Das Programm einer Kindertheologie im Vorschulalter (German Edition)

In the network arranged its first conference in Loccum, extending the German network to include people from several European countries. The second and third conference Kampen, the Netherlands and Trondheim, Norway gave the opportunity for other countries to draw the card of theologizing with children and the Child Theology Network CTN was born.

The preparation for the conference is coordinated by a committee consisting of the following persons: The concepts of the child, of childhood and of learning are changing in public education as well as in church life. This process varies across Europe. The aim of the conference is to bring together researchers from different countries who are interested in a religiosity in early childhood and b in theologizing and philosophizing with young children. Participants are asked to share empirical studies as well as discussions of specific theological, philosophical or spiritual issues that affect the interplay between young children and adults.

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Freiheit bei Martin Luther und Huldrych Zwingli im Vergleich (German Edition)

Theologiseren en ervaringsgericht kleuteronderwijs, door Jan de Vriese Dutch D. Walk in the city of Mechelen 17u30 Evening programme for participants of the Network Conference: He sought to rethink Christian nurture within the churches in the light of social and educational change. These were the coming to power of a Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher in ; and, after a life in which he had experienced constant battles to retain his sight, the onset of total blindness in His work on his experience of blindness and the theology of disability; and on the money culture and its effects on religion, spirituality and education show this unequivocally.

The author of a pioneering textbook for multifaith RE Grimmitt , 2nd edn , Grimmitt came to the University of Birmingham with a strong commitment to a multifaith view of religious education and with extensive experience of RE curriculum development and initial and continuing professional teacher education. Oldham in the inter-war period and, in the s, that of J. Smith, Harold Loukes and Ronald Goldman cf. Bates , , Chapters 5 and 6. Grimmitt and Read The outcome of this second phase development was a rationale for multifaith RE which would be made acceptable to the major faith communities by basing it on the common ground of human development and avoiding any very overt Christian theological underpinning.

Grimmitt develops his thinking fully in a major study which was primarily written to advocate the contribution of religious education to personal, social and moral education Grimmitt Chapter 2 and ff. In order to achieve this: That John Hull shared this broad approach was clear early on in his work on the Birmingham Agreed Syllabus of The s however also saw multifaith RE faced with strong criticism, the proponents of which commanded political support within government circles.

Prominent in this was its explicit mention of the central place of Christianity in both religious education Section 8: They sought a return to a traditional nurturing model of religious education focused on Christianity, the religion of English cultural heritage, and to get rid of approaches to religious education and worship which included material from several religions e. Chapter 3 and his articles and booklets Hull , b, a were vociferous in their criticisms of the aims and policies of this pressure group and much of his time and energy was devoted to campaigning against them during the late s and early s.

Such thinking, he argues, John Hull: In , he tried to do this by stressing the educational character of collective worship ibid. Taylor , to meet together to discuss common problems with leading educationists. As a person who was blind, he became aware as never before of the negative images associated with blindness and the blind in the Bible, especially in its use of the images of darkness and blindness for the forces of evil and lack of faith. He also questions the clear causal connection in the Bible between sin and unbelief and blindness. This would include the exposure and denunciation of John Hull: Hull not only wrote about blindness but took positive steps to improve the quality of life of all people with disabilities.

The consequences of this are acknowledged in his preface to the American edition of What Prevents Christian Adults from Learning?

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With reference to education, he argues that: In recent writings, he argues that the political power which accompanies economic power and produces imperialism and nationalism has also led to a false consciousness and self deception in theology. As will be seen below, Hull has recently brought these perspectives to bear on the role of European Christian churches in relation to religious education in certain countries in the contemporary period.

His great achievement in the UK is to have been the thinker who led the movement to bring religious education into the mainstream of educational thought and practice by convincing many other leading educationists and large numbers of the predominantly Christian body of RE teachers that a secular, multifaith approach to RE in state schools was consistent with Christian theological principles.

On the international front, his joint creation of ISREV and his continuing secretaryship of the organization has contributed greatly to international professional dialogue, a broadening of perspectives and valuable co-operative research. Coupled with his outstanding work on his experience of blindness and the theologies of disability and the money culture for which he has also received international acclaim, he has shown himself to be a theologian and educationist of rare enterprise and distinction.

Despite claims for the secularity of the subject, RE was never going to be thoroughly secularized cf. Chapter 4 in a situation in which the churches and, formally after , the other major religious communities, were directly involved in the monitoring and development of RE syllabuses through SACREs and Agreed Syllabus conferences. This has enabled it, in its changing forms, to dominate curriculum development in RE since the s. It has given rise to much good religious education but the often complex, supposedly interactive curriculum programmes which, in its various forms, it has produced in agreed syllabuses and textbooks over the past thirty years have not always been perceived to cohere in practice and have often not been properly understood, particularly by non-specialist teachers.

