REFERENCES
- Clive and Erricker , Jane . 1994 . ‘Metaphorical awareness and the methodology of religious education’ . British Journal of Religious Education , 16 ( 3 )
- Positivism and post‐modernism offer reductionist accounts of language: the former claims words refer merely to facts in the natural world or to emotional states in the mind, while the latter claims that words can only refer to language itself. Critical realism argues that language is able to point beyond itself, and beyond the natural world and the human mind, to describe reality itself
- Pannenberg , W . 1976 . Theology and the Philosophy of Science , London : Darton, Longman &Todd . There is a general acceptance that we live in the twilight of modernism. A sharp distinction may be made between the responses of post‐modernism and critical realism to this situation. Post‐modernism, represented by philosophers such as Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard, and theologians such as Cupitt and M C Taylor, deny that we can have any knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality. Critical realism, represented by philosophers such as Habermas, Bernstein, Polanyi and Ricoeur, and theologians such as Gunton, Jungel and Pannenberg, claim that we may understand the ultimate nature of reality at the level of a contingent rationality. See M Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, London: Routledge, 1991); J Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1982); J‐F Lyotard, The Post‐modern Condition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984); D Cupitt, The Long‐legged Fly, London: SCM, 1987); M C Taylor, Erring A Post‐modem A/theology, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984); J Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action (2 volumes) (London: Polity Press, 1987); R J Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976); M Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958); P Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977); C E Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation (Basingstoke: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1985); E Jungel, Theological Essays (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1976)
- Day , D . 1985 . ‘Religious Education 40 Years On: A Permanent Identity Crisis?’ . British Journal of Religious Education , 7 ( 2 ) The most systematic statement of this tendency is presented in J Wilson, Education in Religion and the Emotions, London: Heinemann Educational, 1971). The contrast between external religious culture and internal religious experience is reflected in the following distinctions: between ‘explicit’ and ‘implicit’ religion, Schools Council, Working Paper 36. Religious Education in the Secondary School, London: Evans/Methuen Educational, 1971); between ‘understanding religion’ and ‘religious understanding’, E Cox, ‘Understanding Religion and Religious Understanding’, British Journal of Religious Education, 6:1 (1983); between ‘experiential’ and ‘dimensional’ teaching, M Grimmitt, What can I do in RE? (Essex: Mayhew‐McCrimmon, 1973); between ‘the religious dimension of personal life’ and ‘religious understanding’, R Holley, Religious Education and Religious Understanding, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978). Day has suggested that such distinctions have come to form part of the inherent structure of modern religious education
- Astley , J . 1994 . The Philosophy of Christian Religious Education , 135 Birmingham, Alabama : Religious Education Press . See also ‘The place of understanding in Christian education and education about Christianity”, British Journal of Religious Education, 16:2(1994)
- Throughout this paper ‘experience’ refers to this psychological dimension rather than to a sociological dimension that understands experience in terms of relationship with society and culture
- Clive and Erricker , Jane . 1994 . ‘Metaphorical awareness and the methodology of religious education’ . British Journal of Religious Education , 16 ( 3 ) : 174
- ibid , 182
- ibid , 183
- Hay , D . 1985 . ‘Suspicion of the Spiritual: Teaching Religion in a World of Secular Experience” . British Journal of Religious Education , 7 ( 3 ) : 145
- This is not to deny the importance of such experience, but rather to suggest that it must be understood as being intimately related to language and never as a separate foundational entity. To affirm the latter introduces a distinction between internal experience and external language which drives a philosophically, morally and educationally untenable wedge between subjective and objective worlds
- Ricoeur , P . 1974 . The Conflict of Interpretations , 309 Evanston : Northwestern University Press .
- ibid 149
- Lindbeck , G A . 1984 . The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age , London : SPCK .
- Loukes , H . 1961 . Teenage Religion , London : SCM .
- Goldman , R . 1964 . Religious Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence , London : Routledge & Kegan Paul .
- Grimmitt , M . 1973 . What can I do in RE? , Essex : Mayhew‐McCrimmon . The nature of such experience was approached through a diversity of categories. Loukes focused on moral themes; Goldman tended to draw on natural aesthetics; Smith made explicit reference to ‘love’ as a universal moral and religious reality; later Grimmitt was to introduce explicitly existential language. H Loukes, Teenage Religion, London: SCM, 1961); R Goldman, Readiness for Religion, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965); J W D Smith, Religious Education in a Secular Setting, London: SCM, 1969)
- Sharpe , E J . 1975 . ‘The Phenomenology of Religion’ . Learning for Living , 15 ( 1 )
- Minney , R . 1985 . ‘Beginning with Ourselves’ . British Journal of Religious Education , 8 ( 1 ) Marvell moved beyond the general experiential categories advocated by implicit models, drawing on Otto in claiming that religious experience constitutes sui generis experience of the numinous. Surin attempted to reconcile the implicit and phenomenological understandings of experience: general experience is a necessary preliminary to specifically religious experience. J Marvell, ‘Phenomenology and the Future of Religious Education’, Learning for Living, 16:1 (1976), KSurin, ‘Can the Experiential and the Phenomenological Approaches be Reconciled?’, British Journal of Religious Education, 2:3 (1980). Compare R Otto, The Idea of the Holy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931). For further discussion of the central importance of the experiential dimension to the phenomendogical description of religion see: B Lealman, ‘Seven Years with a Phenomenological Syllabus’, Learning for Living, 17:4 (1978); J Sealey, ‘Another Look at Smart's Six Dimensional Account of Religion’, British Journal of Religious Education, 5:1 (1982); D Attfield, ‘Implicit Religion”, British Journal of Religious Education, 7:1 (1984)
- Hammond , John Hay , David . 1990 . New Methods in R.E. Teaching: An Experiential Approach , 6f Harlow : Longman/Oliver and Boyd .
