Trinity Church of England High School

Religious Education > Key Stage 4 > Religion And Social Responsibility

EDEXCEL GCSE RS                  RELIGION AND SOCIETY

UNIT TITLE:           RELIGION AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

AIM:    To consider the key issues relating to religion and social responsibility as outlined in the syllabus.  Students will need to show awareness of 1 religion, which for our purposes will be Christianity.

KEY ISSUES AS OUTLINED IN THE SYLLABUS:

• How Christians make moral decisions: the authority of the Bible, the authority of the Church, the role of conscience and Situation Ethics.
• The electoral system in the UK.
• Differences among Christians in their attitudes to politics, including the separation of religion and politics and involvement in politics.
• The structure of the Welfare State in the UK and non-religious arguments about it.
• The Christian basis of the Welfare State.

TECHNICAL TERMS:

Bible – the holy book of Christians with 66 books split into the Old Testament and the New Testament

Church – the community of Christians (with a small c, it means a Christian place of worship)

Conscience – an inner feeling of the rightness or wrongness of an action

Situation Ethics – the idea that Christian should base moral decisions on what is the most loving thing to do in a situation

Electoral system – the way in which voting is organised

First-past-the-post – the voting system where whoever gets the most votes in a constituency (area represented by an MP) wins the seat

Proportional representation – the voting system where seats are distributed according to the proportion of votes each party gets

National government – the government headed by the Prime Minister which governs the whole country

Local government – the local council which looks after local issues such as education and refuse collection

Decalogue – the Ten Commandments

Golden Rule – the teaching of Jesus that people should treat others as they would like to be treated