The Challenge for Religious Education in Zambia’s Formal Education System

Abstract

Religious education has long been part of Zambia’s primary and secondary education curriculum. It will be argued that, though its role has changed, it has never been highly educational. This is seen to be a major challenge today in the light of a swiftly expanding urban population who find themselves ever more rootless. To address it, it is contended that religious education needs to assume a better ‘learning from’ dimension. Failure to do so means continued disservice to the Zambian school population and may lead to the disappearance of religious education from the national curriculum.

Keywords:

• Religious Education
• Primary/secondary school/Learning about/Learning from/Choice Freedom/transformation/Zambia

Zambia (Northern Rhodesia until 1964), is located in south central Africa, home to the Victoria Falls and Lake Kariba. Today, it has a population of approximately 16 million, of which 95 percent are Christian with about 2 percent Muslim, Hindu, and diverse others (Cheyeka 2018; Phiri 2018; Mwale, Chita, and Cheyeka 2014, 39–40). The formal education system consists of government, aided, and private schools with a heavy natural science curriculum since independence. It consists of primary (grades 1–7), secondary (grades 8–12), and higher levels. Religious education has been an intrinsic part of the curriculum since the beginning of western schooling in the country at the primary and later at the junior secondary levels. More recently, it has become part of social science at the primary level. At the secondary school it is compulsory at grades 8 and 9 and has become an optional at grades 10–12. Where chosen, it has professional teachers and has two or three periods weekly lasting forty minutes each. As such, it remains an attractive option for about a third of all students up to Grade 12. It is publicly examined and counts like other subjects for entry to higher levels of education.

In what follows, I explore how religious education has related to the main formal education curriculum, focusing especially on how distinctly educational it has been. This will be done using a historical lens, with documents and reports from various periods, supplemented by my thirty year experience as a teacher at various levels of the system (Carmody 2020, 2–3). The concern of the article emerges in part from a statement of the Zambian Ministry of Education:

…many Zambians today face an uneasy sense of homelessness and rootlessness. Several seem unable to reconcile traditional values and approaches and the imperatives of urban living, though to a great extent their mode of responding to social, cultural, and economic situations is dominated by a traditionalist outlook. Rapid urbanization has also hastened the demise of many customs and traditions. This is a loss which the schools have done little to prevent (Focus on Learning 1992, 9).

Though this judgment on Zambia’s education system was made many years ago, it still raises the question of the role of religious education in addressing what has been seen to be a major blemish. The Focus on Learning statement appeared when the Zambian education system was in major transition and appeared to offer an opportunity to fundamentally change the mode of educating. This was not seized and religious education has not significantly contributed to what could be termed a much needed “well-being framework.”

Religious education: its development

In the footsteps of David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary explorer, many Christian churches established bases in Northern Rhodesia under the British South Africa Company (BSAC) government. Most of these churches operated independently and competed with each other for converts. This led to such conflict that the government established what was called a ‘spheres of influence’ policy (Carmody 2020, 19; Dorman 1993, 33). Churches were then assigned an area of the country where they should operate without interference from rivals. It is true, nonetheless, that the Protestant churches developed a spirit of working together in light of discussions at the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910. At their subsequent meetings in Zambia, they even invited Catholics to participate, which they did. However, whatever degree of cooperation was achieved did not endure.

Colonial times

Instead, for much of the colonial period until 1964, there was a go-it-alone approach—each church plowed its own furrow—toward evangelization. This manifested itself in churches’ use of the primary schools as instruments of their mission. Each wanted its schools exclusively for its evangelistic purposes (Mwale, Chita, and Cheyeka 2014, 38–39). As government gradually took control of the school system, it attempted to guarantee that some of the primary schools served more than a single denomination. Despite the ‘spheres of influence’ policy, children of different denominations or none could be part of the local community. This led to the question of what kind of religious education would be provided in school? It came to be accepted that during the classroom period for religious education, different churches could send their teachers/pastors for their members. Evidently, this proved awkward. As somebody who was involved in it recalled: “it was a system which neither the schools nor the churches liked” (Carmody 2004a, 78).

