Reframing phenomenological approaches in religious education: insights from affect theory and the aesthetics of religion

ABSTRACT

This article argues that a combined lens of affect theory and the aesthetics of religion provides scholarship with new methodological and theoretical insights for phenomenological religious education. These insights demonstrate the analytic value of understanding religion in terms of its affective and aesthetic dimensions, which offer renewed explanatory power for the variety of religious experiences individuals and communities undergo. In particular, these insights allow educators and students to explore what drives religious practices in everyday life without resorting to essentialist, reductionist or universalist accounts. It is suggested that reframing phenomenological approaches in religious education has the potential to make a vital contribution to developing new sensibilities of the ‘secular’ and the ‘religious’, especially in contemporary multi-religious societies. Finally, it is argued that the innovations offered by reframed phenomenological approaches provide a promising theoretical and methodological platform in religious education for engaging with the affective and aesthetic dimensions of religion.

KEYWORDS:

• Phenomenology
• religious education
• affect theory
• aesthetics of religion
• secularity

Introduction

Since the late 1960s, phenomenological approaches were introduced into religious education in Britain, Europe and Australia (Thobani 2017). In particular, there was a shift from mainly confessional, theology-based to non-confessional approaches that paid attention to how religious phenomena are experienced and interpreted by the believer (Engebretson 2009; Franken 2018). In general, phenomenological approaches in religious education from the late 1960s onwards were rooted in the work of phenomenologists like Gerardus van der Leeuw, William Brede Kristensen, and Ninian Smart, who advocated the study of religion as a social, cultural and historical phenomenon rather than as a set of dogmatic truths (Franken 2018). Over the years, phenomenological religious education has led to several debates about the strengths and weaknesses of phenomenological approaches (e.g. see Barnes 2000, 2001a; 2001b, 2007, 2009; Lovat 2001, 2005; O’ Grady 2005, 2009) as well as their contribution to a multi-religious world in which the relation between the religious and the secular has become of critical significance to education (Thobani 2017).

While these debates have highlighted several benefits and criticisms of phenomenological approaches in religious education, little emphasis has been placed on the role of emotions and affects in religious faith or the study of religion (for an exception, see e.g. Carr 2005), despite the fact that ‘empathy’ has been one of the issues addressed in these debates. Investigating the role of affect, the body, and more generally the senses in religion highlights what has recently become known as the ‘aesthetics of religion’ (Grieser and Johnston 2017, 1), that is, how religion constitutes ‘a sensory and mediated practice’ (ibid.); these perspectives turn our attention to the importance of sensory perception and affective engagement with religion throughout history as well as in recent multi-religious societies. This article brings together these two areas of inquiry – namely, affect theory in the study of religion (e.g. Corrigan 2017; Riis and Woodhead 2010; Schaefer 2015, 2017, 2019; von Scheve et al. 2020) and the aesthetics of religion (Grieser and Johnston 2017; Meyer 2009) – to propose a number of connections that reframe phenomenological approaches in religious education. Needless to say, similar arguments (i.e. the need to pay attention to embodiment, emotions, lived experience, etc.) have been made elsewhere to argue for the employment of feminist theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory and ethnography for improving the study of religion, particularly in the critique of essentialism. However, I argue here that a combined lens of affect theory and aesthetics of religion provides scholarship with alternative methodological and theoretical perspectives that are not available in existing phenomenological approaches and more generally in religious education.

In particular, the notions of ‘religious affects’ and ‘religious aesthetics’ – which are central in these perspectives – are not seen as an ‘answer’ to the shortcomings of past or present phenomenological approaches in religious education; rather, these notions offer a novel methodological and theoretical orientation that can expose more clearly what is often taken for granted in religious education, namely, that affectivity, aesthetics and religion are entangled in significant ways that have important pedagogical implications. ‘Religious affects’ or ‘religious emotions’ are used broadly here to denote feelings, affects and emotions related to religion and religious experience (Schaefer 2015), while ‘religious aesthetics’ is the engagement of the senses, moods and experiences being evoked in religious traditions (Grieser and Johnston 2017). Both of these notions – namely, religious affects and religious aesthetics – enable us to trace affect/emotion as something felt, embodied and historically situated.

The premise on which this essay rests – i.e. that affects/emotions are embodied and historically situated phenomena in religion – is not new; that premise is not the most important contribution of this essay. The more important contribution is the analysis and sorting through of scholarly debates on phenomenological approaches of religious education in light of the renewed significance of affect and aesthetics in the study of religion, to highlight particular nodal points of contemporary conversations about the phenomenal qualities of religious affects and religious aesthetics. The present article, then, aims to probe into the phenomenological branch of affect theory and the aesthetics of religion, and to contribute insights into the methodological and theoretical implications for phenomenological approaches in religious education. It will be argued that reframing phenomenological approaches in religious education has the potential to make a vital contribution to developing new sensibilities of the secular and the religious, especially in contemporary multi-religious societies.

Phenomenological approaches in religious education

Although there are many different understandings of phenomenology of religion, partly because of its long and complex history (Twiss and Conser 1992), phenomenology of religion generally refers to how religious experience is manifested in different historical, social and cultural settings. In general, the main influences of phenomenological approaches on religious education from the late 1960s onwards were about moving religious education away from the promotion of one particular religious tradition or set of truth claims to a wider exploration of the religious experience of humanity. This orientation was ‘phenomenological’ in the sense of standing back – temporarily at least – from arguing about the truth claims of religious groups in order to attempt to understand as much as possible the human religious experience. This move required putting aside one’s own pre-existing assumptions, while attempting (again as far as it was humanly possible) to empathise with others’ experiences and see things from their point of view. The aim of this approach was knowledge and understanding rather than advocating for a particular worldview. In this sense, the phenomenon of religious experience could be studied through description and rigorous analysis i.e. science (e.g. see Kristensen 1960; Smart 1968, 1973, 1976; Van der Leeuw 1963). Scholars like van der Leeuw, Kristensen, and predominantly Smart advocated the study of religion as a means of gaining deeper understanding of human experience and of the world in which we live – i.e. the subjective experience of ‘the Holy’ – rather than as a means of evangelism or religious indoctrination (Engebretson 2009).

In particular, Ninian Smart (1968, 1974, 1976) was the first scholar who advocated the use of phenomenology in religious education in the late 1960s as offering a non-dogmatic and pluralistic method of studying religion (Thobani 2017). Three principles underpinned the methodological and theoretical framework of phenomenologies of religion (Franken 2018; Museka 2019; Thobani 2017): epoche or bracketing, that is, the bracketing out of one’s presuppositions and truth claims in studying the beliefs and truth claims of different religious traditions; empathy, namely, stepping into the shoes of the believer to see the world from the other’s point of view; and, eidetic vision, that is, the ability to see the essence of religion via experience and study of religious phenomena (Sharpe 1975). The implications of these principles for religious education are briefly discussed below.

First, the idea of bracketing (epoche, derived from the Greek word epecho, which means ‘I hold back’) constitutes a crucial point of departure in the classroom for teachers and students to view religious phenomena from the perspective of the believer, thus leaving aside their own presuppositions (Museka 2019). From a methodological perspective, suggests Museka, the study of religion takes on a different trajectory that not only avoids condemning truth claims of other religions but also alerting teachers and students of the need to minimise their preconceived ideas which might distort others’ religious beliefs. This methodological and theoretical orientation of religious education is different from theology and the confessional model, wherein normative statements about the truth and validity of claims are common (Franken 2018); rather, the emphasis of phenomenological approaches is on recognising how religious experiences are historically, socially and culturally situated.

The second principle, namely empathy, implies the cultivation of skills and attitudes that enable teachers and students to enter into the life experiences of believers and approach religious reality from their point of view (Museka 2019). This principle is closer to the phenomenological branch of affect theory (which is discussed in the next part of the article), because it recognises the role of affects and emotions in empathising with others. In particular, this principle highlights the value of empathy in helping students and teachers make sense of the believers’ beliefs and practices as those are situated in specific social, cultural and historical conditions. In this sense, empathy helps ensure that the meaning of religious beliefs and practices is seen from the believers’ point of view; in light of this principle, argues Museka (2019), teachers should not be caretakers of any religious belief system. Finally, the third principle of phenomenological approaches in religious education is eidetic vision, which emphasises that the believer is the primary source of religious beliefs and practices; in this regard, teachers and students abstain from making value judgements on other people’s religious intentions (Museka 2019). This does not mean that evaluative statements should be completely avoided or are ‘forbidden’, but rather that all claims need to be situated in the historical, cultural and political contexts of the believers and their religious practices.

Phenomenological approaches in religious education have been extremely influential in Britain, Europe and Australia where they have ‘presented a non-judgmental way of studying religions as phenomena of human existence, and thus contributing to greater understanding and tolerance of the religious groups within a local community’ (Engebretson 2009, 658). However, over the years, phenomenological approaches have also come under criticism, giving rise to several debates whether these approaches are appropriate as methods for religious education (e.g. see Barnes 2000, 2001a; 2001b, 2007, 2009; Lovat 2001, 2005; O’ Grady 2005, 2009). It is beyond the scope of this article to provide an in-depth analysis of the arguments for and against phenomenological approaches in religious education in all of these debates; it is sufficient to identify some criticisms of these approaches to highlight that there are openings for complementing phenomenological approaches with new theoretical perspectives – such as affect theory and the aesthetics of religion. New theoretical perspectives offer the potential to address some of the criticisms of phenomenological approaches in religious education (Thobani 2017).

In particular, I want to briefly highlight three criticisms of phenomenological approaches to religious education. First, there are problems with the assumptions of phenomenologies of religion projecting ahistorical, decontextualised and universalist notions of religion onto belief systems (Thobani 2017). Such assumptions, for example, include the following: that there is an essence in religion; that the heart of religion is located in the experiences of believers; and, that everyone has ‘predispositions’ to religious consciousness (Engebretson 2009). Second, phenomenological approaches have been critiqued for failing to take into consideration the issue of ideology (see Fitzgerald 2000), focusing only on cultural differences (Teece 2008). For example, it might be argued that the prioritisation of religious experience, while backgrounding ideological discourses around dogma is limiting. As Teece (2008) explains, such criticisms of phenomenological religious education ‘make the point that in purporting to be objective and neutral’ phenomenological approaches are ‘not admitting to a theological bias based on the nineteenth century liberal Protestantism which privileges experience over rational thought’ (188). Finally, the three principles of phenomenologies of religion have been challenged either for being too difficult for children’s capacity such as epoche and eidetic vision (Barnes 2001a) or for implying a transparency of the other person that is not possible such as the case of empathy (Jackson 1997).

The criticisms of phenomenological approaches highlight three important issues about religious education, according to Engebretson (2009). The first of these issues is the extent to which any discussion about religious education can be free of ideology. Does the prioritisation of religious experience within a pluralist, non-confessional model of religious education constitute an ideological approach? The second issue, according to Engebretson, is whether there can be a clear distinction between experiential religious consciousness and religious doctrines. Finally, the third issue concerns the extent to which phenomenology is an appropriate method for young people, given that it is grounded in principles that are difficult for them to undertake, such as bracketing, describing and explaining, as well as empathising.

Despite these challenges, Engebretson (2009) argues that ‘Careful attention to the skills implied in the phenomenological method in religious education may well prepare the way’ for sharpening the critical faculties of children. Similarly, Teece (2008) refers to learning from religion as ‘skillful means’ by which the students develop a wider and deeper understanding of what it means to be human; in this sense, young people can learn from a variety of religious traditions that may enrich the tradition to which they already belong. All in all, the criticisms of phenomenological approaches in religious education have sharpened its methodological and theoretical foundations over the years, yet they have also exposed the need for drawing from different strands of contemporary theorising that has the potential to address some of the limitations of these approaches from new perspectives. Two of these perspectives that are interconnected are affect theory and the aesthetics of religion; both of these perspectives, which are discussed below, pay explicit attention to the study of religion and religious experiences from an angle that has been in the background so far.

Insights from affect theory and the aesthetics of religion

Understanding religion from the perspective of affect and emotion is not new, of course; it has a long tradition that can be traced in the works of Rudolf Otto (1917/1958) and other phenomenologists, who emphasised the importance of subjective experience in understanding religion (von Scheve et al. 2020). According to von Scheve and his colleagues, the concepts of ‘religious feelings’ or ‘religious emotions’ as they emerged in Christian theology and phenomenology of religion, have for a long time been associated with the individual and subjective religious experience; these perspectives failed to paid attention to social, collective and political articulations of religious emotions. However, the renewed significance of religious emotions and affects in recent years, as it emerged in various strands of thinking that are commonly known as affect theory (Seigworth and Gregg 2010), highlight how emotions and affects are embodied as well as historically, socially and politically situated.

In particular, the branch of affect theory discussed here is an extension of the philosophical tradition of phenomenology (Schaefer 2015, 2017, 2019). As noted earlier, phenomenology can be defined in different ways, however, here I follow Schaefer’s (2017) definition ‘as emphasizing the state of being embedded in a world as the source of knowledge and experience, rather than detached, rational reflection’ (20, original emphasis). Thus, a fundamentally phenomenological insight is that ‘we do not choose our relationships with our worlds, but are full embedded within them’ (ibid., 21). According to Sara Ahmed – a scholar at the forefront of the conversation linking phenomenology to affect theory – phenomenology can offer a resource for affect studies that ‘emphasizes the importance of lived experience, the intentionality of consciousness, the significance of nearness or what is ready-to-hand, and the role of repeated and habitual actions in shaping bodies and worlds’ (2006, 1).

The phenomenological branch of affect theory, then, like phenomenology of religion, focuses on the felt life of body moving through the world (Schaefer 2019). As Schaefer explains, ‘this phenomenological branch insists on tracing affect as something felt, something that rises into embodied sphere of awareness’ (2015, 32). Hence, affect, with its focus on embodiment and relationality, provides a conceptual framework that does not rely on essentialist distinctions between ‘inside’/‘outside’ or ‘individual’/‘social’ religious experience (Ural and Berg 2019). It is clarified that the terms ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ are placed in quote marks to denote that they are not used in essentialist terms but rather to indicate that affect theory overcomes the traditional binaries between the psychological (inside) and the social (outside). In light of the emphasis on embodiment and relationality, scholars in the phenomenological branch of affect theory (e.g. Donovan Schaefer and Sara Ahmed) view with suspicion the attempt to draw a hard line between affect and emotion, arguing that such a distinction presupposes that there is a clear moment between awareness and non-awareness of emotion, conscious and unconscious, public and private (Richman 2018). As Richman writes poignantly: ‘When does affect become emotion? Could such a moment be pinpointed? In reality, these divisions are rather fuzzy’ (2018, 301). Given these critiques, I follow here the phenomenological strand of affect that uses affect and emotion interchangeably.

In his landmark book, Religious Affects, Schaefer (2015) uses the phenomenological branch of affect theory to challenge the linguistic bias of popular social constructivist accounts of religion and their foundational assumptions ‘that language is the only model for power’, (ibid., 207) or ‘the imperative to think religion as a set of linguistic propositions’ (ibid., 216). Schaefer argues that only through a recognition of the affectivity of religion can religion and its relationship with power be understood (Williams 2021). Schaefer (2015) describes his affective move towards phenomenological scholarship as follows: ‘where Otto […] saw religious emotion as transcendent and apolitical, affect theory prompts us to ask how these embodied affective potentials form and accelerate systems of power’ (54). In this sense, Schaefer views the shift from the linguistic turn to the affective turn as crucial in understanding human experience (such as religious experience) as both embodied and historically situated.

