The (educational) meaning of religion as a quality of liberal democratic citizenship

Abstract

Religion has become a prominent issue in times of pluralism and in relation to citizenship in school and in society. As religious education (RE) is assigned to be one of the main school subject where issues of what religion is are to be raised, RE teachers’ conceptualizations of religion are of vital concern to investigate. In this article, RE teachers’ descriptions of ‘religion’ are scrutinized and analysed in terms of implications for citizenship with special regard to the role of RE. Three vital conceptions of religion emerge in teachers’ descriptions. First, religion is mainly individual or private, secondly, it denotes ethical guidance, and thirdly, it relates to sociocultural systems for thinking. Taken together, these conceptualizations share two characteristics about religion: religion as being individual-centred and private, and religion as being mind oriented. Out of this analysis, we discuss the role of religion and RE in contemporary liberal democratic life in society. The discussion is concluded by addressing two key things; the importance of the RE teacher as a curriculum maker, and the importance of religion and RE as active interventions in today’s contemporary discussion about pluralism in liberal democratic societies.

Keywords:

• Religion
• religious education teachers
• citizenship
• liberal democracy
• public education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. However, Watson (2004) study indicates that RE teachers may find it difficult to relate RE to citizenship due to its vague meanings in British policy. In this study, we rather address citizenship as social cohesion in line with national policy.

2. One lucid exception is the conception ‘religion as ethical guidance’. This conception involves practice-oriented and to some extent extrovert aspects of relations in life, which would provide for citizenship and citizen action beyond intellectual acts and scopes. However, this conception seems to be bent in a way that at least partly makes it oriented towards reason anyhow, which we return to below.

3. On 5 February 2011, the British Prime Minister David Cameron echoed the criticisms of liberal state multiculturalism arguing ‘Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream. We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values’. Cameron’s talk was aimed at Islamic extremism and the process of radicalization while being careful not to lump all Muslims together. He too focused on the need for identity with core liberal values of host societies: ‘we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism’. See https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference.