The disputed legacy of Ninian Smart and phenomenological religious education: a critical response to Kevin O’Grady

Abstract

The aim of this article is to respond to Kevin O’Grady’s critique (in BJRE, 27, 2005, pp. 227–37) of my interpretation and assessment of Ninian Smart’s contribution to religious education. I begin by dealing with a range of issues that lend themselves to fairly summary discussion and then address two further aspects of his critique in more detail. First, the nature of the influence of the phenomenology of religion over phenomenological religious education is considered within the context of recent critical discussions of the fundamental assumptions of religious phenomenology. Secondly, O’Grady’s positive account of the continuing relevance of Smart’s thought to the issue of hermeneutics in religious education is both qualified by attention to its limitations and complemented by reference to the work of the French hermeneutical philosopher, Paul Ricoeur.

Keywords:

• Phenomenology
• Hermeneutics
• Religious education
• Ricoeur
• Reflexive pedagogy

Notes

1. In the event my essay was published separately and I contributed a much shorter essay to the symposium, which on account of Professor Smart’s death had a slightly different focus from that originally intended, see Religion, 31 (2001), pp. 317–86.

2. It should be noted, however, that in the early 1970s Michael Grimmitt was an influential advocate of phenomenological religious education; see Grimmitt (1973), pp. 88–98. This book was a standard text for teachers and student teachers throughout the 1970s and 80s. That he later changed his views I have acknowledged elsewhere; see Barnes (2001a), p. 452.

3. Examples of writers and school texts that fail sufficiently to engage with the concerns and interests of pupils are David Simmonds, Believers All (1984) and J. R. S. Whiting, Religions of Man (1983).

4. Cf. Donald Wiebe’s (2005) remark (in the same collection of essays) that ‘Smart’s own work seems to contribute to a view of religious studies as a religious exercise’ (p. 109).

5. The positive reference to religious identity should not be interpreted to mean that all such identities are positive and good, for they patently are not (see Barnes, 2005).