Critique in Religious Education

As Religious Education (RE) in public schools repositions to remain educationally relevant for children in an increasingly secularised and post-truth world, the need to engage critically with complex issues (agreeable and the disagreeable) cannot be greater, even in non-public faith-based contexts such as Sunday School or Madrassa. The juxtaposition of different (at times conflicting) knowledge in the material content of contemporary RE, variety of pedagogical approaches and, crucially, how classroom discourse (involving students and teachers) at times de/legitimises certain knowledge, calls for critique (not criticism) as the basis for doing RE. While criticism focuses on fault-finding, disapproval, and ‘othering’, on the other hand, critique relates to skilful conceptualisation, considered judgement, detailed analysis, and reflective assessment of issues, whether religious or not. Critique draws from Critical Theory, involving dialectical thinking and is helpful because it facilitates a critical assessment of and challenge to hegemony, dominant culture, and ideology of the curriculum.

In RE, critique is aligned with Critical Religious Education (CRE) initially developed by Andrew Wright mainly dealing with truth claims (Wright 2007). In its rather evolved form, what makes CRE useful is how it can help learners engage with truth claims whether inside or outside religious belief, including how the approach can be put into practice in classroom discourse (Franck 2015; Goodman 2018). Critique in RE does not require suspending one’s faith (for those with one) nor provide, carte blanche, space to attack religious beliefs or non-religious stances for that matter. Rather, while it deals with disagreement – after all disagreements are part of life (Flensner and Von der Lippe 2019), it fosters critical dialogue informed by an exchange of relevant information, contradictory feelings, and nuanced perspectives (O’Grady and Jackson 2020).

Reading the various articles selected for this volume, I find myself re-appraising the value of critique in RE to appreciate fully their significance in the context in which they have been raised. From Sweden, Ebba Henrekson takes a historical-policy perspective in surveying the existence of independent of confessional schools and highlighting – to the contemporary reader – that these schools are neither new nor a growing problem. This point, according to her, is worth raising to dispel the media-fuelled fear of Muslim independent confessional schools as potential cause of social problems that can lead to ‘segregation, intolerance, extremism, and religious fundamentalism’ belying the fact that historically in Sweden, Christian independent schools have always deviated from values existing in public schools. By highlighting the trajectory of Swedish independent schools, Henrekson takes a critical stance in arguing that public negative attention placed on fewer (Muslim) independent public schools is unfounded and hugely problematic for a pluralist society Sweden has become.

Based on phenomenological reflections, the use of critique to address complex notions of truth in RE is evident in Brendan Hyde’s and David Kennedy’s articles. Writing from Australia, Hyde explores how, by working with community children in the Godly Playroom, truth as Alethia (‘unforgetting’) can be explored in Sunday school RE (drawing on Jerome Berryman’s work). According to Hyde Godly play involves the re/telling of Bible stories ‘… to show how truth is gradually disclosed through the telling of the parable’. From a critical stance, Godly play involves a dialectical process involving repeated interaction between showing and hiding of the truth expressed through ‘disclosure, concealment, withdrawal and reflection’. The creative process involved in the dialogical engagement encourages children to engage with their learning in a meaningful and reflective way. Through critical reflection, Hyde demonstrates how the phenomenon being studied (i.e. the ‘truth’) intuitively makes children desire to engage deeper and meaningfully with their learning.

For his part, David Kennedy (in Ireland) critiques contemporary RE for its rootedness in the classical text-based hermeneutical tradition, and as such at a practical level, failing to engage meaningfully with how children encounter with truth in their life’s journey. Moving away from limited hermeneutical circle and its implications to RE, Kennedy suggests the importance of ‘recognising the givenness of the other in encounters with truth’. Based on a phenomenological reflection and also informed by the theological thinking of Jean-Luc Marion, Kennedy sees the potentiality of Marion’s theological position because it draws insights of postmodernity (and their impact on RE ‘here and now’) to demonstrate how individuals may engage with God/truth from a different hermeneutical standpoint, which he has identified as happening in four hermeneutic moments in givenness.

In his article entitled ‘Dialogues between Ivan and Smerdyakov after the murder of their father from The Brothers Karamazov’, Eisuke Saito tackles the literary masterpiece of the Brothers Karamazov but with a new interpretation (critique) on its educational implications. By analysing the cooperation between the brothers, Saito is able to explore the role of Man-God ideology towards overcoming alienation, grievance and injustice in the world. The complexity of moral dilemmas and implications on education are considered. As Saito explains, despite Ivan’s idealistic compassion as demonstrated in his anecdotes about the victimised children, he could not treat his brother, Smerdyakov, as an equal (and using abusive language against his brother) and thus alienating him. In contrast, Smerdyakov is treated humanely by other people such as his mother Martha Ignatyevna (the ‘good people’ who also treat Ivan well) by their practical care. As such, Saito sees the educational potential of ‘good overcoming evil’ by the actions of the ‘good people’, which can benefit the educational community.

