Imagine five scholar-practitioners of religious education sitting down together to discuss how each of them defines their work. “Religious education is the process of teaching toward faith. It is the scholarship and work of formation in a particular religious practice, community, and way of life,” one of these teachers might say. “It is the nurturing of spirituality in individuals and in the faith community. It is a kind of education that equips people to live out their faith in the world.” A second voice chimes in to say, “Okay, but religious education is not just experience within a faith community. It also involves learning the doctrine and teachings of a particular faith tradition. It is a process of reflection on the meanings of religious practice and experience by teaching a deeper understanding of the content of the faith.”
“Oh, no, that's not how I understand it,” another religious educator inevitably would reply. “Religious education is the study of the phenomenon of religion itself, toward an understanding of how and why human beings practice religions, and what constitutes religion. We engage in religious education to promote religious literacy, a position of basic knowledge about religions in general and one's own religious tradition in particular.”
We can imagine the fourth educator jumping into the conversation here, saying, “Well, all of those definitions together touch on my understanding of religious education as the work both of learning about religion and learning from religion. A learner can do both, of course. In some contexts, such as schools, we approach learning from religion not as formation in a particular faith community but rather as the process through which individual students may clarify for themselves those essential human values and commitments embedded in religions that make life meaningful. Religious education contributes to people's awareness of their spirituality, regardless of whether or not they participate in a faith community.”
At this point in the conversation, our fifth religious educator, no doubt, appears obviously dissatisfied. She offers yet another alternative framework for speaking about religious education, by asserting that “religious education is really a matter of ‘worldview formation.’ It's the process by which persons come to understand the main beliefs and practices observed by adherents of various religious traditions as shaping a worldview, an orientation toward life. Religious education helps learners become conscious of their own worldviews, and move toward greater understanding of the worldviews out of which other people in diverse communities and cultures live.”
These are only some of the ways people in the field of religious education name what we do. This imaginary conversation underscores the “many-sidedness” of religious education. Maybe in real life you have been in conversations like this imaginary one. In such conversations, there seem to be as many understandings of religious education as there are people in the room! As the pages of this journal—and this issue in particular—testify, religious education's subject matter, purposes, foci, and pedagogies remain contested among those within and outside of the field. It makes for a rich conversation! While diverse perspectives often overlap, what “counts” as religious education can differ significantly from person to person, and from community to community. Context clearly plays a primary role in establishing what elements move to the foreground in a particular understanding of religious education.
As you read the diverse perspectives on religious education contained in this first issue of 2018, you may find it helpful to ask a question I always ask when I receive a submission to the journal: what particular understanding of religious education is being advanced in this article? How does that understanding play out in the author's research and argument? In this issue of Religious Education, Muhammed Azeem Ashraf contrasts Madrasa eduation and the Pakistani education system in a discussion of the importance of religious literacy. Carol Ann Ferrara's ethnography of private Muslim schools in France explores the relationship between French civic identity and Islam as it is constructed in these schools. Dennis Gunn takes up the vision of Roman Catholic theologian Bernard Lonergan's education toward “cosmopolis,” a stance of firmly standing within one's own particularity while maintaining a radical openness to others. Johan Liljestrand focuses on interreligious encounter through John Dewey's treatment of experience and environment in education. Marianne Moyaert contrasts multireligious and interreligious learning, making an argument for the need to go beyond comparing sacred texts in pedagogies focused on religious diversity. David Penn considers the impact of cultural constructions of adolescence on the work of religious educators. Trudelle Helen Thomas reflects on a work of young adult fiction, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, underscoring the diverse religious worldviews offered in the novel and challenging the presentation of Christianity found there. Richard Shields takes up a values-approach to Catholic religious education as a way of revitalizing a faith community in an age of relativism. Steven Thomason offers his participatory action research in a suburban Christian church as an example of a particular religious education pedagogy. Each of these authors makes a claim, some more explicitly than others, for a particular understanding of religious education. Where do you stand in such conversations? Book reviews by Melissa Brandes, Cynthia Cameron, and Christopher Welch complete the issue. Enjoy!