Practical
Theology and Religious Education in a Pluralist Europe*
by John M Hull
British Journal of Religious Education Vol. 26, no. 1, March 2004, pp. 7-19
* I
first discussed the following approach in Hull (1975, 43-52) and reformulated
the main distinctions in a further revision published in German (Hull 2000a,
4-12). The present article is a further revision.
Synopsis
The relation between Christian practical theology and religious education is discussed from a contextual perspective, commencing with a number of distinctions between various teaching processes which are then applied to the teaching of religion. The implications for a Christian philosophy of education are considered, and it is suggested that the argument would also apply to relations between other religions and education in a pluralist Europe.
Like other issues in Christian practical theology, the question of religious education in an increasingly pluralist Europe should not be approached in the first place through an exposition of Christian or biblical principles, but through a study of the actual context in which education is taking place. If we seek to apply theological concepts before we have thoroughly analysed and understood the situation, we may find that our theologisation is premature. Instead of illuminating educational practice, we may make ourselves insensitive to its detailed characteristics, and may even find that theology may make a futile attempt to dominate and even oppress educational practice instead of becoming what it should be--the friendly and critical interpreter of education. This is why we must begin our enquiry with an examination of the processes of teaching itself, although we do this with a full realisation that our religious beliefs and faith commitments will already be informing our choice of significant starting points.
What is the
General Meaning of Education?
Let us distinguish between a general sense of
education which includes all the various processes of teaching, and a more
specific concept of education, in which education refers to one process of
teaching among many.
In the general sense, the education offered by a
society consists of everything it deliberately teaches. Learning is a more comprehensive category
than general education. We learn many
things from our experience of life, but general education is an intentional
activity. I may learn a good deal while
I am in hospital, but the purpose of the hospital is to heal me, rather than to
teach me. It is in recognition of this
intentional character of education in general that we speak, by way of contrast, of the ‘hidden curriculum’:
that is, the unintended learned outcomes of school life, which are the sum of
the unwitting influences the school has on the pupil.
Teaching is the activity through which general
education is transmitted, and once again we must distinguish between intended
teaching, (the result of which is general education) and unintended teaching
(best described as influence or example).
The Specific
Processes of Teaching
If we examine teaching more closely, we will
distinguish several processes, such as training, instructing, indoctrinating,
socialising, and schooling. Since we
are concerned with the nature of religious education, we should also
distinguish such teaching processes as evangelising, catechising, and
nurturing. As we analyse these
processes, the implications of specific
education, which is one of the teaching processes, for beliefs about God, the human being, and
the nature of time will emerge. Of
course, we are already in the hermeneutical circle, since the distinctions
between the various kinds of teaching already suggest a certain conception of
the human being. Our arrangement of these teaching processes prepares us to contrast nurture with evangelisation and
instruction with indoctrination, and to leave a space for the process of
education conceived more narrowly. In
these distinctions, the nature of the person-to-person processes involved in
teaching and learning already reveal the influence of certain attitudes to
human relationships and human growth.
It is like that in all questions that concern the relationship between
theology and practice. Theology
influences the selection of the terms by means of which we analyse our
practice; from the analysis of practice we in turn derive theological
insights. We are thus dealing with
religion as critique, and also with a critique of religion. In that circle of interpretation we prepare
for a mutual encounter between theology and educational practice, in both the
general and the specific senses, in which each of the partners may undergo change.
In spite of
the mutual influence of the two sides of the situation, the starting point
remains significant. It makes a
difference where we break into the circle and we will attempt this by means of
a series of stipulative definitions or conceptual distinctions, which arise
from differences in practice, and which in turn may be drawn inductively from
various teaching contexts. Let us see
where this method takes us.
Training,
Instruction, and the Specific Meaning of Education
Training involves a process of repetition, often
based upon imitation, whereby a skill is acquired. Through training, one
achieves a particular technique, an ability specific to a given task and
involving an invariable sequence of operations or manipulations. The character of training is clear when we
remember that we speak of training animals but not of specifically educating them. Human beings can be both trained and educated, but other animals
can only be trained. The difference
between training and specific education
is that an educated person understands the principles upon which the skills are
based. The specifically educated person
has a cognitive perspective which frees him or her from the mechanical
obedience to the sequence of manipulations.
A child can be trained to spell, but only an educated person understands
the principles of orthography, phonetics, or philology. Perhaps a person could be trained in the
principles of orthography or phonetics, but that would mean that the principles
were acquired in a rather mechanical way, without the sense of freedom,
evaluation, perspective, and criticism that are features of the
specifically educated person in any
field of action or enquiry.
