When Christian education meets patriotism: Christian organisations’ response to the introduction of Moral and National Education in Hong Kong schools

Plans by the Hong Kong Government to introduce moral and national education (MNE) as a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools in 2010 encountered strong opposition. The controversy over the plans has lasted for two years, with the government and its supporters claiming that the subject will help to instil a stronger sense of national identity in children and critics deriding it as biased and constituting a form of brainwashing. The subject is also seen as posing troubles or a considerable threat to local Christian schools because most of them have had their own religious education programmes for years. Most Christian school-sponsoring bodies and parachurch organisations oppose the subject’s introduction, urging the government to scrap its curricular guidelines, and many say they will boycott its implementation. To bring the issues surrounding MNE into sharper focus, this article traces the development of Christian education in Hong Kong and analyses how local Christian communities perceive and have responded to the official proposal. Three prominent themes commonly emphasised in the Christian discourse are plural identities, conditional patriotism and universal values. These themes could shed light on wider theoretical discussion about the positive roles of religion and religious education for citizenship education.     

Uniformity and diversity in religious education in Northern Ireland

This paper considers the tension that can exist in the aims of religious education between the desire to encourage open‐minded, critical thinking through exposure to diverse traditions, ideas and cultures and the encouragement, overt or otherwise, into uniformity whereby learners take on the values of a particular tradition, culture or ideology (say of a religion, family or school). The particular situation of teaching religious education to post‐primary school pupils in Northern Ireland is considered, and evidence cited to suggest that the Northern Ireland Core Syllabus in Religious Education has tried to impose a particular non‐denominational Christian uniformity on pupils and teachers through its use of religious language. This has contributed to a culture of ‘avoidance’ in relation to the teaching of broad Christian diversity. The article concludes that there is a need for an ongoing and meaningful dialogue to discover what kind of balance between uniformity and diversity is best in teaching religious education in Northern Ireland, and notes that this also requires the reassessment of fundamental issues such as the aims of education and the relationship between secular and religious values in publicly funded schools.     

THE CLUE TO CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION: UNITING THEOLOGY AND EDUCATION, 1950 TO THE PRESENT

Christian religious educators in the Religious Education Association are challenged to reclaim their theological nerve and their partnership in public conversations about the educational practices of U.S. society. Beginning with the work of Randolph Crump Miller in the 1950s, this essay traces through the pages of Religious Education the dialogue about the partnership of education and theology. A practical theology of education is offered where the teaching and forming of Christian identity is complemented with a public theological examination of educational practices and meanings in the wider culture.     

金陵大学宗教教育述略

中国近代基督教教会大学是特定历史时期的产物,教会背景使得它们对宗教教育有着天然的追求,但它们毕竞生存在中国的环境中。金陵大学作为基督教教会大学中唯一的一所A类大学,是在华基督教教会大学的重要代表。对它的宗教教育发展过程的研究,从一个侧面反映出基督教教会大学在中国土地上的生存状态及其对于中国现代教育的意义。     

Dutch children and their ‘God’: the development of the ‘God’ concept among indigenous and immigrant children in the Netherlands

In the 1980s and 1990s in the Netherlands, as a reaction to the growing number of non‐Christian pupils at Christian schools, religious education and religious development became issues for debate. At some schools, it was the exclusiveness of the Christian tradition that dominated, and at others it was the inclusiveness. Another group specialised in inter‐religious dialogue. Our research studied the religious development of pupils from two primary schools. One is the first and only inter‐religious primary school in the Netherlands, the Juliana van Stolberg primary school. The other is a Christian school, the Prinses Margriet primary school that educates pupils exclusively in the Christian tradition. The research questions focussed on the development of the ‘God’ concept of children confronted with stories from different religious traditions. The ‘God’ concept is seen in our research as a concept that develops in an inductive way from the data. This way of conceptualising ‘development’ is coined as the prospective perspective on development. The results of this comparative research led to the tentative conclusion that pupils in our research population who were involved in inter‐religious learning, demonstrate explorative behaviour concerning their own religion and that of others. Their ‘God’ concept shows hybrid characteristics. These pupils are rooted in their own tradition, and at the same time they are ‘on the move’. This offers points of departure for the development of citizens articulating their commitments and turning imminent conflicts into inter‐religious encounters.     

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Most research into religious education has concentrated upon older children, but this paper reports findings obtained from the teachers of junior (seven to II years old) school children. From the content of religious education lessons and the overall religious sub‐cultures of classroom and school, conclusions are drawn about the religious socialization process of the child. A distinction is made between the child's own religious quest for meaning and the Christian culture which is generally accepted in Britain and taught in school. The child's religion is divided into the cognitive and the emotive while the socialization process is treated as cognitive, explicit and implicit. The general conclusion reached is that religious education lessons do not respond to the child's own cognitive level and are thus likely to confuse, whereas the religious life of classroom and school leads to an emotive affinity with Christianity. Thus ambivalence towards the Christian religion is produced in the child.     