One could thus say that during the pre-independence period, religious education was denominational, closely tied to the churches, and possibly resembling what James Arthur described as holistic (Arthur 1995, 225–231). Its denominational nature was reluctantly accepted by the government which generally desired a less tribal andmore interdenominational approach, in so far as it wanted religion on the curriculum at all. As a Zambian educator put it:

Over and over the administration was British and until the 1960s you rarely had a Catholic in the administration so you are looking at education with a Protestant or agnostic approach and for them religion was something to be tolerated, but really they wanted as much secular approach as possible (Carmody 2018, 82).

What seemed to be more and more necessary in the eyes of the colonial government was that the schools should provide more than a religiously tribal approach to life, which denominational religious education tended to underwrite. As the country moved toward independence and endeavored to create a nation-state where different groups would live together, this trans-tribal approach became more urgent.

Independence and beyond

When Zambia gained independence in 1964, the new government invited church cooperation. This was to be on government conditions which were not always seen by churches to be entirely positive. Nonetheless, churches realized that if they wished to be included in the national education system, they would have to accept what was being offered (Carmody 2014b, 63). Within this setting, religious education, still largely denominational, continued to be part of the curriculum of both the primary and secondary schools that were swiftly emerging.

The state president, Kenneth Kaunda, whose father was a Presbyterian minister, viewed religion and religious education to be significant in the new nation but expressed dislike of the denominational approach to it. His attitude is hardly surprising as he had the awesome task of uniting different peoples into a nation where one of his first major challenges was to confront the Lenshina religious movement which caused much unrest and loss of life (Hudson 1999; Mwale, Chita, and Cheyeka 2014, 42). Kaunda advocated a form of non-denominational religion which would, he hoped, foster cooperation and unity rather than division (Cheyeka 2006). The president’s preference to have a potentially more unifying type of religious education left the churches with a challenge. If they wished to keep religious education on the curriculum, they needed to re-think its exclusively denominational character.

At this time, an East Africa inter-church syllabus was being developed in neighboring countries and seemed a promising way forward for the churches in Zambia. It was designed to foster ecumenism (Mwale, Chita, and Cheyeka 2014, 48–50; Carmody 2021, 3–4). Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education stressed academic achievementas the way to national development, and this was in line with the government’s modernization approach (McCowan 2015, 31–58). It did this to such a degree that religion was secondary. Though religious education remained an academic subject on the secondary school curriculum, its significance compared weakly with natural science-related offerings. Without great difficulty, it might be removed. In edging toward a more inter-denominational religious education, the churches were aware of the need to ensure that the subject would continue to be accepted as part of the curriculum.

While adoption of some of the East Africa interdenominational syllabus at the secondary level held promise in the early 1970s, there was a similar concern at the primary level. This led a group at Charles Lwanga Teachers College to pioneer a syllabus at the primary level that came to be acceptable to the various denominations (Carmody 2004a, 79–80; Mwale, Chita, and Cheyeka 2014, 43–44, 48–49). Overall, religious education at both primary and secondary levels moved toward being an acceptable, publicly examinable, academic subject. One might say it had approached being a subject like others with the ambiguity which this entails (Hyde 2013, 36–45).

In the process, the form of religion presented had become less denominational and was more like what has been called ‘civil religion,’ where its foundation in specific doctrines and practices is largely overlooked (Donoghue 2001, 106–107). This was evidently regretted by some church members. The interdenominational model nevertheless seemed more appropriate when pupils from diverse denominations shared the same classroom and when teachers often came from a church different from that of many of the pupils. Religious education gradually became less church-based. As it achieved an interdenominational character, it was also being undermined nationally by a creeping secularism spurred on by a growing presence of Marxism. This increasingly anti-religious atmosphere acted as a kind of wake-up call to religious education, intimating the need to present at least a denominationally unified profile in the shadow of its possible exclusion (Carmody 2004b, 32–33). On a positive note, the interdenominational syllabi came to be seen as the right forum in which to prepare students with more informed and tolerant perspectives to encounter other forms of religion and ideology. However, in losing touch with its denominational base, religious education also lost some of its distinctive identity, not unlike what has been seen to be the case in England when it adopted a phenomenological mode of delivery (Barnes 2001, 445–461).

Religious education then came to resemble, in Michael Grimmitt’s words, a ‘learning about’ religion (Grimmitt 1987, 225–227). Pupils learned about beliefs, teachings, and practices of different religious traditions in a somewhat abstract, impersonal way (Grimmitt 1987, 225). As indicated, this had value but it could be seen to center exclusively on the text and feebly examined what the text meant in daily life (Elias 2006, 9–21). This mode of religious education served in Zambia for many years and it continues. It is true nonetheless that its place within the curriculum was challenged over the years especially when government became more immersed in what was termed Scientific Socialism (Carmody 2018, 115–120). Such circumstances indicated that the study of religion needed to be more firmly rooted in Zambia’s formal educational system, as Marxist anti-religion slogans became widespread even to the extent of calling for religious education’s replacement by political education.

This challenge of being securely deep-seated intellectually and more distinctive as a subject on the curriculum continued beyond the Marxist period into when the new Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) government wished to dissociate itself from Marxism and declared the country to be a ‘Christian nation’ in 1991 (Simuchimba 2001). Students needed a means of critically appraising this political intervention. They needed to be able to evaluate whatever sources of invasion by half-truths, propaganda, prejudices, and forms of religion they were meeting. The question came to be: were they receiving any such critical tools? Was religious education equipping them in this critical way?

The study of religion at university

As religious education was introduced to the university curriculum in the 1980s, those responsible remained anxious to ensure its respectability as an academic subject (Mwale, Chita, and Cheyeka 2014, 52). This concern needs to be seen in the light of the prevailing modernization and seminally secularist approach to education for national development. It was also colored by a climate that was skeptical of the value of religion and less than enthusiastic about its presence as an area of study at the university. Though the Marxist-derived paradigm of development was ambiguously interpreted in Zambia, much of its rhetoric had been adopted by the ruling United National Independence Party (UNIP) party in its autumnal days under the rubric of Scientific Socialism. Even in 1989, despite the demise of the Soviet Union and the breaking down of the Berlin Wall, the overall political atmosphere in Zambia still had a Marxist veneer with a lukewarm, if any, welcome for the study of religion at the university.

Though ordinarily religious studies would fall under the domain of humanities, it was located in Languages and Social Science Education (LSSE). Whatever its parentage, it was seen to fall within the domain of education. This made some sense as its main function was to prepare religious education teachers and lecturers even if one would have expected that it should have been located in the School of Humanities. Identifying it as a social science revealed ambiguity about how religion was understood (Moran 2006, 44). The initial selection of courses in religion offered at the university of Zambia (UNZA) approached religion historically and sociologically and were intended to enhance the background of secondary school teachers. Because religion was presented principally in a sociological way, it was not a major challenge for the teacher to present it impartiality when speaking of different denominations. Almost anybody could teach this type of religion whatever his/her religious or non-religious background. What was more central was that it should be treated with academic rigor comparable to what other subjects demanded.

While the study of religion was not, as we have seen, new to the Zambian school system, its nature had been heavily contested as it shifted from being denominational to non-denominational. One could argue that, within the educational system which operated with its almost exclusive economic development emphasis, religious education remained marginal. As in many Western countries, in its efforts to be academic and a subject like others, the study of religion was in danger of being packaged and kept in a neat corner where one might or might not go, depending on how useful one deemed it to be (Groome 2014, 119–121; Hyde 2013; Pring 2020). Though religious education held its place as a subject in the curriculum over the years, it had a low profile.