One result of John Hull: To a large extent, the problem lay in the secular theological premisses which underpinned the schema both in its earlier and more recent forms and in relation to primary as well as secondary religious education Bates a. The schema under consideration attempted to replicate these processes which in fact embody quite sophisticated adult religious experience cf.

This process has been described by Grimmitt as: The project puts aside the old bipolar structures and recognizes that: The best active learning methods typical of good thematic methodology in primary schools also lead to pupil involvement and varieties of expressive work which promote personal development Bates a. His essential criticism of Hull is that his theology of education has effectively adopted the premisses of rationalist philosophy ibid. With regard to the relativism of this universal faith Cooling ibid.

Writing from a critical realist, orthodox though not evangelical Christian standpoint, Andrew Wright, in a book published a year before that of Cooling Wright also mounts a strong attack on aspects of the liberal religious education of the posts period. Indeed, in his highly generalized critique of cf.

He contrasts this view with his own critical realist notion which sees the major faiths as each claiming to have received the revelation of eternal truths which in the case of some faiths inevitably involves them in being dogmatic and illiberal. It has nothing to do with universal affective religious experience but with New Testament eschatology. John Hull has also been concerned with the accurate portrayal of religions and acknowledges that: Chapter 5 , Wright sees any such social objectives as both unnecessary and threatening to the integrity of religious education.

It is clear that both Cooling and Wright are focused upon certain present valued institutional and doctrinal realities of religions and philosophies — and especially Christianity. Visionary perhaps but a vision which is at the heart of Judaeo-Christian and Islamic cf. For many Christians, this is more central to their faith than the creeds.

The penetrating directness and honesty of his writings took the somewhat staid world of UK religious education by storm during the s and 80s and it is questionable as to whether the English ecclesiastical establishment has ever quite forgiven him for his criticisms of The Fourth R in School Worship: They are there to serve. This conviction continues to be John Hull: For him, the days of a Christian hegemony, however liberal, in state education in the UK and in other increasingly pluralistic and secular European societies should be over.

In countries where certain churches and the state have an historic association, not least the UK, the maintenance of a Christian presence at the centres of power, or a privileged position in the administrative structures supporting religious education in state schools, is still sincerely seen by some as providing a valuable opportunity and surer base for serving the community.

Inevitably, however, in times when the major denominational forms of institutional Christianity are suffering drastic decreases in membership and attendance at worship in the UK and in many parts of Europe cf. It should be recognized, however, that failure to attend churches need not be an indication that their presence in society is not esteemed. In many societies, not least the UK, the role of the churches in education may be perceived, for various reasons, as one of their most valued contributions. The relation between nations and their churches in Europe is complex.

In Germany, religious education in the schools of most states is still conceived as initiation into the Protestant or Roman Catholic faiths and some German educationists see this as also being in principle extendable to other faiths, notably Islam. Chapter 6 below, Nipkow and Ziebertz His support for the state of Brandenburg in taking control of religious education in its state schools and introducing a syllabus in world religions and ethics cf.

This debate is likely to continue for some time to come. He has by turns inspired, infuriated and confounded his readers and hearers but has never bored them. Addressing John in an open letter, Karl Ernst Nipkow puts it thus: It is sometimes said that people can be judged by the friends they choose; John numbers among his friends people of all shades of theological stance and religious and non-religious allegiance from all continents, all skin colours and both genders.

His outstanding contribution to religious education and practical theology is rightly celebrated in this festschrift and its editors and contributors together with many other friends and colleagues thank him and hope that he will continue to shock, inspire and provoke them all for many years to come. Connections and Contradictions, London: Understanding Secularisation —, London: Mainstream and Margins in the West, Aldershot: Francis eds Christian Theology and Religious Education: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Believing Without Belonging, Oxford: Parameters of Faith in the Modern World, London: Darton, Longman and Todd. Edwards eds Religious Education in a Plural Society: The Key Philosophical Issues, London: Placher eds Newhaven and London: Approaching World Religions, London: Religious Education in the Primary School, London: SCM Press; 2nd edn , Philadelphia: Notes for Parents and Teachers, Derby: Religious Education in Multi-cultural Britain: Stamps eds Essentials of Christian Community: Essays in Honour of Daniel W.

Religious and Moral Education Press. Turning Points in Religious Studies, Edinburgh: Issues in diversity and pedagogy, London and New York: National Foundation for Educational Research. David Fulton Publishers in association with the Roehampton Institute. Problems and Challenges, London: The subject should also the fourth essay communicate an awareness of the potential of religion to being used in the pursuit of often evil and inhuman political ends.