Schaefer (2015) introduces the notion of ‘intransigence’ which ‘suggests that emotions are built into our bodies – that they are artifacts of an embodied evolutionary history’ (14), ‘persisting across bodies and creating species-specific, embodied universals imprinted at birth’ (13). The notion of intransigence, argues Schaefer, complicates linguistic accounts, deploying a ‘postessentialist account of bodies [that] helps us understand the interface between bodies and power’ (2015, 13). In this sense, phenomenological affect theory, writes further Schaefer, ‘helps map the lines linking biologically grounded emotional responses – for example, fear – to religion and other systems of power’ (51). Thus, phenomenological affect theory offers a corrective to the overemphasis on linguistic and social constructivism in critical theory by insisting that feelings and emotions are at least partially biologically rooted (Williams 2021). As Williams explains: ‘Affect theory seeks to dig beneath the explanations that can be offered by structural linguistic critical theories of religion and discover the affectivity and animality which subvenes religion as a linguistically and culturally mediated’ (6). In other words, phenomenological affect theory enables us to combine the biological with the social and political, thus being sensitive to the effects of power relations – e.g. in relation to race, gender, class and other categories – on the experiences of bodies. Needless to say, we do not need phenomenological affect theory as such to appreciate power relations. Other scholars (e.g. Michel Foucault, Judith Butler) as well as theories (feminist theory, postcolonial theory) turn our attention to power relations. My argument here is that the combined lens of affect theory and aesthetics of religion offers religious education more generally a new way of framing the discussion and new vocabulary and concepts about religious experience.

In recent years, recognising the role of the body, the senses, and affects/emotions in religion has constituted a dynamic and fast-growing field of study labelled ‘aesthetics of religion’ (Grieser and Johnston 2017). ‘Aesthetics’, according to Grieser (2016), is an ambiguous term that is mostly associated with the philosophy of art and beauty. However, a broader understanding of the term takes as its starting point the Aristotelian notion of aisthesis (Meyer 2009), which is understood as our sensory perception of the world and generally ‘how human beings make sense of their environment and of themselves through their senses’ (Grieser and Johnston 2017, 2). Clearly, such an understanding of aesthetics in terms of aisthesis or sense experience, argues Meyer (2009), can be traced to the phenomenology of religion as developed by Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw and Mircea Eliade. In this sense, the phenomenological branch of affect theory is interconnected with the aesthetics of religion, as both of these perspectives allow us to understand better the affective and aesthetic dimensions of religion.

The aesthetics of religion, as a framework for studying religion, is grounded in the realisation of the shortcomings of more conventional interpretive approaches in the study of religion (Meyer 2009, 2013); hence, the aesthetic approach provides a platform for theorising religion as a sensory and mediated practice (Grieser and Johnston 2017). For example, the aesthetic approach enables scholars in the study of religion to ask new questions such as: ‘How in the context of religious practice are the senses stimulated, governed and disciplined? How are religious experiences emotions and attitudes created, memorized and normalized? How do religious perceptual orders interact with those of a larger culture?’ (Grieser and Johnston 2017, 2). Focusing on how humans understand their world through their senses and affects/emotions turns our attention to the role of religious affects/emotions in contemporary liberal and (post)secular societies (I come back to this in the last part of the essay).

When directing attention to the engagement of the body, the senses, and affects/emotions in everything that has to do with religion and religious experience, it is rather obvious that religions are as much felt, sensed and experienced as they are thought and believed (Grieser and Johnston 2017). The aesthetic approach, then, favours the idea that the study of religious emotions is as much a matter of sensory perception and its historicity as it is a matter of discursive concepts. The aesthetics of religion, therefore, like the phenomenological branch of affect theory, bridges psychological and evolutionary theories of perceptions with socio-cultural and political perspectives of how humans perceive themselves and the world they are part of (Grieser and Johnston 2017). Binding these diverse modes of knowledge together, according to Grieser and Johnson, allows the integration of embodied, material, affective and discursive aspects, as well as individual and collective perspectives of religion and religious experience.