Within the context of the evolution of the religious education syllabus, discussion failed to distinguish religion from its cultural embodiment in different churches and forms of religion. This meant that the study of religion came to be text book-centered and abstract, resembling what was taking place in other subject areas. In terms of our discussion, Grimmitt’s ‘learning from’ religion remained weak (Grimmitt 1987, 225). What this meant was that pupils were rarely encouraged to ask autobiographical questions and to engage in personal evaluation of religious beliefs, values, and practices (Grimmitt 2000, 35). Thus, there was little emphasis on what pupils learned from their study of religion personally. Religious education may have had an impersonal critical component, as other subjects had, but it did not stretch to self-criticism and self-knowledge (Grimmitt 1987, 226–228; Bailin and Siegel 2003, 181–193).

Movement in this direction had barriers. Religious education was embedded in an overall formal education system that tended to be abstract and textbook-centered so that ‘learning about’ religion was safely distant from life, especially political concerns (Carmody 2004c, 159). The political situation had become dictatorial and oppressive. People feared to say what they really felt. Instead, they remained silent or were careful not to be seen to be critical of the state president, Kaunda, or his government. What was being delivered in religious education was questionably a distinct form of learning. Its capacity to induce self-reflection was greatly limited, largely because it labored to be accepted as a subject like others within an increasingly secularist and market-place educational framework (Catholic Bishops 2009, sec 5).

Even when the study of religion was approved as a major component of the undergraduate program as a development from being a minor course at university in 1991, additional course offerings such as ‘An Introduction to World Religions,’ were added but they remained largely decontextualized. The notion of teacher impartiality could emerge as a thorny issue. When students looked at different religions, it would seem natural for them to ask which form of religion was right and true or truer than others? In general, this was not a real issue largely because what was being done was to describe some of the main major religions like Traditional African Religion, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism. Their descriptions were treated academically and rarely touched the question of truth. The study of religion thus entailed two distinct worlds—that of the school and that of life. In school, it was being reduced to ‘learning about’ religion. It could be compared to what has been seen to be pursuing holiness of life through head-trips in the luxury of retreat centers far away from the mundane misery and anxiety of everyday life.

This distance from ordinary life seems to have been generally true, though at times in the classroom religious education might be expanded from within and enter the domain of ‘learning from’ religion. ‘Learning about’ and ‘learning from’ religion occasionally worked together as had been originally envisaged (Grimmitt 2000, 38; Wright and Wright 2017, 713–727). Religious education was nonetheless operating primarily within a paradigm where points in the examination remained the major priority for students in line with the emphasis of education generally in Zambia.

To move beyond this, against the tide, and to be distinctive remained an ongoing challenge (Carmody 2021, 5–9). This nonetheless led to the question of the distinctively educational value of the religious education that was taking place. Limited to ‘learning about’ religion, religious education risks misinterpretation of religious data not unlike what might even be true in the study of literature, art, music, or even natural science. Such learning can resemble the critic of literature who writes his/her critique without properly experiencing what the text is talking about. It could be spoken about as looking at a stained-glass window from outside. It fails to reconstruct the insider’s world (Jackson 1997, 25).

Religious education–educational?

The study of religion at UNZA was perhaps little different to what was offered at public universities (Nord 1995, 305–315). It developed in accord with the university’s more general exam-focused mode, where narration and memorization featured predominantly (Catholic Bishops 2009, sec 4). It hardly passed beyond the external shell of religious language and culture to engage with the inner core of numinous experience (Grimmitt 2000, 42). Though this informational approach had value, it did not engage the learner self-critically. It could perhaps be seen to be functional religious literacy (Hannam et al. 2020, 214).