Associated with these themes, the third essay explores the role of philosophy of religion in religious education in providing a forum for the rational discussion of religious beliefs by pupils and students of all faiths and none with a view to promoting dialogue and furthering understanding. Whilst the two human rights covenants recognize parental rights to choose the religious education of their children, the phrasing and terminology used in relation to the subject highlight common prejudices and questionable levels of understanding.

These are directly addressed in the second part of the essay. Robert Jackson Chapter 2 , focusing on the UK context, takes up a related theme. The twin towers tragedy and race riots in the North of England lent awareness and urgency to the need to include the religious dimension of intercultural diversity in citizenship education.

Citing an example of successful dialogic intercultural RE in a multicultural primary school, Jackson argues against the view that the instrumental aim of promoting social harmony diverts RE from its proper concern with understanding religion and necessarily leads to relativism and universalism. John Hick Chapter 3 commends the value of its contribution to religious education in the state schools of religiously and philosophically pluralist societies.

It offers a non-partisan, open forum for the discussion of key religious topics and questions in which believers of various faiths and non-believers alike have equal status and opportunity to put forward their viewpoints. The last issue receives particular attention, the key question being whether, in view of the contribution of the human mind to all forms of awareness, it is rational to trust such modes of experience as responsive as well as projective.

The recognition and discussion of such issues should form part of a genuinely open religious education. Despite numerous United Nations Introduction 37 pronouncements, genocide is still a common occurrence in various parts of the world, including Europe, as has been seen in Kosovo. The disputations which occurred in the latter formed the basis of Islamic jurisprudence and since students were made party to the interpretations of the professors an inevitable element of critical assessment was introduced.

Meijer tentatively suggests that this might offer a possible precedent for the development of an Islamic critically open religious education. Future peace and security depend not only on politics, economics and technology, but on the successful transformation of religious education. This claim does not get denied by political leaders or economic experts; they may never think about religious education. Indeed, even religious leaders and educational experts tend to think in very parochial terms about religious education.

Neither meaning can do justice to the task of relating the religious life of humankind and a lifelong process of education. There has been less progress in tapping into the positive possibilities of religion for national identity and international cooperation. For the exploration of religious education in its political and economic implications, John Hull has probably been the most important person in the world. While exemplifying a deeply rooted Christian life, Hull has led the way toward an educational approach to the religions of the world. This essay has two sections.

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Second, I will examine the need for religious groups to achieve understanding and tolerance in their practice and teaching. The second section will take its lead from the ambiguities and inadequacies in the language of the United Nations documents. Those of us concerned RE and international understanding 39 with religious education have to work at improving the language. One cannot expect the United Nations or any national legislature to develop an adequate language for religious education.

The United Nations is always in search of non-violent — or educational — means to reach understanding and avoid war. From its beginning, the United Nations has had a fragile existence; its ability to solve any problems has often been hopelessly compromised. Despite its limitations, the United Nations is the most visible and stable institution of international order.

The importance of the document has continued to increase throughout the last half century. The fact that the document was composed, debated and approved in without a negative vote and only eight abstentions was an amazing accomplishment. Eleanor Roosevelt shepherded the document through the process but the authors were Lebanese, Canadian, Chinese and Chilean. When religious controversy arose during the writing, Roosevelt decreed that religion would be excluded. The decision may have been necessary to arrive at agreement but it merely postponed facing up to religious issues in the conduct of nations Glendon However, there are four places in the document where religion does get referred to.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and, in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. The wording here provided the standard formula used in subsequent documents: It appointed a committee, headed by Arcon Krishnaswami of India, to produce a study of religious rights.

In , Krishnaswami produced a careful and comprehensive report of eighty-two countries. He noted that there are permissible limitations upon the right so long as a minority group is respected and the decisions further the freedom of the society as a whole. Krishnaswami also made the important point that differential treatment of individuals or groups is not always evidence of unfair discrimination.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights While only a declaration was deemed possible in , the plan was to give legal force to rights by way of an international covenant. It also named some of the reasons for limitation of this right: National security is not listed as a reason. Article 18 of the Covenant is of special importance here.

A recognition of the right to religious education is remarkable progress. The drawback is that religious education is addressed only in the context of a parental right to choose for their children. International peace and stability require nothing less. Instruction in a particular religion is not acceptable unless there are non-discriminatory exemptions or alternatives for those who want them Lerner This Declaration furthered the work of the Universal Declaration and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in cataloguing the religious rights that need protection Articles 1 and 6.

At the same time, it recognizes that religious institutions need leeway in hiring personnel, mandating dress or organizing observances Article 6. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights had placed its emphasis on the rights of individuals. The Declaration on Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion and Belief is the most important international document for the protection of religious rights.

