Religious Education, and its predecessor Learning for Living, for 25 years, from 1971. The journal had started life in 1934 as Religion in Education, before its first name change in 1961. Learning for Living initially bridged the divide between theory and research, and practice. However, with a growth of research in the field, and a changing climate in universities, a publication with a stronger focus on theory and empirical research was needed. The change can be detected in later issues of Learning for Living, but the full transformation came in 1978 with the renamed British Journal of Religious Education. The BJRE was complemented by Resource (first published in 1978), which became the journal of the Professional Council for Religious Education (later the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE), and RE Today, both focusing on issues mainly related to the practice of teaching. Many schools and higher education institutions subscribed to a package including all three publications.
A key feature of Learning for Living/BJRE during John’s record quarter century at the helm was his editorials. These included reactions to contemporary debates, and new writing in which John often shared his current thinking, giving tasters of what was to follow in future publications. His intelligent, analytical and sharp-witted editorials, which were not interrupted by his experience of blindness, provide a commentary on the leading issues and major developments in British religious education for 25 years. In one of his earliest editorials, John encouraged head teachers to become familiar with new literature in RE, and urged the government to address the shortage of subject specialists and poor working conditions (Learning for Living 10 (5), 1971, 4). John’s final editorial, in 1996, included proposals that religious education should be incorporated into the national curriculum, local agreed syllabuses wound up and the parental right of withdrawal extended to any subject to which parents might express ‘reasonable concern’ (BJRE 18 (3), 1996, 132), all suggestions still being made today.
Recurrent themes in his editorials include close attention to the status of the subject, with impatience expressed towards those not valuing RE. ‘We are sick and tired of hearing people say that there is no future in religious education’, wrote John, declaring that RE was as healthy, meaningful and creative as any other school subject (Learning for Living 14 (4) 1975, 130). Other themes include celebrations of the work of key researchers such as Harold Loukes (Learning for Living 13 (1), 1973, 4), and Ronald Goldman (Learning for Living 11 (2), 1971, 4), and (often embellished with waspish comments) reviews of official publications, such as the Swann Report – ‘They still see the 1944 Act and the agreed syllabus provisions as surrounded by a sort of Christian halo … The truth of the matter is that religious education has been one of the spear-heads of the multicultural curriculum’ (BJRE 7 (3), 1985, 103) – or the Government’s DfE Circular 1/94, which John rightly judged to be ‘deeply flawed’. No less than twelve BJRE editorials (from 10 (3), 1988 to 18 (3), 1996) were devoted to comment and critique of the 1988 Education Reform Act and the Bill which preceded it. His emergent thinking on themes such as ‘religionism’ (e.g. BJRE 14 (3), 1992, 131) and ‘spiritual education and the money culture’ (e.g. BJRE 17 (3), 1995, 130f; 18 (2), 1996, 68) also figured prominently.
John’s formation of the International Seminar on Religious Education (ISREV) in 1978, with American researcher John Peatling, facilitated his internationalisation of the BJRE, with some recent ISREV papers appearing in the journal in 1987, for example, (BJRE 9 (2). Education in Europe was discussed (BJRE 15 (2), 1993), while the significance of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child for religious education was also considered (BJRE 14 (3), 1992). In his last editorial, John was still fighting for RE to be brought out of the ‘backwater’, although acknowledging that there had been ‘some success’ in raising its profile over the years (BJRE 18 (3), 1996, 130). Taking over from John as the editor of the BJRE in 1996 was a daunting opportunity. However, he gave me great encouragement, and we had a lovely celebration with colleagues from the journal’s publishers (then Christian Education) to mark John’s fine achievements, and the beginning of a new phase for the BJRE.
John and I had many subsequent encounters, and it was inspiring to catch up with his ‘post-retirement’ work in pastoral theology (including some direct action against nuclear weapons), or to talk about jazz. The last venture we engaged in together in May 2015 was to try, together with Professor Philip Lewis, to get some of Abdullah Sahin’s work published in The Times. We wrote a carefully worded letter, pointing out the value of new approaches to Islamic education by Muslim scholars, and urging The Times to publish Abdullah’s short article ‘A Muslim Educator’s Response to Islamic Extremism’. The last email I received from John on 25 June 2015 said, ‘I regret to say that I have received no response from The Times’.