Małgorzata Wałejko’s and Julian Stern’s article explores the role of ‘the ineffable as one of the central features that religion and religious traditions can bring to schooling’. From a philosophical and theological critique, Wałejko and Stern addresses a complex but important idea that not everything is communicable (at least in the known way of communication), for example, death, silence, the transcendence, and private/taboo matters – and as such requiring a different hermeneutical process to draw out what is being or intended to be communicated. The implications of the uncommunicable and uncommunicated for schooling that engages with religious issues are explored, including the need for ethical care, sensitive awareness of children’s internal mystery so that ‘we become more aware of the borders of intimate personhood’. The article concludes with the suggestion that schools need to recognise the intrinsic value not only of children’s effability but their ineffability as well.

In the next article, Olga Sitarz, Anna Jaworska-Wieloch and Jakub Hanc examine, from a Polish context, the reconstruction of the international standards relating to RE of juveniles in correctional institutions. Based on a Human Rights perspective, the authors critique the complicated situation that exists in the competition involving different parties (juveniles themselves, their parent or legal guardians and officials at the isolation centre) – and all with rights governed by various legal acts as to who has the right to determine whether RE should be offered to juveniles. From an analysis of relevant materials, they authors assess the legal situation for these juveniles relating to religious rights of the child, including the primacy of the welfare of the child to ensure that ‘… every child enjoys the right of access to religious instruction or beliefs in accordance with the wishes of his or her parents or legal guardians …’ They conclude by suggesting the need to reconstruct the national legal order (based on the international freedom of conscience, secondary legislation and internal rules governing isolation facilities) to ensure that juveniles in correctional institutions are not deprived of their liberty to exercise their (religious) rights.

The article by Suhayib and Muhammad Fauzan Ansyari critiques the purposes, contexts, and curriculum alignment of Islamic Religious Education (IRE) in Indonesia. Based on document analysis, the article highlights a disjuncture between the aim of the curriculum and teachers’ design of IRE, partly because the ‘… curriculum and teachers are not developed simultaneously’. The article demonstrates how the design of the curriculum hardly integrates the three-fold purpose of IRE namely, ta’leem (qualification), ta’deeb (socialisation) and tarbiyah (subjectification). To address the problem, the article reports on the useability of the teachers’ guides in helping teachers clarify curriculum objectives, design activities, and formulate assessment strategies. To address the various challenges facing IRE in Indonesia, the article suggests the need to rethink the role of IRE and develop a taxonomy to support its conceptualisation.

Sjay Patterson-Craven’s article explores the teacher agency of recently qualified secondary school teachers in England. Subjecting the issue to critical reflection and informed by an ecological approach to teacher agency, the article notes that the beginner RE teachers’ sense of agency is influenced to a greater extent by their own previous learning of RE as secondary students and how this informed their values, ideas and beliefs about the purpose of RE. The article observes how teachers’ sense of agency is dominated by a shared understanding that the purpose of RE is ‘… to bring disparate and diverse communities together’ and seeing as their duty to facilitate that. As such, curriculum content that fail to recognise the role of RE in community cohesion is seen as a ‘… hinderance to this agency’. Recognising this limitation and in attempt to mitigate against professional damage and subject-status due to this anomaly, the article suggests the need for beginner RE teachers ‘… to enact and achieve agency in different socio-political contexts’. This, the article suggests, calls for the need to re-examine RE teacher agency beyond the limited view of legacy tied to a myopic (secondary school) view about the purpose of RE and how teachers enact their agency in the subject.

The last article in this volume takes elements in critical pedagogy (using dialectical thinking) to explore the teaching of controversial issues in RE through Forum Theatre as a critical pedagogical approach to democratic education in Norway. Drawing on data from the perspectives of secondary school students, the article addresses the forms of democratic learning students get when reflecting on their participation in Forum Theatre when addressing controversial issues. It considers what Forum Theatre must design and what critical democratic educators must consider in tackling controversial issues in RE. It invites a critical discussion of the contribution of Forum Theatre to democratic education in RE, and also considers the potential pitfalls of this approach (i.e. Forum Theatre). The article concludes by highlighting how the use of critical pedagogy ‘… empowers students to become political and moral agents in the search for nonoppressive solutions …’ in tackling controversial issues in RE through Forum Theatre.

The eclectic mix of topics in this volume – from different contexts (e.g. England, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Indonesia, Australia, and Ireland) and emphasising varied aspects – coalesce in reminding the RE profession and academic community of the necessity of critique (not criticism). As demonstrated in the articles included in this volume, critique is necessary because RE is a school subject dealing with the contested and the contestable, including the ineffable in a curriculum space where perhaps, constructive disagreement is the only ‘safest’ outcome hoped for.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Yonah Hisbon Matemba

Yonah Hisbon Matemba, PhD, is Deputy Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education and responsible for coordinating Special Issues. He has taught Religious Education in secondary schools and teacher education in Malawi, Botswana, and Scotland, and supervises many masters and doctoral students in a variety of education related topics. Dr Matemba is co-chair of the ‘Religion, Education and Society’ SIG within the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). He publishes widely in Religious Education and recently co-authored (with Richardson Addai-Mununkum), Religious Education in Malawi and Ghana: Perspectives on Religious Misrepresentation and Misclusion (Routledge, 2021 and co-edited (with Bruce collet) The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religious Education in the Global South (Bloomsbury, 2022). His book chapter entitled “Multi-faith Religious Education: A Theoretical and Practical Conundrum” is published in L. Philip Barnes’ book, Debates in Religious Education: Second Edition (Routledge, 2023).