All in all, studying religion through the lens of affect and aesthetics offers two crucial insights: first, it enables scholars to analyse affective and sensory practices – ways of seeing or listening, cultivating the body, embodying certain values – within religious traditions without evoking an essentialist model of religion, namely, a model projecting ahistorical, decontextualised and universalist notions of religion; and, second, it allows us to trace how perceiving and meaning-making in the context of a religious tradition is very much entangled with the religious cultivation of affects and the senses (Grieser and Johnston 2017). Both of these insights emphasise that what makes religious experience as such or more generally the senses in all things religious, is linked to the body as well as the materiality and affectivity of (religious) practices. The aesthetics of religion, therefore, combined with the phenomenological branch of affect theory provides an approach that accounts for affective, bodily and sensory phenomena in the study of religion and religious experience. Rather than opposing historical, linguistic or interpretive approaches, this combined approach serves as a ‘Connective Concept […] by offering a link between perception and the history of aesthetic forms, and between individual practice and cultural ideologies; [and] by enabling scholars to question dualist notions of body and mind, or spirit and matter’ (Grieser and Johnston 2017, 30, 31, original emphasis).

In the last part of the essay, I will discuss how a combined framework of affect theory and the aesthetics of religion provides a renewed methodological and theoretical framework that responds to some of the shortcomings of early phenomenological approaches in religious education and contributes to developing new sensibilities of the secular and the religious, especially in contemporary multi-religious societies.

Reframing phenomenological approaches: implications for religious education

While previous framings of phenomenological approaches have been criticised for their assumptions regarding religion (e.g. that there is an essence in religion or that the heart of religion is located in the experiences of believers) and the use of phenomenology as a method in religious education (e.g. that phenomenological religious education is ideological or that it is an inappropriate method for young people), insights from affect theory and the aesthetics of religion create openings that reframe phenomenological religious education as we know it, by engaging more directly with the social, political, cultural, affective and aesthetic dimensions of religion in non-essentialist ways. It is beyond the scope of this paper to develop a full account of reframed phenomenological approaches that combine affect theory and aesthetics of religion; what I wish to do instead in the remainder of this paper is to outline some innovations of reframing phenomenological approaches.

In particular, I analyse three innovations and give some examples to show the theoretical and methodological potential of reframing phenomenological approaches, especially in regard to the secular-religious interface as it pertains to religious education (see also, Thobani 2017). My analysis here extends the work of Grieser and Johnston (2017) on the potentials of an aesthetics of religion approach, by exploring the implications of these potentials for religious education. The three innovations offered by reframing phenomenological approaches in religious education are the following: (1) reframed phenomenological approaches take into account objectives and topics for study in religious education from novel perspectives; (2) these approaches offer new explanatory possibilities for the historical and political effects of religion in contemporary societies; and (3) reframed phenomenological approaches enable a critical reflexive analysis on how affective and aesthetic perspectives are embedded in religious history and the ideologies of their time. These innovations are discussed below in more details.

The first innovation is that reframed phenomenological approaches take into account objectives and topics for study in religious education from novel perspectives. Grieser and Johnston (2017) suggest that instead of focusing on the content of religious texts and the hermeneutics at play, taking into consideration affect and aesthetic theories would include paying attention to bodily practices and the affective engagement in religion. A practical implication of this idea is exploring how different religious traditions use images, music or bodily performances (in various combinations) to invoke affordances of religious-aesthetic arrangements, namely, how these affective and embodied performances make possible (i.e. afford) the experience of religion in ways that would have been otherwise impossible. For example, this idea pays explicit and careful attention to innovative ways of integrating dance, music or sound in the religious experience, in order to invoke excitement. One might argue that this suggestion is hardly a new one, as it has been an important part of exploring religious experiences in non-confessional religious education for half a century. However, what is new here is that the use of affect theory and aesthetics provides the vocabulary that offers a renewed way of appreciating religion as an aesthetic and affective practice, acknowledging the intensity and the qualities of affective and aesthetic effects (Grieser and Johnston 2017, 21). In other words, the use of terms such as affects and emotions (as they are theorised here) to describe how the individual and the social and entangled in religious experiences provide renewed explanatory power for developing a deeper understanding of how religious affects are historicised as social, cultural and political realities in a network of affective relations that define community identities.