The last time I saw John face-to-face was at his 80th birthday party on 22 April at his home in Selly Park, Birmingham. He gave a wonderful, witty speech, which included talking about the importance of love of family and about friends and friendship. At the end of the speech, John, and his voice cracked when he spoke, quoted a line spoken by Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act One, Scene Three. When I heard from Marilyn on the morning of 28 July the sad news of John’s death, I had to write a poem for him. The last verse of ‘Dear Friend John’ recalls that last meeting with a truly remarkable and hugely talented friend and colleague, who is sorely missed.
Your friendships were relationships to seal,
Good friends, you say, ‘enriching life’ for real;
So, moved, you quote Polonius’s appeal:
‘Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.’
‘Dear Friend John’ is published in Robert Jackson and Dermot Killingley, Narrowboat Music: Poems of Life, Newcastle upon Tyne, Grevatt & Grevatt, 2015.email: [email protected]
Professor Gloria Durka
Fordham University, New York, USA
I write as one who has spent 40 years teaching religious education in US universities, 30 years of which have been nourished by the works and person of John Hull. John’s writings were introduced in the US in the 1970s on the cusp of major changes in church and society, such as the impact of the groundbreaking document The Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions issued by the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church, and the mounting challenges of the civil rights movement. In a country which struggles to maintain separation between church and state, how religious education was to be taught in all schools then became of even more pressing concern. Academicians were drawn to John’s description of the nature of religious education in a pluralistic society and his efforts in developing an approach in which pupils would learn from religion in ways which would ‘enrich them and deepen their humanity, rather than merely informing them’ (J M Hull (ed) New Directions in Religious Education, Lewes, Falmer Press, 1982, xv). As a review of his works reveals, he explored aspects of this theme throughout his subsequent publications.
Eventually John Hull’s work became more widely known through the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values founded in 1978 by him and his US colleague John Peatling. The timing could not have been better as witnessed by its exponential growth. From the first US meeting in 1980 with 25 participants from 8 countries, ISREV’s current membership has grown to 300 members from 35 countries. My first meeting with John took place at the 1980 meeting of ISREV, and I was immediately impressed by his commitment to supporting the work of others, especially young scholars. Commitment to growing ISREV remained one of John’s passions for he believed it to be a rich model of critical thinking, scholarly research, intense dialogue and deep connections between its members. Through the years, these qualities have sustained ISREV’s uniqueness as an academic association.
The rapid growth of graduate programmes in religious education and pastoral theology continued in the US, and John’s work increasingly appeared in course reading lists and research papers. Then 9/11 happened, and ‘it changed everything’. This event and its colliding of worlds continue to challenge the religious imagination. For John and other scholars, it heightened the conviction that understanding theologies of religion was essential to living in peace. Many academicians and practitioners vigorously targeted this need in scholarly works and school curricula. Interreligious education in public and private schools is becoming a pivotal focus of religious education. This is evident in the themes of national and regional professional conferences for teachers and administrators of religious education programmes, many of whom were influenced by John’s works while they were graduate students.
John’s recent return to teaching theology is reflected in his writing and lecturing. He came full circle with the publication of The Tactile Heart (2013). Interestingly, of all the works international students read for my graduate courses, this work resonated most deeply with them and generated intense reflection and discussion. The autobiographical film, Notes on Blindness (2014) introduced John as a person while pricking our pretences about normalities in a compelling and elegant way. To the poet, Mary Oliver’s question from her poem The Summer Day, 1990:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
(House of Lights, Boston, Ma., Beacon Press, 1990, p.60)
John could answer that he lived his precious life as a theologian of education to show that religion can be a beautiful and worthy choice amid the present perils to the planet, and that religious education can help us reframe the way we regard our differences. For many US students and for me, John is a striking and splendid witness that:
… what we have loved,
others will love
and we will teach them how
(William Wordsworth, The Prelude lines 446–7)
Professor Friedrich Schweitzer
University of Tubingen, Germany
John Hull was a remarkable human being and an excellent colleague. His standing in the field of religious education at an international level was unrivalled. It was he who, together with some peers, successfully advanced religious education to an academic discipline of equal status with other disciplines. His founding, together with Professor John Peatling, of the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV) was a visionary step in this direction.