It is true however that religious studies adopted a phenomenological approach at UNZA by introducing students to the works of Rudolf Otto and later William James (Carmody 2008, 28–30). This encouraged learners to dig beneath the surface of the text by putting aside their own perspectives and so attempting to place themselves temporarily in the religious mindset of others. Though helpful in moving toward an insider view, Robert Jackson, in this lengthy critique of phenomenology, argues that this approach did not go far enough. It did not properly connect the student as outsider to the religious viewpoint of the ‘insider’ (Jackson 1997, 32–33; Barnes 2014, 79–193).

In encountering their own African religions, students approached them through Western lenses in various texts; but there was little attempt to get them to ask if such conceptualization corresponded with what they experienced in day-to-day life. The religions were being viewed from outside. More was needed if religion was to be seen to be as a way of life, underpinned by a set of beliefs and with a distinctive narrative (Pring 2018, 82; Bellah 2011, 11; Buetow 1991, 57). As a way of life, the study of religion called for a capacity to enter insiders’ religious experience.

A reason for the prevalence of the outsider approach to the study of religion emerged from where the concept ‘religion’ originated. It emerged from Western scholarship as an abstraction (McGrath 2011, 44; Smith 1991, 191; King 1987, 282). Yet, it was meant to represent people’s understanding of the mystery of life as they pondered where they had come from, why they were here, and what would happen to them. Their responses to such questions were formulated in diverse, often common-sensical ways (Horton 1971, 85–108; Colson 2004, 1–7). As such, they did not correspond to the Western mode that became the norm for deciding whether or not a society possessed a religion. This led scholars and missionaries to conclude that the societies to which they went in Africa and elsewhere had no religion. This way of viewing religion has continued and so African traditional religions are ambiguously classified (Mwansa 2004, 34–41; Mwale, Chita, and Cheyeka 2014, 38–39).

Because of approaching the study of religion in this academic way, religion in the classroom became conceptual and Western, providing words that were weakly linked to the reality. It might be said that students learned more about abstractions of God and religious phenomena and less about the actual reality (Palmer 2000, 67; Johnson 2009). This captures the situation where religion is close to being academically dead even when it has an important role in peoples’ lives (Nord 1995, 230). What was missing was how to satisfactorily interpret the religious truth or reality to which the religious words referred.

To better address this split between religious expression and its more fundamental grounding in the spiritual, Rudolf Otto’s Idea of the Holy identified the concept of the holy. However, to properly interpret the term, he directed the reader to identify what he/she means by it within his/her experience:

The reader is invited to direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious experience … whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments in his experience is requested to read no further; for it is not easy to discuss questions of religious psychology with one who … cannot recall any intrinsically religious feelings (Otto 1970, 8).

Personal experience is essential as Otto proceeds to speak of the holy as profound mystery (mysterium tremendum). He struggled to get terms that would best describe it. He thus spoke of religious experience as sui-generis, that is to say, distinctive and highly personal. From this, it followed that any conceptualization of it (including his own) would need to be done carefully so that, as one learned about religions, one needed to connect them very closely with their origins in the experience of those who held such formulation. This edged closely to saying that any conception of religious experience was intrinsically entwined with its roots in the person (Bellah 2011, 12). It might be seen somewhat as creative work which needs a fatherland (Noddings 2003, 37).

While moving with Otto and James toward a more phenomenological approach to religion at university beckoned in a more fruitful direction, it was greatly limited. It needed the kind of development which has been articulated by Jackson and others, to which we now turn.

Jackson’s approach to the study of religion could be seen to align with Otto’s in so far as it emphasizes the personal nature of religious experience to the point where he was on occasion accused of nominalism (Jackson 1997, 64–65; Jackson 2008, 13–24). Though Jackson’s turn to achieving a more correct interpretation of religions was appreciated, it received criticism. Among some of the more vocal, Andrew Wright queried how one might validly move from personal religious experience as outlined by Jackson to viewing it more widely and objectively. How could one generalize and speak validly of a group’s religion whether it be Catholicism, Hinduism, or Islam if individual religious experiences could not be generalized? Of course, each individual carries a personal version but, for Wright, an overall conceptualization is necessary and possible. He argued that religious traditions can be represented objectively without essentializing or decontextualizing them (Wright 2008, 3–12; Bellah 2011, 38, 603; Polkinghorne 1986, 17).

