The Controversy of Jesus Depictions in English Schools

Drawing Christ in England:
Why recent school guidance advising caution over depictions of Jesus reveals a deeper confusion about Britain’s Christian foundations.

A document circulated to schools in England this past week has triggered a revealing controversy about the direction of British education policy. The guidance in question—Sharing the Journey: A Guide to Supporting the Needs of Muslim Pupils—was issued by Leeds City Council and produced in collaboration with several neighbouring local authorities, including Calderdale, Oldham, and Wakefield, as advice to schools on accommodating the religious practices of Muslim pupils within the classroom and wider school life.¹ The document was intended as a practical resource for teachers navigating the complexities of modern classrooms in which pupils come from a variety of religious and cultural backgrounds. Yet almost immediately after its wider circulation, one particular recommendation within its pages became the focus of national discussion.

Among its recommendations is a warning that teachers should exercise caution when asking pupils to reproduce images of prophets—explicitly including Jesus—because some Muslim families regard figurative depictions of prophetic figures as religiously inappropriate. The document states that schools should be careful not to ask pupils to produce images of “Jesus, the Prophet Muhammad or other figures considered to be prophets in Islam,” noting that certain interpretations of Islamic teaching discourage such representations.² The advice is framed in the language of sensitivity and mutual respect, suggesting that teachers consider alternative assignments where such depictions might cause discomfort or offence.

The guidance goes further by advising teachers to be mindful that some families may object to elements of the curriculum involving music, dance, drama, or figurative art, as some conservative interpretations of Islamic law discourage such activities. Schools are therefore encouraged to exercise sensitivity and flexibility where such concerns arise.³ The implication is not that these subjects should be abolished, but that teachers should remain attentive to the possibility that certain pupils or parents may wish to opt out of particular activities on religious grounds.

Taken at face value, the document appears to be an attempt by local authorities to manage the practical realities of religious diversity within school communities. Teachers and school leaders are frequently required to navigate competing expectations from families, community groups, and government policy. In such circumstances guidance that encourages awareness of cultural sensitivities may seem reasonable or even prudent. Yet the implications of such advice reach far beyond administrative pragmatism.

For the figure whose depiction is now treated as potentially problematic is not simply a religious character among many. Jesus Christ is the central figure of the civilisation from which Britain’s institutions, art, law, and moral culture historically emerged. His life and teaching shaped the philosophical assumptions of Western civilisation; his image has been painted, sculpted, carved, illuminated, and sung about across the centuries of European culture. The story of Christ is woven through the very fabric of Britain’s cultural inheritance—from the stone carvings of medieval churches to the stained glass of cathedrals, from the poetry of John Milton to the choral traditions that continue to echo within parish churches every Sunday.

To suggest that English schoolchildren should hesitate before drawing such a figure in art lessons therefore carries a symbolic weight far greater than the guidance itself may have intended. It touches upon the relationship between the nation’s historic identity and the assumptions guiding contemporary public policy.

The United Kingdom remains, in law and constitutional structure, a Christian country. The Church of England is established by law, and its position within the constitution continues to shape the legal framework of the state.⁴ The monarch must be a Protestant Christian under the Act of Settlement 1701, which bars Catholics from ascending the throne and requires the sovereign to maintain communion with the Church of England.⁵ This provision, enacted during the constitutional struggles of the late seventeenth century, reflects the determination of Parliament that the nation’s monarchy should remain inseparable from the Protestant settlement that followed the Glorious Revolution.

At the coronation, held in Westminster Abbey, the monarch swears before God to maintain the Protestant religion established by law and to uphold the settlement of the Church of England, a requirement codified in the Coronation Oath Act 1688.⁶ The ceremony itself—solemn, ancient, and unmistakably Christian—serves as a reminder that the British state was never conceived as religiously neutral in the modern sense. It is a constitutional monarchy crowned not merely with regalia but with the language of covenant and sacred obligation.

The sovereign also bears the title “Defender of the Faith” and serves as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, an office reflecting the continuing constitutional relationship between the monarchy and the established church.⁷ This arrangement, though often treated today as ceremonial, remains embedded within the legal structure of the state. It symbolises the enduring link between the Christian heritage of the nation and the institutions that govern it.

