BBC Beyond Belief and the University of Manchester

The BBC Beyond Belief archive is fantastically rich public resource that provides a wide range of communities across the UK with the opportunity to learn about issues in the study and practice of religions, about cultural and religious diversity, and about the contemporary experience of people in faith communities. This means that the Beyond Belief archive has the potential to enhance the learning experiences of students across the UK studying RE A-level by providing access to accounts of individual lived religious experience and scholarly perspectives on religion that are not readily accessible in the majority of textbooks and other learning resources. Click on the button below to access the Beyond Belief archive of episodes.

Now academics at the University of Manchester Religions and Theology Department have designed a range of unique learning resources built out of their own cutting edge research expertise and the BBC Radio 4 Beyond Belief archive. On this website you will find learning activity pages on a range of topics including Free Will, Same Sex Marriage, Climate Change and even Roboethics! On every activity page, you will be guided to listen to relevant BBC Radio 4 Beyond Belief episodes and think about how you might apply what you learn from that, and from the information provided by University of Manchester Religions and Theology lecturers, to your A level coursework and exams. In addition to these pages, you will also find thateach University of Manchester academic who has contributed an activity page has also designed a resource for you to enhance your understanding of the topic and drawing upon their own research in that area, so you’ll also get a chance to hear about new ideas and evidence well before they reach the textbooks. 

Although this website is not a textbook — so you won’t find an activity page on every topic on your syllabus, and not every paper of every syllabus will be covered — what you will find is a suite of engaging content produced by University of Manchester lecturers on their research specialisms that will help you go above and beyond in A level study with the help of BBC Beyond Belief too. Over the coming months more pages will appear on additional topics.

So, explore, enjoy, learn!

Cooordinated and edited by Dr Holly Morse, Senior Lecturer in Bible, Gender and Culture