Amor surveyed 77 countries regarding the observance of religious rights. Amor found that many states have compulsory religious instruction in the 42 Gabriel Moran religion of the majority. Most states do not provide for any exemption from this instruction. Evidently, many states are oblivious of what constitutes religious coercion.

There may never be an entirely adequate language to cope with the differences among religions and the paradoxes within each religion.

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Trying to achieve a less inadequate language is a continuing challenge for the disciplines of religion and religious education. General versus particular In the brief reference above to what is permissible and impermissible in the state school, the United Nations committee assumed an unhelpful dichotomy. The United Nations is not especially at fault here. Events of the last century should be enough to spark realization that our language is inadequate to deal with religion, especially the living religions of living people. A religious education that is adequate for the future has to examine religions in particular not in general; but one particular religion has to be related to other particular religions.

A small child, for example, need not be exposed to a multiplicity of religions; that will come soon enough. The International Covenant is legitimately concerned that parents rather than the state have control of the religious education of their children. Schoolteachers become partners to parents in the education of their children. The school RE and international understanding 43 raises questions and stimulates inquiry in ways that most parents cannot.

Some Christian groups protest that an approval of homosexuality is in violation of biblical teaching and therefore an attack on their rights. This protest has not received much attention in the press but it is a lively movement made possible by the Internet. Families in Alberta, Canada are able to share strategy with parents in Tasmania, Australia. It is a fascinating development to see conservative groups asserting their rights by appealing to United Nations documents.

Although such protests are upsetting to some schools, the positive possibilities are obvious. Distinction versus discrimination I noted one glaring inadequacy of language in the Universal Declaration: It then proceeds to list some of those distinctions, such as race, sex, nationality.

One distinction that is not listed is age. I think it is obvious that age does make a difference in how rights are applied. The United Nations document, Convention of the Rights of the Child, does make a distinction between adult and child; but I would argue that that document still suffers from a lack of distinctions. Surely one has to distinguish how rights apply differently at seven months, seven years and seventeen years. Surely, making distinctions is necessary for any process of thinking.

In dealing with religion, it is important to distinguish differences and respect the distinctions. To disallow distinctions is to pronounce that education is unnecessary. This peculiar modern approach to complex problems tries to get rid of the problem by declaring that there is no room for discussion; education is replaced by political lobbying.

Here, I think, there is an inbuilt ambiguity that cannot be entirely overcome but should be noticed. Surely, one cannot advocate a proselytizing or indoctrinating attitude? However, the choice of alternatives should be carefully considered. This ideal is beyond dispute in those situations where the task is to see or measure an object, a thing, that stands before the examiner.

There are other situations, however, that demand a different, possibly opposite, attitude. Sometimes understanding demands trying to put oneself into the place of another subject and listening to the person s. Sciences such as psychology, anthropology and sociology have struggled to include the inner dimension of human life along with their respective claims to be a modern science. Objectivity in some situations can be horribly inappropriate Price Ironically, Arendt was herself criticized for her objectivity — for not passionately denouncing Eichmann as the incarnation of evil; but I think Arendt was trying to do a proper journalistic report amid emotions run rampant Arendt The understanding that is appropriate to religion is on the outer extreme of the tension between objective elements and the attitudes, feelings, motives and decisions of human subjects.

In a state school, there has to be emphasis upon the factual and a wide range of facts; but teachers and students still have to try to get inside the subjects involved. Nonetheless, the treatment should maintain the tension of objective elements and subjective life. A Christian cannot attend to details of the Christian religion without, for example, immediately encountering Jewish religion. The contemporary context economic, political, military of Christian belief and practice is indispensable in trying to understand the lives of Christians.

The danger is admittedly present in any Christian, Jewish or Muslim school but indoctrination is also a danger in the teaching of economics, political science or psychology. The insistence on friendship may be demanding too much; friendship cannot be mandated. Tolerance has two quite distinct paths. What has largely triumphed in the Western world is a form of tolerance based on scepticism. We should tolerate different views because no one can be certain of the truth. Isaiah Berlin is probably the best known exponent of a tolerance based on the limits of knowledge Berlin Religion, in this view, is a problem because of its passionate claim to know the truth.

Voltaire believed that with the decline in the strength of religious creeds there would be a concomitant decline in human hatreds, in the urge to destroy another man because he is the embodiment of evil or falsehood. Indifference would breed tolerance. The gruesome tale of torture, killing and hatred in the last century does not seem to bear this out. There is a different path that tolerance could have taken and eventually must be developed, a toleration based on understanding rather than indifference.

