The Archbishop of Canterbury says a purely rationalistic and secularist approach to intellectual and academic life has sold short both the meaning of rationality and the broad human values nurtured by critical faith.

The Kochhar Humanist Education Center (KHEC), which was launched yesterday by the American Humanist Association, is to develop a curriculum for the humanist equivalent of Sunday schools. This will include programs in ethics geared to serve the children of atheists, agnostics and freethinkers.

Humanism is a philosophy and approach to life that has Christian, atheist, deist and theist roots, says Mark Vernon. So when it is taught in schools, what kind of approach will be adopted?