Therefore, an important goal for religious education in Western liberal and (post)secular societies is to analytically engage students and teachers with affective and aesthetic phenomena such as, for example, the religious affects emerging in contemporary discourses on multiculturalism around particular religious practices. In many Western countries, religious practices such as the wearing of headscarves or other religious rituals have led to intense religious feelings from many communities on ‘opposing’ sides of the spectrum (von Scheve and Walter-Jochum 2019). To understand the role of religious emotions in relation to the accommodation of particular religious practices, it is crucial to borrow analytical terminology from fields and theories (such as affect theory and aesthetics of religion) that theorise religious feelings and the senses as constitutive for identity and belonging and a potential motive for action, be it participation in religious worship or violent street protests (Ural and Berg 2019; Williams 2021). This point brings me to the next innovation.

The second innovation of reframing phenomenological approaches is that these approaches offer new explanatory possibilities for historical and political effects of religion in contemporary societies. In their argumentation for the value of historical and political dimensions in aesthetic and affect theories of religion, Grieser and Johnston (2017) highlight that these perspectives make a difference because they raise new theoretical and empirical questions such as: How is sensory and affective knowledge of the self intertwined with the social and historical orders of religious practices? Which technologies of the self would be deployed in religious practices and what impact would they have on (re)producing specific cultural and political norms? These questions emphasise the value of investigating the ways in which religious practices also constitute aesthetic and affective practices situated in specific politics of power.

Similarly, reframing phenomenological approaches through the lenses of affect theory and the aesthetics of religion raises new questions for religious education such as: How can teachers and students in religious education explore the embodied nature of the religious and the secular subject as well as the ‘structures of feeling’ that these subjectivities entail and the ways that they constitute embodied sensitivities towards certain religious practices? In which ways can religious education examine sensitive and controversial issues (such as Islamophobic hate-speech or the ‘cartoon controversies’ in many European societies) in ways that recognise the affective complexities involved? In terms of pedagogical practices, these questions could work to motivate a number of pedagogical strategies that pay explicit attention to emotional sensitivities and the challenges of navigating those in the classroom such as (see Zembylas and Kambani 2012; Zembylas 2021a): developing a supportive emotional atmosphere in the classroom and a trusting, open relationship between teacher and students to prepare the ground for discussing sensitive and controversial issues; being sensitive to students’ personal biographies; sharing one’s biography and explicitly acknowledging how the teacher and students feel about the issue at hand; emphasising the importance of teachers and students reflecting critically on their emotions towards certain religious practices and experiences (e.g. whether emotional reactions to some issues are justified or not); creating opportunities for students to gain experience in working with less contentious issues first and then moving gradually to more sensitive and controversial ones; recognising and examining multiple perspectives and interpretations about religious experiences and practices; and finally, using familiar active approaches such as discussion, small groups, and independent learning as shortcuts into controversy. In other words, using affect theory and aesthetics of religion as such does not provide in and by itself pedagogical approaches that do not already draw on previous pedagogical contributions such as experiential, constructivist, interpretivist, or direct encounters with religion in practice; what is new is the framing of these pedagogies that with the help of affect theory and aesthetics of religion enables teachers and students to turn their attention to concepts, events, and issues that have previously been on the background. For example, the use of these theories allow teachers and students to talk about ‘affective regimes’ in societies, how they are entangled with religious practices, and most importantly how these regimes ‘determine what is possible to feel, think and believe within a society’ (Grieser and Johnston 2017, 25). Reframed phenomenological approaches, then, adopt a more frontal engagement with the social, political, and cultural realities for addressing religious experiences, practices and issues as they pertain to religious education (cf. Thobani 2017).

Finally, the third innovation of reframed phenomenological approaches in religious education is that they allow a critical reflexive analysis on how affective and aesthetic perspectives are embedded in religious history and the ideologies of their time. These approaches enable us – educators, scholars, researchers, etc., – to trace the entanglement between affect and ideology – or ‘affective ideology’ to use Peters and Protevi’s (2017) terminology – in religion and religious education. The concept of ‘affective ideology’ puts affect and ideology on equal footing, insisting on the inseparable union of affect and politics in everyday life (Peters and Protevi 2017). This term is helpful in showing how particular visions within a society (e.g. secularism; religious traditions) invoke certain affective investments and attunement with certain beliefs, therefore, affective and aesthetic dimensions are crucial aspects of any ideology (see also Protevi 2009).