The earliest move toward toleration was not based on indifference. John Plamenatz notes that in Locke, Milton and others in the seventeenth century there was a religious underpinning to tolerance. We cannot simply resurrect the seventeenth-century context but it might give us hints as to the direction needed today. The link between the two attitudes to tolerance is a humility about anyone possessing the whole truth. Faith can include a sceptical questioning element. Faith, if genuine, is based on the experience of trustworthiness. To believe in someone is to trust beyond the edge of rational certainty.

I can tolerate differences if I can trust that the other is not out to destroy me. I can lessen the fear of difference if I can get some understanding of the difference. A religious education not only requires this kind of tolerance. Religious education ought to be the practical embodiment of this attitude. Pluralism is meant to be a recognition that the truth is found along many paths, not just one path.

Isaiah Berlin and most writers who have followed his lead assert a distinction between pluralism and relativism Berlin ; but in trying to avoid relativism, pluralism can become the one absolute. The question then has to be raised whether pluralism is plural. Is pluralism just another ideology that dictates that only one way of thinking is acceptable?

While Ignatieff says that every voice has to be heard at the bargaining table, only religion seems to be excluded. Orentlicher rightly argues that human RE and international understanding 47 rights need to exist within religious traditions, not just against them Orentlicher The exclusion of religion from the discussion suggests that pluralism is not open to all plurality. The contrast is to absolute truths that are always and everywhere true, that is, not relative to time or place.

But if the statement of any truth is related to conditions of time and place, then relation — being relative — is not a defect. In fact, the wider and deeper the relations, the greater the truthfulness. Far from excluding the relative, the plural requires it. Pluralism is said to be necessary for tolerance and ecumenism but the claim can nonetheless be heavy-handed. John Hick, for example, lists three approaches to religious study as exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. He clearly prefers pluralism but he cannot avoid the paradox that his pluralism is either exclusive of the other two or inclusive of both of them.

In either case, his pluralism is insistent on only one approach being legitimate Hick It might be more helpful to acknowledge that language always includes and excludes at the same time. Simple factual statements exclude other facts. There is nothing wrong with that element of exclusivity. Some language, however, can be very inclusive in seeing another level in ordinary experience. Northop Frye referring to Macbeth writes: Religious language is both inclusive and exclusive; how the two are related determines whether the language is tolerant or intolerant.

There can be a plurality or multiplicity of tolerant positions in which there are exclusive elements of religion, as well as an inclusive attitude. The fear, once again, is a proselytizing attitude but one has to approach the teaching of any subject with a passion for getting it right. Asking a teacher not to take sides makes 48 Gabriel Moran no sense.

In a pluralistic attitude the teacher takes both sides: The principle holds whether one religion or several religions are at issue. The task is to provide appreciation of how the religion is actually practised, while at the same time providing a critical angle provided by a different religion or by secular society. I think there is a lot of good religious education being practised, most of it outside the spotlight.

I am not surprised that we are still at the beginning of religious education; its importance is still only emerging. In the future, religious education has to be inter-religious and international if it is to make sense of ordinary experience. Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Princeton: Schools Council Working Paper No. For further information consult the United Nations website www. Many teachers of religious education joined the National Association for Multiracial Education, and RE was commonly regarded as a valuable contributor to multicultural education.

Then there was a schism. Rather than promoting understanding, it was argued, multiculturalists were playing into racist hands by creating stereotypes of distinct, separate cultures. According to antiracists, multicultural education also avoided issues of power, explaining racism psychologically in terms of attitudes that could be changed through acquiring knowledge and learning tolerance, rather than through challenging accepted power structures within institutions. These inequalities of power were regarded as the real explanation for the perpetuation of inequality. These writers included Mal Leicester e.

Policy on the issue of multicultural education became clearly hard line during the latter part of the period of Conservative government between and In , two years before the election of a Conservative government, the Department of Education and Science promoted the recognition of Britain as a multicultural society and education that recognized that fact.

The policy was maintained during the early years of the Conservative administration. For example, student teachers received training to teach in a multicultural society, in-service training courses were made available to serving teachers and GCSE examination boards3 had to take account of linguistic and cultural diversity. Moreover, money from central government was given to support projects on curriculum development for an ethnically diverse society Tomlinson and Craft However, despite positive rhetoric from Government sources,4 policies relating to the implementation of the National Curriculum eroded work in multicultural and antiracist education.

Concern for equal opportunities and offering knowledge about minorities disappeared in favour of a drive to raise standards, market competition, a regulated National Curriculum and testing. There was a change in atmosphere with the election of a Labour Government in , and a drive towards the development of citizenship education through the establishment of an Advisory Group on Citizenship.

