Reflecting on Rekis’ (2023) paper, the dominant religion of a society often sets the standard for acceptable behaviour—implicitly shaping what is normal, credible, and institutionally valid. This is problematic in educational institutions when there is a degree of ambivalence to religious or cultural needs. Even with inclusive aims, the default setting of systems often assume that students must adapt to the system (which is influenced by biased structures) not the other way around. Accommodating every religious or cultural observance equitably is difficult within an institution systemically embedded within Christian-majority norms. Academic calendars, for example, rarely account for non-Christian religious holidays.
This plays out in my own teaching context. The Lunar New Year can coincide around summative assessment period in the final year. Once assessment dates are set, we sometimes see an uptick in students—mainly from East Asian backgrounds—notifying us of illness, family emergencies, or urgent travel. While this is anecdotal and unverified, I suspect many of these students are going home to celebrate Lunar New Year with their families. Regardless, we accommodate for the students, but the system itself is not designed to flex. Final-year units are 60-credits or 15-weeks. Staff, like myself, are under added stress to arrange alternative assessments, and students often carry the stress of feeling unable to be transparent about their reasons, presumably. This creates a friction point—culturally and administratively––and likely affects one’s sense of belonging.
In the broader context, these challenges raise questions about how secular institutions navigate faith. In the U.S., the separation of church and state tends to mean “keep the state out of my religion”—with a bias and caveat for Christian religions. In France, under laïcité, it’s more about “keep religion out of my state.” Both models struggle with pluralism in practice. Universities must support freedom of religion while maintaining secular governance, but this is not a simple balancing act as the religious, the cultural and the social are deeply interconnected beyond academia. Both interpretations can be harnessed for either equitable or oppressive purposes. As Buchanan (1992) describes, this is a “wicked problem”—one with no clear solution and multiple, conflicting demands.
Kwame Anthony Appiah’s (2014) talk argues that “religion” is not a singular, definable thing. The very idea of religion as a category was constructed through Euro-centric efforts to compare other cultures to Christianity. The result is a list of “world religions” that may not reflect how people actually live or practise. Beliefs and customs vary by geography, community and individual experience. Religion is not fixed—it is lived, negotiated, and intersectional. Appiah’s conclusion that “there is no such thing as religion” speaks to this point: using the label of “religion” uncritically flattens the complex ways people relate to faith, ethics, and community as part of their identity.
Adding to this, Jawad (2022) challenges the assumption that religious expression such as wearing the hijab is inherently oppressive and instead reveals how Muslim women actively assert agency within constraining institutional frameworks. Religious identity is not just belief, but also embodied practice, and something easily marginalised by secular systems that claim to be neutral.
My own perspective is shaped by a Catholic upbringing. I attended Catholic schools through my early education, and then Jesuit high school and university. I consider myself fortunate to have been educated in a liberal religious environment that encouraged study of religion and cultures and open inquiry. I no longer identify as Catholic, but I still go to mass with family around holidays as tradition and culture––Catholic culture is part of my identity but I don’t identify as Catholic. Furthermore, that education taught me to read religious texts as human documents—rooted in history, struggle and hope; records of people trying to make sense of human experience, suffering and morality.
References
Appiah, K.A. (2014) Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question). [YouTube]. TED. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2et2KO8gcY (Accessed: 23 May 2025).
Buchanan, R. (1992) ‘Wicked problems in design thinking’, Design Issues, 8(2), pp. 5–21.
Jawad, H. (2022) Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women. [Online]. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2022/09/islam-women-and-sport-the-case-of-visible-muslim-women/
Rekis, J. (2023) ‘Religious identity and epistemic injustice: an intersectional account’, Hypatia, 38, pp. 779–800.
Trinity University (2016) Challenging Race, Religion, and Stereotypes in Classroom Available at: https://youtu.be/0CAOKTo_DOk
Hi Jeff.
I enjoyed reading your post. I think you touch on something which is important to understanding the tension between religious freedom and secular governance in saying that “the religious, the cultural and the social are deeply interconnected beyond academia.” Also how the dichotomous worldviews: keeping “religion out of my state,” and keeping “the state out of my religion” can both be harnessed to affect equity or oppression. Given the high number of Chinese students across the university, I think that your experience of Chinese students and the Lunar New Year are probably something that is shared by many other practitioners. Reflecting on this point, and how from my positionality as (similar to your own cultural experience of Catholicism) someone being baptized in the Church of England – and having had experience of church going at various points in my life – but not really identifying as a practicing Christian. However, what is certainly true is my emotional connection to religious holidays, particularly Christmas; when the family Christmas was made impossible by the pandemic – for me I felt some sense of sadness and injustice. Empathizing with Chinese students who will have the same emotional attachment for the hugely important cultural event of Lunar New Year – which is of course a family event (which is something very much true across many religious festivals in different faiths. This made me reflect on the plurality of faiths and how this may affect the empathy that we have towards different faiths and belief groups; maybe we are less able (in the Christian – both Catholic and Anglican/ Protestant culture – if not faith) to empathize with Chinese Buddhist cultural narrative than with the Abrahamic monotheistic narrative. Perhaps how institutions behave towards different faith groups and cultural practices is affected by their interpretation of what a religion is – and what it is not.
I think your hypothesis about monotheistic affinity is a lot of food for thought and an intriguing avenue for research in the context of intersectionality and institutional biases. There may well be a kind of latent cultural proximity at play, where the shared structures of Abrahamic religions (e.g., singular deity, sacred texts, prophetic lineage, moral frameworks) create a sense of recognisable logic for those brought up in Christian-majority cultures. This might inadvertently inform greater institutional empathy, or at least familiarity, when navigating the needs of Muslim students. For example, around prayer times, Ramadan, or halal dietary requirements.
In contrast, traditions like Buddhism, which may not prioritise worship or divinely mandated rituals in the same way, are more easily cast as “cultural” rather than “religious.” This can subtly shift how seriously institutions treat observances like Lunar New Year, which may sometimes be framed as optional or discretionary time off, rather than time connected to deeply held values or identity. This gets at your point how institutions understand and recognise “religion” is not neutral. If recognition hinges on proximity to Western monotheistic models, that shapes who gets accommodated and who is seen as peripheral.