There are few religious educators in the world whose books get translated into other languages. The fact that several of John’s books are available in German and that in addition to this, there is a two volume German edition of his articles, indicates the special regard in which he is held for religious education in Germany. Even more than through the written word, however, John has inspired many German religious educators through personal encounters and in conversation. Directly and indirectly this is most true for his work on interreligious issues, his understanding of God-talk with children and, in a very different way, concerning blindness.
John was one of the pioneers in opening up the field of religious education beyond the introduction to one’s own religious tradition. It has come to be widely accepted in Germany that there is much to learn from the UK experience, even if the British multi-faith model does not seem to be suitable for continental countries. Beyond the general approach, it was his Gift to the Child which is often mentioned as an inspiring model.
John’s little book, God-talk with Young Children, was published in German in 1997. This was the time when the new idea and movement – children as theologians – was in its earliest stages. In addition to the UK, this movement has spread to a number of other countries, like the Scandinavian countries, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. Although John did not use the terminology of children’s theology in his book, his ideas influenced the movement very much and inspired it to explore the rich theological capacities of even young children.
Personally, I do not hesitate to say that the book that had the strongest impact on me was Touching the Rock: an Experience of Blindness. When I first read it more than 20 years ago, it was a real eye-opener for me. I had never realised how much prejudice against people with disabilities there is even in the Bible. Can the blind lead the lame? Yes, they certainly can – and a blind person can make those who have functioning eyes, see much more and more clearly. This is one of the lessons I was granted to learn from John. In the more recent debates about inclusive education, John’s insights stay with me and acquire additional meaning.
In the end, for me as for many others, John was something like a caring midwife helping us to give birth to new ideas. The interest he took in others and their work as well his questions were encouraging in more than one way. He will be missed by many – for a very long time.
Prof. Dr Mualla Selçuk
Divinity Faculty, Ankara University, Turkey
The RE world and we, as RE people and members of the ISREV family, have lost a very special person, a unique scholar and one of our most forward-looking ethicists. In his death, we have also lost a truly ‘great soul’. Having heard of John’s death I, like many of you, began to think about how he had touched my life. Strangely, what came instantly to my mind was not his invaluable books and articles that I have read many times or his original presentations I attended on different occasions; it was our conversation in the rain at ISREV, Villanova, in 2004. I had the honour of having lunch with him on one of the days of the seminar and what I found about him was not a surprise at all. Here was the personification of grace, goodness and kindness at the table.
After lunch, we had a short walk together on the campus thinking about which session we were going to attend in the afternoon. It was, to borrow your words, dear John, from your stunning book Touching the Rock (1990) a ‘nice day’. ‘It was a mild day, warm with a light breeze but thundery’ (p. 16). We found ourselves under a roof when it started raining heavily. We began to talk and John told me about ISREV, its establishment and some parts of its history. It was really astonishing to listen to him not just for his knowledge and scholarship but also for the names, facts and the details of events to which he referred. Slightly excited, I asked John about the possibility of hosting ISREV in Ankara. He smiled and said with a friendly voice ‘You are jumping ahead Mualla! How long have you been at ISREV?’ ‘Norway was my first and this one is the second’ I replied, ‘but I feel a strong desire to do it.’
The courage and strength John gave me to offer a proposal for the next session is still fresh in my memory and I will never forget how he helped and guided me in the organisation of ISREV Ankara, sharing with me his time, knowledge, experience and wisdom. While John, Yakob Katz and myself were corresponding to organise ISREV Ankara in 2008, John sent me a note stating with joy ‘A Muslim, a Christian and a Jew are working together for the future of RE. That is amazing!’ With the help of his sense of humour, his compassion and his great enthusiasm, things went smoothly and in proper order so I managed to host the ISREV family for its 30th Anniversary session in Turkey. Most importantly, I have learned from John through this experience that what makes people with an extraordinary character different from the rest of us is how they respond in hard times.