The introduction of citizenship education in as an optional subject in primary schools and as a statutory part of the National Curriculum for secondary schools, has given a new impetus to multicultural education in England and Wales. Thus, at last, a form of multicultural education has been incorporated into the curriculum, but it needs to be developed along the lines suggested by Leicester and Rattansi and must not lapse into the simplistic multiculturalism of the s. There is a clear role for specialists in religious education to contribute to this form of education Jackson , On a global scale, events such as those of 11 September, in the United States of America and their aftermath, including the atrocities in Bali in the autumn of , in Casablanca in May and Jakarta in August , and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have also put religion on political, social and educational agendas internationally.

Indeed, in the European context, directly as a response to the events of 11 September and their consequences, the Council of Europe is encouraging the addition of the dimension of religious diversity to intercultural education, including civic education, across Europe. This aims to produce materials for policy makers and practitioners across more than forty member states by the end of Jackson Chapter 10; Larsen and Plesner Thus, the needs of citizenship education and responses to civil unrest in Britain, reactions to international terrorism in Europe, and attempts to apply codes of human rights globally, all invite forms of intercultural education that take full account of issues in religious diversity, promote communication and dialogue between pupils from different backgrounds, and foster social cohesion through the encouragement of tolerance, understanding and respect between peoples.

Religious education, social cohesion and tolerance It seems fairly obvious that religious education has a great deal to offer towards the attainment of such goals. I want to argue against this position. First, it is impossible to establish a necessary connection between the instrumental goal of using religious education to promote tolerance and social cohesion and the adoption or propagation of relativism or theological pluralism. Second, there is some empirical evidence to show that there is no tendency towards relativism or theological pluralism among children taught RE that includes such instrumental goals.

The second is the rational basis of their thinking about religion. The children provided many examples of bringing together ideas in an attempt to synthesize them into a coherent whole. However, although children adapted their personal views over time, there was no trend towards their abandoning the faith positions of their families and communities. Children adapted their views as a result of engagement with the religious languages of others but, rather than moving towards a relativist stance in the face of a variety of belief systems, many of the children maintained a realist view Ipgrave ; see Jackson Like Ipgrave, I would argue that a religious education that sets out only to promote tolerance or social cohesion is inadequate.

Elsewhere I have argued that a key aim for RE is to develop an understanding of the grammar — the 54 Robert Jackson language and wider symbolic patterns — of religions and the interpretive skills necessary to gain that understanding Jackson Achieving this aim requires the development of critical skills which, when applied, raise issues of representation, interpretation, truth and meaning. Religious education is thus a conversational process in which pupils, whatever their backgrounds, continuously interpret and reinterpret their own views in the light of what they study cf.

But this does not imply a methodological assumption that religions are simply cultural facts or are equally true. I would want to add a cautionary note about the relationship between knowledge and attitudes. It is a mistake to assume that understanding and knowledge necessarily foster tolerance.

There are some very well informed racists and bigots. Chapter Intercultural education and RE 55 1; Skeie , In other contexts, they interacted with others, creating cultural fusions and new cultural expressions. This second view of culture — culture as process — was absent from the multicultural education of the s, and indeed from much religious education to date. The complexity and diversity of cultural interaction needs to be represented.

Baumann gives the following advice: Whenever the reifying discourse talks about citizens or aliens, purple or green ethnics, believers or atheists, ask about rich or poor citizens, powerful or manipulated ethnics, married or sexual minority believers. Who are the minorities within majorities, who are the unseen majorities right across minorities? Drawing on methodological ideas from ethnographic research, it recognizes the inner diversity, fuzzy-edgedness and contested nature of religious traditions as well as the complexity of cultural expression and change from social and individual perspectives Jackson Individuals are seen as unique, but 56 Robert Jackson the group tied nature of religion is recognized, as is the role of the wider religious traditions in providing identity markers and reference points.

The interpretive approach has been adapted by others, to meet particular classroom needs Jackson Having much in common with the interpretive approach, is a group of dialogical approaches to religious education developed independently by Julia Ipgrave in Britain, Heid Leganger-Krogstad in Norway and Wolfram Weisse and his colleagues in Germany. All claim the relative autonomy of the individual, but recognize the contextual influence of social groupings, such as family, peer, ethnic and religious groups. There is common agreement that the personal knowledge and experience that young people bring to the classroom can provide important data for study, communication and reflection.

All also introduce further source material; religious education does not only consist of the analysis and exchange of personal narratives. Julia Ipgrave bases her approach on the research in her multicultural primary school in Leicester referred to above. The teacher often acts in the role of facilitator, prompting and clarifying questions, and considerable agency is given to pupils, who are regarded as collaborators in teaching and learning.

