Bob Bowie

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 interwoven in our neural structures and Bob discusses how the cohort you were with when you were younger carries on in you. We learn why he used to reference Casablanca in his ethics classes and we talk about it is that that marks us generationally. 

We learn why Saturdays were so important when growing up and how, with nostalgia, what we may have taken to be normal when growing up can become strange. He asks whether we dishonour the suffering by eliminating memories of the likes of Jimmy Savile? We also talk about purgatory as God whispering in your ear the story of your life and we learn why Bob has respect equally for those who want to close the lid on traumatic memories and those who want to open it.

We talk about how the problem with Paradise is the unchanging nature of the blessed state, we learn about Bob’s box of spaceships, and why Japan is an extraordinary country, having lived there back in the mid-90s. We learn whether he is ready to return there (or Enfield for that matter), and at the end of the interview we learn why Bob is more inclined to look forward rather than back.

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Bob Bowie and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.