Since John’s demise, my PhD students sent me their condolences and also shared their memories about this generous man who gave so much to so many:
We may not be able to reach his skills or strengths but we can all try to learn from his gentle personality, his humanity, and also his commitment to his work and to people. Throughout his life, John imparted to all of us, Muslims, Christians and Jews, religious and secular, an understanding of an open and critical RE for the nurture of children and adults. It has been a privilege and a blessing to have known him, worked with him and learned from him. Thank you for reminding me that hardship can be borne with optimism and dignity; thank you for reminding me that kindness and love are the main values in life that really and only matter. May your soul rest in peace.
Verily, unto God do we belong and, verily, unto Him we shall return. (Quran 2:156)
Professor Marian de Souza
Melbourne University, Australia
I first came across John Hull’s work in the mid-1990s when I turned my attention to the religious education curriculum in Australia. Generally, Religious Education (RE) had been confined to faith-based schools where it was influenced by theological thinking. It did not have a place in the core curriculum in government schools. However, in the late 1980s, new school-leaving curricula for senior secondary students were being developed across some Australian states and, in the State of Victoria, a subject called Religion and Society was introduced. This required that religious education would have a multi-religious focus with a critical understanding of religion in the contemporary secular context, and it led curriculum planners to examine the religious studies movement in Britain from the previous decades. In particular, John’s argument, generated by the multi-religious aspects of Britain in the 1960s, that religious education should assist students to understand the nature and role of religion in society, and which was foundational to the Birmingham Syllabus in 1970, was highly influential in the development of the religious education programmes that were subsequently offered in state-based senior secondary education curricula in Australia.
John’s writings reflected a fundamental aim for religious education: that students should learn to respond to religious diversity in a critical and respectful manner; and to appreciate that while each religion has its own distinctive features and boundaries, religions also share common themes. Such themes enable dialogue which, then, can become a starting point in a study of religion. This concept is as relevant to the contemporary, pluralistic world as it was to the multicultural society of Britain in the 1960s and 70s.
For me, personally, the value of John’s work lay in his heightened awareness of the otherness of Other. He spoke of how his blindness had made him more sensitive to the life-situations of minority groups and had inspired in him a solidarity with marginalised people. When I first met John in 2004, he was interested to hear about my personal experiences about settling and teaching in Australia. He also offered valuable insights into my research which, as a new researcher in this field, I found most affirming. Over the years, my appreciation of John’s wisdom and knowledge continued, along with my sincere admiration and awe for a man who overcame his disability with dignity, without losing interest in and compassion for others. John recognised that teachers’ personal lives play a role in their professional practice and that therefore, RE teachers needed to reflect on the role of religion in their lives.
Religious education, then, for John was an encounter with Other, predicated on the fact that we are all in this world together as human beings, living our lives the best way we can. Ultimately, religious education, as inspired by John’s thinking, should promote in us an understanding that it is our humanity that we have in common which enables us to enter and embrace other human worlds, and to find ways to live a peaceful co-existence with Other.
Prof. em. Siebren Miedema
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
I should like to express my appreciation of Professor John Hull’s impact on my work and the debate on RE in the Netherlands by utilising parts of my ‘Laudatory Address’ on the occasion of the award to John of an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Psychology and Education on October 20th 2005.
Inspired by Ninian Smart’s plea for religious education as an encounter with religions, it was you – a trained teacher, a religious educationist, a prominent member of the Christian Education Movement and a convinced Christian, who concretised this vision pedagogically in many projects culminating in The Gift to the Child project on which you worked with Dr Michael Grimmitt and a project team. You believed that it is crucial that religious education be part of every public school’s curriculum and that it does not only aim at knowledge about religions but also has a moral and spiritual dimension.
The focus in your work has always been on assisting the individual child’s religious development utilising religious objects, rituals and the practices that fulfil an important role within a particular religious community and reveal the sacred beauty of religious life. It was your view that religious education should not be restricted to the teaching of Christianity but that it has a multi-faith perspective. In your own words: ‘Christians in education are not there to advance their own cause or to win selfish recognition for their own faith. They are there to serve’. You have convincingly shown that the situation of religious plurality that we meet locally, regionally and globally is an inevitable item on the agenda of everyone who attaches importance to the relationship between education and religion.