“Shaping Communities” as a Christian Practice and Popular Religion: Their Implications for Latina/o Religious Education in the United States

This article sets Dorothy Bass' Christian practices movement in critical dialogue with U.S. Latina/o popular religion in order to explore ways that these distinctive sets of practices could enrich one another. Then, it focuses on shaping communities as a Christian practice and correlates it with the U.S. Latina/o popular religious practices enacted by a predominantly Mexican-American congregation in East Los Angeles, California. It concludes by examining the implications for U.S. Latina/o religious education in light of José Irizarry-Mercado's concepts of bilingual aesthetic and inter-cultural experience.     

Christian religious education and the development of moral virtues: a neo-Thomistic approach

ABSTRACT

This article explores the implications for Christian religious education of the theory of moral virtues formulated by Thomas Aquinas and developed by the contemporary Neo-Thomists. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part introduces Thomistic virtue theory and presents cardinal virtues crucial for Thomistic ethics: prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude, as the reference points for moral education. This part also includes analysis of the relationship between cardinal and theological virtues, leading to the conclusion that Christian religious education also requires the development of theological virtues. The second part explores, through Thomistic theory, what factors condition the development of a person’s moral character (i.e. his/her moral virtues) and what those factors mean for supporting moral education within Christian religious education, initially within the context of Polish schooling. Particular attention is given to three issues: introducing the concept of responsibility for community members, introducing knowledge of moral virtues, and building a relationship with God.     

Ecclesiastical and religious factors which preserved Christian and traditional forms of education for citizenship in English schools, 1934–1944

Participants in the public discourse pertaining to religious education and education for citizenship in English schools between 1934 and 1944 included many ‘Christian educationists’. They advocated a conservative and elitist form of education for citizenship as taught through indirect training, Arnoldian public school traditions and ecumenical, liberal Protestantism. This contrasted with the conception of education for citizenship promoted by the founder members of the Association for Education in Citizenship. They wanted pupils to be educated into a liberal, democratic and secular version of English citizenship by means of ‘progressive’ pedagogies and direct instruction. This article identifies the ecclesiastical and religious factors which preserved the Christian and traditional form of education for citizenship in English schools between 1934 and 1944. These factors included the revival of the Christian foundations of British national identity and citizenship, the development and acceptance of non‐denominational forms of Christian education, the increasingly positive response which an evermore coherent and professionalised cohort of Christian educationists received from the Board of Education and the Consultative Committee, and the political power of the Anglican Church within the dual system combined with the religious settlement agreed in the 1944 Education Act.     

TIME OF UNCERTAIN CONVERSATIONS: RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF THE POST-SOVIET LATVIA

This article describes the development of religious education within the system of public education in Latvia. It consists of three parts. The first part deals with the social context of a post-Soviet society and its impact on the development of religious education. The second part describes the four approaches to religious education in public schools that have emerged in Latvia during the last ten years: the confessional approach, the ecumenical Christian approach, the world religions approach, and the Christian ethics approach. The third part analyzes the problems and opportunities presented by the current stage of plurality of approaches.     

Whose confession? Which tradition?

For over 30 years official disapproval of confessional approaches to religious education in community (formerly county) schools has been the norm. However such forms of religious education persist. Some arguments put forward in favour of non- confessional religious education are now shown to be weak. Confessional religious education is now thought (generally) to be appropriate in church schools. These facts raise the possibility of a return to confessional religious education in non-church schools. Non-confessionalism is founded on a contradiction: that education can proceed without ‘confessing’ anything and is therefore inherently unstable. In fact many different types of ‘confessions’ operate in religious education. Yet pressure continues to be put on Christian teachers to dismantle their confessional approach. This is unfair and an attempt is made to show that such teachers have much to offer the future of religious education in a society which contains many religions.     

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AND PLURALISM IN ZAMBIA

Today, Zambia has a comparatively unified, somewhat exceptional, approach to religious education despite a wide variety of predominantly Christian denominations. This article retraces the history of the development of religious education from when it was entirely confessional to the present time when it has become largely educational. In so doing it identifies some of the difficulties encountered and some of the problems that lie ahead in promoting an even more religiously pluralistic and educational approach to religious education in a country that has been declared a Christian nation.     

Whose confession? Which tradition? (A preliminary critique of Penny Thompson, 2004)

What does Penny Thompson really want? Reading her article in BJRE 26 (1) proved a baffling experience: it clearly wanted to say something, and to say it passionately, yet signally failed to do so. It fails largely because it lacks an argument; there seems also to be conceptual muddle at its heart. A fuller critique will need to attend to Thompson’s reading of religious education’s history, particularly to her use of evidence—but that is a story for another night. Consequently, this brief critique has at its core four questions to elicit clarity where at present there is none: First, does Penny Thompson want so to revision religious education in community schools that she and other aspirants to ‘Christian confessional religious education’ may freely work to convert young people to ‘Christianity’ and to nurture them in a Christian tradition? Second, in what sense, or senses, does Thompson want readers to understand her phrase, ‘the truth of the Christian faith?’ Third, in whose confession and in which tradition does Thompson want this Christian confessional religious education to be rooted? Fourth, is Penny Thompson willing to allow Christian teachers to present alternative understandings of Christianity, critical of her (implied) view? These questions are preceded by reflection on the form of her article’s argument and on its use of ‘confess’ and its cognates.     