- Priestley , J . 1981 . ‘Religious Story and Literary Imagination’ . British Journal of Religious Education , 4 ( 1 ) : 23
- Slee , N . 1992 . “ ‘"Heaven in Ordinarie” ‐the imagination, spirituality and the arts in religious education’ ” . In Priorities in Religious Education , Edited by: Watson , B . London : Falmer Press . There is, unfortunately, no space available to chart the complex nature of the development of the spiritual model. Key texts which advocate, in a variety of different ways, the central importance.of the experiential in spiritual understanding, listed in order of publication, include: B Lealman, ‘The Ignorant Eye: Perception and RE’, British Journal of Religious Education, 4:2 (1982); J Priestley, ‘Towards Finding the Hidden Curriculum: A Consideration of the Spiritual Dimension of Experience in Curriculum Planning’, British Journal of Religious Education, 7:3 (1985); U King, ‘Spirituality in Secular Society: Recovering a Lost Dimension’, British Journal of Religious Education, 7:3 (1985); D Hay, ‘Suspicion of the Spiritual: Teaching Religion in a World of Secular Experience’, British Journal of Religious Education, 7:3 (1985); D H Webster, ‘Commitment, Spirituality and the Classroom’, British Journal of Religious Education, 8:1 (1985); B Lealman, “Grottos, Ghettos and City of Glass: Conversations about Spirituality’, British Journal of Religious Education, 8:2 (1986); M Ham's, ‘Entrance into Inwardness”, British Journal of Religious Education, 10:1 (1987); D Webster, ‘A Spiritual Dimension for Education’ in L Francis and A Thatcher (eds), Christian Perspectives for Education (Leominster Gracewing, 1990)
- King , U . 1985 . ‘Spirituality in Secular Society: Recovering a Lost Dimension” . British Journal of Religious Education , 7 ( 3 ) The logic of the work of David Hay seems to me to point also in this direction, though he is explicit that his model of spiritual education is aimed at complementing rather than replacing phenomenological study of religion. See D Hay and J Hammond, ‘"When You Pray, Go To Your Private Room” A Reply to Adrian Thatcher’, British Journal of Religious Education, 14:3 (1992) pp.146,149; contrast A Thatcher, ‘A Critique of Inwardness in Religious Education’, British Journal of Religious Education, 14:1 (1991)
- Cooling , T . 1994 . A Christian Vision for State Education , 67 London : SPCK . On the instrumental use of religious language see
- Wright , A . 1996 . “ ‘The Child in Relationship: Towards a Communal Model of Spirituality’ ” . In Education, Spirituality and the Whole Child , Edited by: Best , R . London : Cassells . This would appear to be the ultimate outcome of the work of H‐G Heimbrock, ‘The Development of Symbol as a Key to the Developmental Psychology of Religion’, British Journal of Religious Education, 8:3 (1986), and of D Jenkins, ‘"And She Supposing Him to be the Gardener...” Spirituality, the Arts and the Open Secret’ in D Starkings (ed.), Religion and the Arts In Education. Dimensions of Spirituality, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993). For a critique of such anti‐realism in spiritual education see
- Buckley , M . The Roots of Modern Atheism , New Haven : Yale University Press . 1987); H Kung, Does God Exist?, London: Collins, 1980)
- Schleiermacher , F D E . 1976 . The Christian Faith , Edinburgh : T &T Clark . and On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, New York: Harper & Row, 1958)
- Schleiermacher , F D E . 1976 . The Christian Faith , 12 Edinburgh : T & T Clark .