The context of increasing multi-religiosity you have experienced since the 1960s in the UK and especially in Birmingham has had a tremendous influence on your conceptualisation of religious education. However, the impact of your work has not been confined to the UK. The importance of your contribution has been recognised worldwide, which is also due to your leading role as editor-in-chief of the British Journal of Religious Education and your chairmanship of the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV).
Your work has inspired several religious educationists in the Netherlands, but the Dutch dual system of public and denominational schools grounded in article 23 of the constitution has hampered for a long time a direct acceptance of your views. Your aims in religious education are incompatible with both the passive impartial view that is characteristic of religious education in many public schools and the active impartial view in which only knowledge about religion is taught to children. Moreover, your aim also opposes the view that religious education is the sole privilege of denominational Christian schools. I believe, however, that the new view of religion and society as well as religious education and society that has grown out of the events following ‘9/11’ has given urgency to the question as to how we can profit from your contribution in the field of religious education more fully in this country.
Dr Abdullah Sahin
Markfield Institute of Higher Education, UK
John Hull’s transformative impact on Christian education and religious education in general is widely acknowledged. It is less known that from the mid-1990s onwards John, largely through engagement with his Muslim students, contributed to the emergence of an open and critical Islamic education in the UK. It was not that John was privileging Islam and Muslims but as a religious educator, he was deeply aware of the significant challenges surrounding the presence of Islam in the midst of secular and multi-faith European societies. The history of political and religious conflict between mediaeval Islam and Christendom as well as the more recent trauma of Western colonisation of the Muslim world naturally caused the mutual prejudice to persist. John felt that religious educators had a special role in fostering mutual recognition, understanding and solidarity. More significantly, he argued that the new cultural and religious plurality characterising modern Britain was creating opportunities for rethinking our identities so that we could find better ways of relating to one another.
John strongly believed that an open and reflective Islamic education was critical in encouraging Muslims to reconcile their faith with wider secular democracy and multi-faith British society. I was fortunate enough to know John as a mentor, colleague and friend. John’s weekly seminars, largely attended by Muslim and Christian educators, were exciting and challenging. They also facilitated constructive and critical inter-religious understanding and dialogue which contributed immensely to the formation of my vocation as a Muslim educator. One of the first significant competences John nurtured in us was to ‘think educationally about religious traditions’. When we began to reflect on the Qur’an and Bible educationally, we could appreciate that their educational gifts were open to all humanity. I remember vividly during one of these meetings that John, in a typically humorous but challenging manner, posed a critical question: ‘Is the Qur’an only for Muslims?’ I pointed out that the Qur’an clearly states that ‘God has created humanity as people of different races, cultures and faiths so that they may have the opportunity for learning from one another’ (49:13; 30:22; 5:48). John was so pleased that he jokingly said, ‘Abdullah please stop. If you continue I fear you may convert me to Islam!’
With hindsight, I can see how the educational and theological issues John engaged with decades ago as a Christian educator are now defining my own vocation as a Muslim educator. Among those themes were: turning faith into a rigid identity structure, lack of willingness to engage with the impact of an inherited imperial faith that created a false consciousness justifying authoritarian power structures. It was impossible not to be moved by John’s prophetic educational theology that was deeply informed by psychology, sociology and above all ‘Marxian’ analysis. His life was the embodiment of ‘critical faithfulness’ that showed courage for self-criticism as well as militant activism to uphold justice and dignity for all. John dedicated his last major work to voice this prophetic spirit that deeply informs the sister faith traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
A significant consequence of critical faithfulness was to recognise the inter-dependence of all life and the reality that our life worlds have limitations. We experience life, including the Divine, in relation to certain contexts. This limitation, he argued, should not been seen as a shortcoming but as an educational motive for us to adopt a learning attitude to grow into our humanity. John’s prophetic educational legacy will continue to inspire generations of educators including Muslim educators. Today’s world is in need of such prophetic educational insights so that we can better relate to one another and achieve peace, justice and dignity for all. I remain forever grateful for what John has given to the world and to me especially.