If you look to our schools and universities, you will not see a serious engagement with the Bible as part of the study of politics, of philosophy, or even of literature and culture more generally, despite the huge influence of Biblical ideas on the development of British, American and European politics – and so also across the Commonwealth and the world. University courses on political philosophy take a fundamentally ahistorical position of focusing on purely secular philosophers, rather than facing the reality of the Bible’s impact on the actual development of modern politics.
From Bristol to Warwick to Glasgow, the works of Hobbes and Rousseau, Mill and Rawls, are compulsory study; but across dozens of modules available, none focuses on the Bible or the role of religion, historically and in the present day. Similarly, university courses on literature rarely involve study of the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, despite the fact their influence on the English language and its literature is matched only by Shakespeare.
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