Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Bob Bowie, Professor of Worldviews Education at Canterbury Christ Church University and Director of the National Institute of Christian Education. We learn that Bob, who lives in West Kent, started out by studying classics and philosophy and went on to train as an RE teacher.  We discuss the question of what RE is, whether people study religion because they are religious, and the implications for census data. Bob recalls growing up in Enfield, North London, and its Victorian parks and being one of three kids in his class at school who had parents who were born in England. Bob explains why the city is a place to visit rather than to live and why there are some things he doesn’t want to go back to, e.g. the violence that was a regular part of his time in school.  Bob, though, sees this as a gift as it gave him opportunities to discover forms of hospitality he hadn’t experienced before, and we talk about being the victim of bullying.  There is something about music that is inter