Primary dialogue is the acceptance of diversity, difference and change. Secondary dialogue involves being open to and positive about difference — being willing to engage with difference and to learn from others. Tertiary dialogue is the actual verbal interchange between children. The basic activity here is discussion and debate. They are also encouraged to consider how they arrived at their conclusions, to recognize the possibility of alternative viewpoints and to be open to the arguments of others.

Chapter 7; Leganger-Krogstad , Weisse sees issues such as relativism, undermining faith and challenging the absoluteness of Christianity as part of the debate that young people should engage in. While the spectrum of topics points to the many similarities between the religions, dialogue in RE is also designed to demonstrate the differences between religious traditions. Individual positions are not found by mixing different views, but by comparing and contrasting them with one another.

Religious education should make dialogue in the classroom possible by allowing participants to refer to their different religious backgrounds. Both now include theoretical frameworks and pedagogies that take account of the complexities of plurality and incorporate sophisticated analyses of culture. Tragic events within Britain and internationally have pointed to the need to give more attention to the religious dimension of social life in educational programmes.

Interpretive and dialogical approaches to religious education are among those that can contribute positively and directly to intercultural education, through their underlying empirical research, theory and their pedagogies. Moreover, they can do this without promoting relativism or particular theories of theological pluralism. DES Education in Schools: The Making of the National Curriculum, London: An Interpretive Approach, London: Issues in Diversity and Pedagogy, London: Farmington Institute for Christian Studies. Sheilke eds Towards Religious Competence: Diversity as a Challenge for Education in Europe, Hamburg: Modgil eds Cultural Diversity and the schools: Education and Cultural Reproduction, London: Rethinking Multicultural and Antiracist Education, London: Taylor eds Ethics, Ethnicity and Education, London: Modood eds Debating Cultural Hybridity, London: National Association for Multiracial Education.

Making Diversity Work in Bradford, Bradford: Rattansi eds Race Culture and Difference, London: Sage in association with The Open University, 11— The Parekh Report, London: Policy and Practice in the s, London: Craft eds Ethnic Relations and Schooling: The Athlone Press, — Interreligious and Intercultural Education: International Journal of Bible, Religion and Theology, 55 4: Prospects for Religious Literacy, London: The basic principle that the proper function of religious education in schools is not to induct students into any one particular form of religion, or indeed into the more basic acceptance of a religious as opposed to a naturalistic faith, was established in this country in the s and 70s.

John Hull played a major part in that all-important transition and, as all of us who were concerned with him at that time in creating the then new multi-faith Birmingham Agreed Syllabus remember, the transition was not an easy and uncontested development. Now, syllabuses which are to varying extents multi-faith are virtually universal in British schools. However, whilst in practice a variety of approaches and methods are in use, a widespread assumption seems to have formed that the only alternative to the old, rejected, confessional stance is a purely phenomenological treatment of the material.

In practice this has often been interpreted as meaning the study of religions in isolation, learning about their origin, history, scriptures, practices, etc. However this, by itself, teaches only the external phenomena of religion. Fortunately this is often enriched and enlivened, at least in multifaith areas, by contributions from adherents of the faith currently being taught and by visits, again in areas where this is possible, to one of its places of worship, giving the students some sense of what it means to be a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Hindu, or Sikh, or Buddhist, etc. When this happens, an important further dimension is added to the phenomenological approach.

The philosophy of religion adds yet another dimension. It might perhaps be said that for Buddhism the unseen power of karma controls our destiny, but this is not so much a distinct power as a law of nature. Others however want to maintain a clear distinction between religious and secular world-views, the former hinging on some conception of an ultimate reality transcending the material universe whilst the secular faiths deny any such transcendence. Yet another approach seems to some of us to be even more useful.

Activities which we identify as games are enormously varied and have no common essence. Some are competitive, being played between teams or individuals, whilst others are solitary and non-competitive; some are played with balls of different sizes and shapes, some with cards, some with sticks, darts, etc. The network can be stretched more widely or less widely. The wider and narrower clusters are relevant to different interests. The situation is not that one usage is correct and the other wrong, but that they serve different legitimate purposes.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who founded and directed the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard, has distinguished the two concerns in a very helpful way. In The Meaning and End of Religion , a classic of modern religious studies, he distinguished between the cumulative traditions and what he called faith.

Education, Religion, and Society: Essays in Honor of John M. Hull (Routledge Research in Education)

The cumulative traditions are historical phenomena, integral to different cultures and civilisations and interacting with all the other forces that go to make up human history. Unfortunately I cannot think, any more than he could — it was an issue that we discussed on several occasions — of a better term for what Cantwell Smith is referring to. A central topic in the philosophy of religion component of religious education, therefore, has always been the arguments for the existence of God — or more broadly for the existence of an ultimate transcendent reality, whether or not personal.

