Religious Studies

Course summary

The Theology and Philosophy Department is a centre of robust exchange of ideas, historic and contemporary, in which pupils are taught to scrutinise ideas, explore systems of thought and ask what it means to believe. We attest to the rigour of strong philosophical training and the ability to think, speak and write with clarity, care and at times creativity. We seek to mine the intellectual foundations of Western philosophical thought and the subsequent Judaeo-Christian culture, but not at the cost of more expansive thought around different cultures, ideas and theories. We are home to charitable and open learning, and Theology and Philosophy teachers at Westminster seek the wholistic good of the pupils who pass through our classrooms. In the Sixth Form and Remove (Years 12 and 13), we use the OCR Religious Studies A Level to provide a spine for our academic outcomes, but we leave much room for exploring the deeper territories of Theology and Philosophy, which includes core texts like Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism and Humanism, and other additional non-specification material like Virtue Ethics, Free Will and Determinism, and moral psychology. We seek to ensure pupils understand the historic harmony between Theology and Philosophy, and the points at which modernity signifies abrupt ruptures and movement in philosophical thought. Our teaching is discursive and pupil-focused, and the pupils who thrive make the utmost use of the classroom as a place to form, refine and shape ideas, ready for excellent critical essay writing. For A Level pupils, the department is a place in which political and legal philosophy, medical ethics, artificial intelligence and genetic technologies can all be explored in a cross-disciplinary way.