Religious experience as foundational

What this discussion indicates, for the religious education student in Zambia or wherever, is that to properly interpret religion, he/she needs to focus primarily on his/her own religious experience. This is valuable but it serves only as a prelude to connecting with his/her own tradition and the religious experiences of those from other traditions. It leaves him/her with the challenge of crossing a communication bridge from outsider to insider without homogenizing the other (Bellah 2011, 600). Learning the basic terms of the insider’s faith offers a necessary starting point or essential grammar as Grimmitt’s ‘learning about’ religion indicates. It is a first step, but to truly appreciate the faith stance under study, the learner has to go beneath the words and rituals. He/she thereby enters the worldview of the other and lives through it from the standpoint of the other (Buber 1979, 125). Doing this remains a major challenge. It requires capacity to leave one’s hidebound ossified self so as not to inadvertently colonize the other. This requires more than phenomenology as Jackson realized when he applauds Clifford Geertz’s anthropological approach:

Whereas the ‘classical’ phenomenologists attempt to lay aside their presuppositions in reconstructing another’s worldview, Geertz urges ethnographers to be conscious of the relationship between the concepts, symbols, institutions etc. of ‘insiders’ (Jackson 1997, 33; Barnes 2014, 205–215).

This so-called anthropological approach includes, according to Jackson, what is needed to go beyond phenomenology in correctly appreciating the ‘insider’s’ perspective.

For Jackson, such interpretive capacity requires dialogue, which is not an all or nothing understanding (Burbules and Rice 1991, 409; Dunne 1993, 84). The way to it is detailed by Grimmitt’s ‘learning from’ religion along the lines indicated by Wright’s amplification (Grimmitt 1987, 226–228; Wright 2007, 201–236).

For Grimmitt, this happens through approaching the insider’s experience with open mind and in the process the learner attends to his/herself not unlike what Jackson speaks about as reflexivity (Barnes 2014, 200). Grimmitt speaks of the student becoming more aware of his/her assumptions and thereby learning personally from what the other is saying. For Grimmitt, this becomes autobiographical. The learner evaluates what is studied in personal terms. When the learner juxtaposes what the religious tradition is saying about ultimate issues with his/her own perspective, he/she is likely to be even fundamentally challenged. Grimmitt notes that learners’ taken-for-granted meaning is thus problematized as he/she is encouraged to examine propositions not simply as accepted and perhaps true. He/she is challenged to dig deeper and examine the problems and inquiries from which such propositions and doctrines emerge as provisional solutions (Pring 2019, 133). In such ‘learning from’ religion, the emphasis shifts from passively absorbing data to making what is correctly understood one’s own. The learner begins to recognize his/her own self-transcending voice (Wright 2007, 201; Freire 1996, 68–105; Poulimatka 2005; Groome 2006, 763–777).

Completing the narrarive

The educator’s challenge at this stage has been spoken about as that of moving students from a grasp of narratives and narrative forms being studied to their own lives. They are led to ask: what would it be like to complete the narrative of my life successfully? (Dunne and Hogan 2004, 9). This inner path to deeper self-reflection and potential self-transcendence opens the way to where the learner develops an assimilative capacity from which to discern the truth of what traditions offer (Carmody 2017, 169–170; Carmody 2015, 505–506; Carmody 1988). This movement to self-reflection is seen to be central to religious education and to education in general if it is to help students examine their lives and explore the great questions we all ask (Noddings 2006, 289; Noddings 2007, 228; Wright 2007, 126; Krishnamutri 1966, 15, 64).