Christianity’s constitutional presence is also visible in Parliament. Twenty-six bishops of the Church of England sit in the House of Lords as the Lords Spiritual, participating directly in the legislative life of the nation alongside life peers and hereditary peers.⁸ Their presence reflects the historic conviction that the moral voice of the Church should contribute to the deliberations of the state, offering counsel on matters affecting the ethical life of the nation.

These arrangements are not merely ceremonial remnants of an earlier age. They reflect a long-standing principle recognised within English jurisprudence: that Christianity historically formed part of the moral and cultural framework of the nation. The eighteenth-century jurist Sir William Blackstone wrote in his Commentaries on the Laws of England that Christianity was understood to be part of the common law because the ethical assumptions underlying English law had grown within the Christian tradition.⁹ Blackstone’s observation was not theological but civilisational: the law of England had been shaped by the moral imagination of a Christian people.

Education historically reflected the same inheritance. Many schools across England were originally founded by Anglican or Catholic institutions, and a substantial number of state-funded schools still retain Christian foundations today.¹⁰ Even within the modern state system the Education Reform Act 1988 requires that collective worship in maintained schools be “wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character.”¹¹ Parliament retained this requirement because it recognised that Britain’s educational culture had grown from a Christian civilisational framework.

The artistic heritage of Britain itself illustrates this truth with remarkable clarity. From the illuminated manuscripts of the early medieval period to the soaring architecture of Gothic cathedrals, the creative imagination of the nation has long drawn inspiration from the life of Christ and the narratives of the Gospel. The paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the sacred music of composers such as Tallis and Byrd, and the countless carvings and sculptures adorning churches across the country testify to a civilisation in which Christian imagery formed an essential part of cultural expression.¹²

Against this background the logic of the Sharing the Journey guidance appears deeply confused. Protecting the religious freedom of minorities is a legitimate and necessary feature of a free society. Muslim families, like all citizens, are entitled to practice their religion without harassment or discrimination under British law. The freedom to hold and practice one’s beliefs is among the most important liberties secured within the British constitutional tradition.

Yet there remains an important distinction between protecting individual liberty and reshaping the cultural life of public institutions to conform to the theological prohibitions of particular religious traditions. When the cultural inheritance of the nation itself begins to be treated as potentially problematic, a deeper question arises: what precisely is the purpose of public education?

Public education exists not merely to avoid offence but to transmit the cultural inheritance of the nation itself. That inheritance includes the art, literature, and history of a civilisation profoundly shaped by Christianity. From medieval iconography to the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, from the architecture of English cathedrals to the literature of Milton and Eliot, the figure of Christ is woven throughout the cultural fabric of Britain.¹²

To treat the depiction of Jesus as something potentially inappropriate in English schools is therefore to misunderstand the very heritage those schools exist to teach.

The deeper issue exposed by this controversy is the widening gap between Britain’s constitutional identity and the assumptions guiding modern policy. Constitutionally the nation remains Christian. Yet many administrative decisions are framed as though Britain were a religiously neutral state managing a collection of competing cultural identities.

Such a contradiction cannot persist indefinitely. Either Britain intends to maintain the Christian character embedded within its constitutional framework, or the institutions that express that identity will eventually be dismantled.

What cannot endure is the present ambiguity—where the nation’s laws and institutions proclaim one heritage while official guidance quietly proceeds as though that heritage no longer mattered.

If Britain remains, in law and constitution, a Christian country, then the policies guiding its public institutions should at the very least reflect that reality rather than gradually eroding it in the name of administrative sensitivity.

Leeds City Council et al., Sharing the Journey: A Guide to Supporting the Needs of Muslim Pupils.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Mark Hill QC, Ecclesiastical Law, 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Act of Settlement 1701 (12 & 13 Will III c.2).
Coronation Oath Act 1688 (1 Will & Mary c.6).
Norman Doe, The Legal Framework of the Church of England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
House of Lords Library, The Lords Spiritual in the House of Lords.
William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. IV (1769).
Department for Education, Schools, Pupils and Their Characteristics: England.
Education Reform Act 1988, s.7.
Kenneth Clark, Civilisation: A Personal View (1969).

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