Religious education in the context of sub‐Saharan Africa: the Malawian example

The argument in this paper is that in spite of the acknowledgement of plurality, many countries in sub‐Saharan Africa seem reluctant to introduce multi‐faith approaches preferring to maintain Christian confessionalism in religious education. Even in those countries where new approaches are being tried, there is some unwillingness to make wholesale changes throughout the school system. In some instances this state of affairs is precipitated not by educational policy but by the socio‐religious situation, which mirrors Christian ideals. This is better illustrated in the Malawian context where largely due in part to the historical Christian influence and for the fact Christianity is the major religion in the country, multi‐faith religious education introduced in schools was opposed. As a compromise to a difficult situation, government resolved to offer both multi‐faith religious education and the historical Bible knowledge on the school curriculum. Results of a school survey seem to indicate that Bible knowledge as opposed to multi‐faith religious education is still a favoured syllabus in schools, possible reasons of which are suggested. The conclusion is that efforts should be made to interest those still wary about multi‐faith religious education considering the benefits it can bring in a world today where heterogeneity rather than homogeneity is the acceptable reality.     

Head teachers’ attitudes towards religious diversity and interreligious dialogue and their implications for secondary schools in Catalonia

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the attitudes of secondary-school head teachers towards religious diversity, intercultural and interreligious dialogue and the role of education in fostering intercultural and interreligious dialogue. A sample comprising 275 head teachers in Catalan secondary schools answered an online questionnaire. The results revealed attitudes which were moderately favourable towards cultural and religious diversity, more strongly favourable towards interreligious dialogue, and less favourable towards education playing a major role in managing religious and cultural diversity and in fostering interreligious dialogue. We found significant differences in head teachers’ attitudes in line with the specific features of the schools where they worked. Amongst these differences, it was noticeable that heads of religious and private–public schools had more positive attitudes towards managing religious and cultural diversity and towards education playing a leading role in promoting dialogue. Also, we identified three groups of head teachers who showed differing degrees of positivity according to the perceived religious diversity of their schools. The more diverse the school, the less favourable the attitude, and vice-versa; the most moderate favourability was also associated with the most moderate diversity.     

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF OLDER ADULTS: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

This article presents a number of historical themes that are relevant to emerging efforts in the religious education of older adults. Drawing on themes in Jewish, Christian, Confucian, and other world religions the author indicates that religious bodies have shown respect for the elderly, especially for their abilities as teachers and counselors. Older adults have pursued learning either by living in close connection with religious communities or in separate institutions under the sponsorship of religious bodies. Religious traditions have urged study and contemplation as suitable activities for their older members. The increased numbers of older adults in religious bodies is a problem that can be turned into educational challenge and opportunity.     

Christian Education,White Supremacy,and Humility in Formational Agendas

Christian education served as a tool of White supremacy that played a central role in the devastation of millions of human lives throughout the colonial era of Western expansion. An adequate account of how Christian education paired with colonial imperatives helps to identify where the legacy of White supremacy and imperial domination lives on in contemporary practices of Christian faith formation and religious education. While any educational venture requires authority and is an act of power, humility is an essential partnering virtue for Christian educators who do not wish to replicate this history of domination.     

HOLDING ONTO HOPE: ADDRESSING THEOLOGICAL CONFLICT THROUGH CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Today deep theological differences threaten to divide Protestant denominations. In turn, these differences often mute church education and block mission. This article seeks to offer glimpses for addressing that theological controversy. It is an exercise in historical retrieval examining a generative period in the history of Christian religious education, that is, the theological conflict between the liberal religious education movement and neo-orthodoxy in the 1930s through 1950s. As Christian educators moved through this earlier conflict, underlying theological commitments and theological practices emerged that offered a faithful politics of hope calling the church to mission.     

The Ministering Community as Context for Religious Education: A Case Study of St. Gabriel's Catholic Parish

Friendship renewal is offered as both content and context for Christian religious education. In the first section, four marks of genuine friendship are used to elaborate on the meaning of friendship: a shared story, embodied love and intimacy, committed reciprocity, and a shared vision that enables generativity. In the second section, it is suggested that friendship renewal provides an efficacious vehicle for renewing the life and mission of the church. Friendship enables bridges to be built across cultural divides and empowers the church to become a befriending community. In the final section, friendship renewal is discussed in relation to the what, why, where, and when questions regarding Christian religious education.     

THE NEED OF UNIVERSITY TRAINED LEADERS IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL

Approaching Christian education in light of Charles Sanders Peirce's Classical Pragmatism can help catechists make Christian tradition more intelligible to present-day North Americans; it can provide them with a rich framework for pedagogical practices; and it can help them offer a compelling vision of deeper participation in the Trinitarian life of God. A Peircean pedagogy of religious education emphasizes attentiveness, discernment, creativity, artistry, and the key role of the Holy Spirit.