But in schools it seems to me that the teaching of religion in the broadest sense is vital. We live in a world where religion of all sorts is making a comeback, even where secularism thought it had won the field.

It isn't, in other words, just a small-scale and rather odd private hobby, but something which affects the lives of millions. It is as vital to a young person growing up to understand what religion is and how it functions as it is to understand geography, electricity or biology.

This, however, masks the real problem, which is: How do you teach religion, given that this word covers everything from Russian Orthodox Christianity to New Age crystal-mongering? It is possible to teach it all from a secular point of view ('these are the peculiar things some peculiar people like to do and teach'), but that is about as much fun as taking a course on the history of music from someone who's tone deaf.

But if the teacher, or the course organizer, has a particular religious commitment, they are of course 'biased' . . . perhaps just like the music teacher who adores modern jazz but has to teach about Bach and Beethoven as well. A good teacher will still bring the classics alive even if her real passion is jazz (or vice versa), and perhaps some good teachers of religion can help pupils get a real understanding of, say, Islam, even if they themselves are Hindus.

This is a real challenge for our time, and the fact that so many people assume a meaning for religion, which comes to us courtesy of the muddles of the 18th Century, really doesn't help!

In the ancient world, of course, religion was something done by the whole community, involving state affairs, marriage, daily life, high and low culture, war, you name it, not just 'private spirituality'.

This, apart from anything else, is worth remembering when we read the New Testament with our historical eyes open.