- Cantwell‐Smith , W . 1978 . The Meaning and End of Religion , London : SPCK . J Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, London: Macmillan, 1989)
- Cupitt , D . 1987 . The Long‐legged Fly , London : SCM . M C Taylor, Erring A Post‐modern A/theology, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984)
- Otto , R . 1931 . The Idea of the Holy , Oxford : Oxford University Press . Husserl's phenomenological reduction and eidetic vision were intended as moves within transcendental philosophy. Religious education's confusion of empathy with eidetic vision imposes Schleiermacher's experiential hermeneutics onto the phenomenological method in a way that entangles phenomenology in precisely that psychologism Husseri set out to avoid. Contrast F D E Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics: the Handwritten Manuscripts (Missoula, M T: Scholars Press, 1977) and E Husseri, Cartesian Meditations (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967). Compare
- Smart , N . 1967 . ‘A New Look at Religious Studies: The Lancaster Idea’ . Learning for Living , 7 ( 1 ) The ‘theological’ version of experiential‐expressivism entered into the sphere of religious education in the 1960s via the so‐called ‘new theology’ associated with Bultmann, Tillich and Bonhoeffer and popularised by the ‘Honest to God’ debate. See D Jenkins, ‘Where is God?’, Learning for Living, 3:1 (1963). The secular ‘religious studies’ version was linked to the development of that particular discipline in higher education in the late 1960s and early 1970s. See
- Taylor , C . 1992 . Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modem Identity , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . For the epistemological implications of this concept of selfhood, see R Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980)
- Gunton , C E . 1985 . Enlightenment and Alienation , Basingstoke : Marshall, Morgan & Scott . R J Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976); M Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958); C T Yu, Being and Relation: A Theological Critique of Western Dualism and Individualism (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, I987)
- Ricoeur , P . 1974 . The Conflict of Interpretations , Evanston : Northwestern University Press . see also Freud and Philosophy (Haven: Yale University Press, 1970)
- Hay , D . 1985 . ‘Suspicion of the Spiritual: Teaching Religion in a World of Secular Experience’ . British Journal of Religious Education , 7 ( 3 ) : 141
- Ricoeur , P . 1974 . The Conflict of Interpretations , 148 Evanston : Northwestern University Press . The preceeding sentence reads: The “destruction” of hidden worlds is a positive task and this includes the destruction of religion insofar as it is, as Nietzsche says, “a Platonism for the people”
- ibid 149
- ibid 112
- Wittgenstein , L . 1974 . Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus , London : Routledge & Kegan Paul . represents, in its picture theory of language, a classic statement of a philosophy grounded in ostensive definition. It has clear affinities with logical positivism, though of course ultimately the two are poles apart
- Wittgenstein , L . 1968 . Philosophical Investigations , 3ff Oxford : Blackwell . offers what is now recognised as a key text in the repudiation of ostensive definition. See also J M Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). For Wittgenstein as a critical realist see D Bolton, An Approach to Wittgenstein's Philosophy, London: Macmillan, 1979); PMS Hacker, Insight and Illusion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972)
- Wittgenstein , L . 1968 . Philosophical Investigations , 88ff Oxford : Blackwell . See, for example, Wittgenstein's rejection of ‘Private Language” in
- ibid 8 11 88 174 226
- Gier , N F . 1977 . Wittgenstein and Phenomenology , Albany : State University of New York Press . N Malcolm, ‘Anselm's Ontological Argument”, The Philosophical Review, 69 (1960). Compare P Winch, ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’, American Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 1 (1964)
- Within Protestant theology the tradition of critical realism has, since Barth, consistently understood itself in opposition to religious liberalism. Where modern religious education has been happy to enter into dialogue with the liberal Protestant tradition of Tillich, Bultmann, Cupitt et al., the work of Barth, Moltmann, Pannenberg, Jungel, Torrance and many others warrants barely a footnote, if that
- Hick , J and Knitter , P F , eds. 1987 . The Myth of Christian Uniqueness , and D Lochhead, The Dialogical Imperative, London: SCM, 1988 London : SCM . Contrast here
- Wright , A . 1993 . Religious Education In the Secondary School. Prospects for Religious Literacy , London : David Fulton . For the implications of this dialectic of religious truth and religious ambiguity for religious education see
- Kerry , T . 1980 . ‘The demands made by RE on Pupils’ Thinking’ . British Journal of Religious Education , 3 ( 2 ) Note the following attempts to develop the use of language beyond the limitations of phenomenological description, attempts ultimately eclipsed by the turn to the experiential categories of spiritual models of religious education: A G McGrady, ‘Teaching the Bible: Research from a Piagetian Perspective”, British Journal of Religious Education, 5:3 (1983) and ‘A Metaphor and Model Paradigm of Religious Thinking’, British Journal of Religious Education, 9:2 (1987); N Slee, ‘Parable Teaching: Exploring New Worlds’, British Journal of Religious Education, 5:3 (1983) and The Development of Religious Thinking: Some Linguistic Considerations’, British Journal of Religious Education, 9:2 (1987); F Schweitzer, ‘Progress, Continuity and Change: Three Approaches to the Language Problem in Religious Education’, British Journal of Religious Education, 9:2 (1987)
- I owe this point to Mr Andrew Angel, Trinity School, Croydon
- Ricoeur , P . 1974 . The Conflict of Interpretations , 297 Evanston : Northwestern University Press .