For example, a contested issue in debates on phenomenological religious education has been the extent to which this approach is ideological (a similar argument is made about the ideology of religious studies, see Fitzgerald 2000). Insights from affect theory and aesthetics of religion help us critically reflect on the extent to which a particular approach in religious education may also constitute a form of affective ideology. The political character of a reframed phenomenological approach in religious education lies in the simple question of whether and how this or any other approach in the study and teaching of religion organises and governs what is possible to feel, think and perceive at all – as much as a religious practice would do the same. In other words, as much as certain religious practices such as the Islamic veil or Jewish circumcision become political, especially in conflictive situations (Grieser and Johnston 2017), it is inevitable that religious education approaches and pedagogical practices around these sensitive issues might also invoke certain affective ideologies, especially if scholars and educators in the field fail to exercise sustained vigilance and critical reflexivity. Once again, the pedagogical strategies suggested earlier may be helpful here to navigate through these sensitive issues in the classroom. At an epistemological and ontological level though, affect theory and aesthetics of religion alert teachers to become more critically conscious of how their pedagogical approaches may exert ‘affective indoctrination’, that is, manipulating or coercing students emotionally to adopt particular religious or other beliefs and emotions (Zembylas 2021b).

In summary, the innovations offered by reframed phenomenological approaches – without underestimating some of risks and dangers pointed out – provide a promising platform in religious education for engaging with the affective and aesthetic dimensions of religion. In recent years, proposals related to religious education in European and international systems have increasingly included suggestions that embrace some phenomenological principles (e.g. non-confessionalism, empathy, plurality) as well as the study of religion from historical, cultural and political perspectives (Thobani 2017). Of equal importance, I would argue, is revisiting these principles and enriching them with new theoretical and methodological perspectives, such as affect and aesthetic theories.

Concluding remarks

In this article, I have argued that phenomenological approaches to religion and religious education must be acknowledged for both their strengths and weaknesses, yet some of their limitations can be addressed through introducing new theoretical and methodological insights such as the phenomenological branch of affect theory and the aesthetics of religion. These insights demonstrate the analytic value of understanding religion in terms of its affective and aesthetic dimensions, which have explanatory power for the variety of religious experiences individuals and communities undergo (Williams 2021). This is a particularly crucial insight for religious education, because it allows teachers and students gain a deeper understanding of what drives religious practices in everyday life without resorting to essentialist categories. A broader understanding of phenomenological religious education, I suggest, can benefit from a critical examination of the affective and aesthetic engagement with religion in specific historical, social, cultural and political conditions.

I would argue, then, that reframed phenomenological approaches along the lines discussed in this article have the potential to make a vital contribution to developing a deeper understanding of the affective complexities around the ‘secular’ and the ‘religious’ in particular societies in ways ‘that are more receptive to a reconciliation between these two domains than has been the case in the past’ (Thobani 2017, 622). The proposal put forward here suggests an embodied, aesthetic and affect-based approach in religious education that can open up the possibility of developing in students critical understanding and sensibility over the multifaceted and complex ways that affects/emotions are an inextricable part of religion and religious experience. Needless to say, this approach is not the only one that can help religious educators towards this direction; however, it can certainly support religious education’s efforts to incessantly contest affective and aesthetic practices that invoke reductionist, essentialist, or deterministic accounts of religion and religious experience.

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Michalinos Zembylas

Michalinos Zembylas is Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University of Cyprus, Honorary Professor at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa, and Adjunct Professor at the University of South Australia. He has written extensively on emotion and affect in educational theory and curriculum studies. His recent books include: Affect and the rise of right-wing populism: Pedagogies for the renewal of democratic education, and Higher education hauntologies: Living with ghosts for a justice-to-come (co-edited with V. Bozalek, S. Motala and D. Hölscher). In 2016, he received the Distinguished Researcher Award in ‘Social Sciences and Humanities’ from the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation.