ABSTRACT
In the third worked example of Statement Archaeology, this chapter considers the question ‘how the study of non-Christian religions and belief systems became possible?’. It takes as its starting point a statement taken from the Schools Council’s 1971 publication, Working Paper 36—Religious Education and the Secondary School, which encouraged the study of non-Christian religions and belief systems. Here the excavations reveal that the widespread adoption of the study of world religions became possible during the 1960s as a result of a series of complex, concurrent, changes, with classroom teachers and other local actors rather than national policymakers being the key agents of change. Following the statement towards the present shows that the legitimization of the study of world religions at a rhetorical/official policy level comes a little whilst later than the change in classroom practice, with key documents from 1968 and 1975 being significant in this process. The chapter shows that the study of world religions became ‘official’ policy only once it had become established as the dominant paradigm in many classrooms across the country.