This inner journey to self-knowledge is likely to emerge from addressing the question of the significance of one’s life as he/she reflects on the fundamental questions that underpin religious traditions. These include:

… whether there is life after death, whether there is a deity who cares about us, whether we are loved by those we love, whether we belong anywhere, we wonder what we will become, who we are, how much control we have over our fate (Noddings 2005, 20).

Such questions open the way to looking more deeply at one’s own life, asking oneself: is my life a trip to achieve distinction, to get a good job, or to have power over others? (Schinkel, De Ruyter, and Aviram 2016, 398–418). Is my education itself about acquiring knowledge, gathering data, getting a well-paid job or is it more? Is there need for me to be concerned for instance that I might become the kind of engineer that builds gas chambers or a doctor who poisons children? (Pring 2019, 44–57). More fundamentally: Is being educated about helping the person’s wellbeing? (White 2009, 423–435).

Such existential questions about the meaning of life and meaning in life are often raised when one learns about religions. This evidently also can also include reflection on how life can appear meaningless and how best to face issues of loneliness, feelings of homelessness, insecurity, and more. Through such self-reflection the learner can thereby be enabled to discover his/her roots and be better equipped to view his/her life not simply as a series of fragments but as a whole, where in a sense the words do not stand alone but are part of a context. This achievement of self-meaning however entails authenticity and autonomy (Bonnett and Cuypers 2003, 326–340: Freire 1978, 299; Lonergan 1974, 69–86; Teece 2010, 102). While the learner’s subjectivity is treasured, it also needs to lead students to ask: what would it be like to complete the narrative of my life successfully?

Religious traditions can then be addressed in a way that is personally provocative and meaning-making. They can operate in religious education as a springboard for reflection while at the same time religious educators ensure that religious traditions are properly interpreted. They should not be reduced to the experience of the learner (Wright 2007, 201–203; Freire 1985, 128; Carroll 2000, 184–202; Gallagher 1997, 790). In such a search for meaning, the learner should not be left shipwrecked on the stormy ocean of life in face of bewildering questions. Religious education should enable him/her to make personal well-informed choices (Barnes 2014, 194–195; Reiss and White 2013, 6, 14; Noddings 2003, 20, 22; Pring 2019, 39–51; Bellah and Tipton 2006, 439–453).

As religious education enables the learner to objectively evaluate traditions, he/she is better placed to discern wisely what his/her own way forward in life might be. For this, a high degree of personal freedom, not rooted in whim but underpinned by value is needed. This potentially leads to the choice of a way of life that is happy and fruitful where the doctor, engineer, office-cleaner, or teacher is not only well qualified but acts in ways that are responsible, thereby contributing to the fashioning of a society that is primarily communitarian.

Conclusion

Though religious education has formed part of the formal education system in Zambia for over more than a century, it has related to that curriculum variously over the years. At first, it was included primarily as an instrument of churches. Eventually it came into public space by being publicly examinable almost as a subject like any other. This was seen to be an important step forward by the churches in as religious education became respectably academic.

Though significant, it is contended that this meant underplaying religious education’s distinctiveness and emancipatory power, which a more educational study of religion might have done. It has thus been argued that religious education’s distinctively educational contribution was weak. To gain greater educational traction, it has been noted that a movement to phenomenology was taken but, while this helped, religious education needed more in order to become personally transformative. It has been suggested that this self-transcending dimension could be achieved by approaching the study of religion along the lines of ‘learning from’ religion. This would, it has been argued, make it distinctive, and have implications for Zambian and perhaps African education more widely (Carmody 2014a). Such redirection would also enable the religious education student to reach a degree of self-awareness where he/she is prepared to choose the kind of life that he/she has reason to value (Sen 1999, 285). Such capacity to make informed choices would be a highly worthwhile and be distinctively educational, which religious education should be fitted to deliver.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.