This is the most subtle of the arguments, involving the concepts of existence, attributes, perfection, and introduces the student to several major thinkers — Anselm, Descartes, Kant, Bertrand Russell. It thus connects with the current science—religion debate, which is both intrinsically important and also of immediate interest to many students. On the other side of the ledger the most formidable anti-religious argument is, of course, the problem of evil: Arguing about the problem of evil seems to be of natural interest to students.

The outcome of the whole debate about what we may infer from the data of human life and the world is, for many of us, an acceptance of the ambiguity of the universe. That is to say, it is possible, at least in principle, to offer both a complete and consistent naturalistic and a complete and consistent religious account of the universe, each including an explanation of the other.

However another approach altogether has now for many people superseded the attempts to prove or disprove the existence of God, or to show that this is more probable than improbable, or vice versa. The new approach centres on religious experience e. Hick ; Alston It is not however the traditional argument from this to God as its cause.

Instead of arguing from some aspect of our experience to God, the new approach claims that we experience God or the Transcendent — though not, as we shall see, in a direct and unmediated way. Experience of that which impinges on us occurs most obviously in sense experience. When I am looking at, say, a tree I do not infer its existence from my apparent perception of it. If I did, the inference would, as Hume showed, be very insecure. In ordinary life we take sense perception as the paradigm of reliable cognition.

For we have discovered from experience that there are illusions, hallucinations, mirages as well as veridical perceptions. In what we know to be a hall of distorting mirrors, we do not believe that we are as fat or as thin as we appear in the mirrors to be; but it would be irrational to distrust appearances when we 66 John Hick have no reason at all to be suspicious of them. Put positively, it is rational to trust our cognitive experience — i.

Richard Swinburne has called this the principle of credulity Swinburne An even better term has recently been introduced: The big question is whether we can properly apply this principle to religious as well as to sense experience. For just as there are errors and hallucinations in sensory experience, it is to be expected that there should be errors and hallucinations in religious experience.

The medieval Christian mystics, for example, were acutely conscious that not every vision and voice comes from God. They generally thought of what we call self-delusion as being deceived by the devil. For example, St Teresa of Avila was acutely conscious of the danger of deception and was persuaded of the genuineness of her own visions by their effects in her life, which were evident to everyone. She used the analogy of someone who encounters a stranger who leaves her a gift of jewels. If someone later suggested that the stranger had been a mere apparition, the jewels left in her hand would prove otherwise; and in the case of her visions: I could show [any doubters] these jewels — for all who knew me were well aware how my soul had changed: I concluded, I could not believe that, if the devil were doing this to delude me and drag me down to hell, he would make use of means which so completely defeated their own ends by taking away my vices and making me virtuous and strong; for it was quite clear to me that these experiences had immediately made me a different person.

Teresa of Avila I mentioned earlier that our accepted paradigm of authentic cognitive experience is sense perception; and the main argument for religious experience as delusion lies in its two obvious differences from sense perception. First, sense experience is universal among humans, whereas religious experience apparently, is not.

Second, sense experience is uniform around the world with relatively slight cultural differences which we can overlook for our present purpose whereas religious experience takes markedly different forms within the different religions. Further, these differences are clearly correlated with the different teachings and practices of the religious traditions. Christians may see visions of Jesus, whereas Vaishnavite Hindus may see visions of Krishna, and Jews of neither; and whereas theists experience the divine as personal, Buddhists have quite different forms of religious experience.

Do not these manifest differences between sensory and religious experience make it proper to trust the one but distrust the other? These arguments against trusting religious experience cohere with the pervasive naturalistic assumption of our culture and do not need further elaboration; but the argument for trusting it needs to be made out. The key is the profound differences between the two objects of putative experience. The physical world of which we are part has conditioned us to experience it correctly, that is, in the way appropriate to animals of our size in our biological niche.

If humanity had not long since learned by experience that we cannot breathe under water, or walk with impunity into a rock face, or jump off a high cliff without being injured or killed, homo sapiens would not have survived. Indeed all this must already have been learned much further back in the evolutionary process. A correct perception of our physical environment is compulsory; we obey the teachings of nature on pain of death. However whilst this massively intrusive givenness of the material world constitutes the situation within which we exercise our moral freedom, it does not undermine that freedom.

It restricts our freedom of physical movement but not our moral freedom within the given world. Suppose that, interpenetrating and transcending our material or natural environment there is a supra-natural environment. Wherever you turn the face of God is everywhere: Now whereas our natural environment forces itself upon our attention, our supra-natural environment does not. If we were compelled to be conscious of it, we would lack the inner freedom in virtue of which we are moral and spiritual persons rather then creaturely puppets.

God has to be deus absconditus, the hidden God, whom we come to know through a venture of trust.