In 1969, a conference at the Shap Wells Hotel spawned the
Shap Working Party on World Religions in Education. ‘Shap’
then is not an acronym (Smart, Hinnells and Parrinder was once
floated as an intelligent guess) but the name of the Cumbrian
village which in pre-motorway days marked the testing gradient
on the route to Scotland, and the nearest hamlet to the location
of early meetings of the Working Party.
From its early days Shap has been a forum for religious educators
from a variety of educational settings, working together in the
cause of open and broadly based approaches to religious education
studies. From the start Shap has been a Working Party engaged
in organising many conferences for teachers, in producing books
and an annual Mailing (consisting of a journal and a calendar
of Festivals) and in offering advice to a wide range of people
— from publishers and broadcasters to individual pupils
doing examination projects. Among the Working Party’s recent
publications are Festivals in World Religions (Longman 1986) and
The Shap Handbook on World Religions in Education (Commission
for Racial Equality 1987) both edited by Alan Brown. The Working
Party’s junior offshoot, The Chichester Project, has also
published an array of books for pupils on various aspects of Christianity
accompanied by a teachers’ book Teaching Christianity: A
World Religions Approach (Lutterworth 1988) edited by Clive Erricker.
The present volume celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Working
Party and draws on contributions to Shap’s journal currently
called World Religions in Education. The book is a tribute to
the hard work and commitment of the journal’s successive
editors and to Angela Wood without whose energy and enthusiasm
this book may have remained an interesting idea.
by the Chairman Robert Jackson |