Instruction is what you tell people when you are
training them. Instruction is the
verbal counterpart of training. Like
the training it encourages, instruction moves forward step by step, in an
orderly sequence, such that a curriculum of instruction has a beginning, a
middle, and an end. The training is
complete when the skill can be performed.
The instruction is complete when the course is ended. If training is skill-centred, and
instruction is content-centred, then education (in the narrow, specific sense)
is person-centred.
This helps us to understand why training and
instruction, having a beginning, a middle, and an end, are bounded by time,
while specific education is boundless.
The task of specific education is the formation of personhood, and this
task is never ending. To live is to
learn, and insofar as we are teachers and educators, we may say that the
process of specific education is an important contribution to learning to be a
person.
This does not mean that the processes of training,
instructing, and educating are incompatible, or that they necessarily exclude
each other. Indeed, we may say that
they require and presuppose each other.
It has been said that the mansion of learning is entered through the
doorway of training, and it is true that there are many situations where
without fundamental skills, further growth through specific education is
difficult if not impossible. Without
the acquired skill of speaking, I would find it more difficult to learn from
your teaching, and without keyboard skills, the whole world of learning
available from the Internet would be less accessible. We continually develop new sets of skills, in which we have been
instructed, and upon these expanding frameworks develop further our personhood,
thus growing through specific education. Of course, these teaching and learning
processes are not the only means of human growth. Persons are formed in freedom and love, and not only by skills,
instruction, and education.
Indoctrination
and Specific Education: Opposites
I hope by now it is clear that whenever I refer to
education in the context of distinct teaching processes, to education as one
process among several such processes, the reference is to specific education. I
will therefore no longer speak of specific education but will take it for
granted that the meaning is clear from the context.
The concept of indoctrination includes content,
intention, and result. The content of indoctrination is doctrines. One can socialise a person into correct
table manners but one cannot indoctrinate the person into them. Table manners are customs, not
doctrines. A doctrine is a proposition,
an expression of values or beliefs, usually relating to an ideological system
which is controversial in the surrounding society. The intention of the indoctrinator is to disguise the
controversial status of the doctrine from the learner by presenting the
doctrine as though it were a fact. This
is done with the further intention of securing from the learner an irrational
commitment to the truth of the controversial doctrine. This does not necessarily mean that the
doctrine itself or the ideology of which it is a part is irrational; it does
mean that the grounds upon which the indoctrinated person believes the doctrine
are irrational. One can be educated
about an ideology, instructed in it, or indoctrinated into it.
It is possible for an attempt at indoctrination to
fail. For an act of indoctrination to
be successful requires not only that the content is appropriate, and that the
intention is to form an irrational commitment to the doctrine, but that this
intention should succeed. The
indoctrinator denies freedom to the person; the educator enhances the critical
freedom of the learner.
The Teaching
Processes and Time
We may gain a clearer idea of the differences
between the processes we are considering if we relate them to time. The indoctrinator intends to secure the
transmission of the doctrines in a form which tolerates no change or
development. The indoctrinator seeks to
re-duplicate his or her beliefs in the learner. The learner is not encouraged to become his or her own person,
but to become the incarnation of the indoctrinator. So the indoctrinator frustrates not only the development of the
person but the development of the future.
If we accept the modal character of time (Hartshorne
1964, 271), then there is a qualitative difference between past and
future. The past cannot be changed but
the future does not yet exist. The past
is actual; the future is possible. When
the indoctrinator tries to extend the past into a completely predictable
future, an attempt is made to make the future exactly like the past. The
indoctrinator may thus be thought of as one who tries to abolish the future.
So we see that while the instructor measures time
(the beginning, the middle and the end), and the indoctrinator abolishes time
(the future shall be exactly as the past), the educator helps the pupil to
achieve fulfilment, or to develop with time.
The educator is aware of the timing of personal development. Thus the educator is concerned with Kairos; the instructor with Chronos; and the indoctrinator with Chaos: the chaos, the stagnation, the
distortion of complete rigidity.
Socialisation
and Schooling
Socialisation is the process whereby a person grows
into the customs and mores of the society, the process being complete when the
behaviour of the socialised person is indistinguishable from that of the
majority of the members of the surrounding society. The finishing point, the point in time, for the conclusion of
socialisation is thus determined by society.
Socialisation is concerned with the customs and manners that are the
common property of the society, whereas the indoctrinator is concerned with
controversial ideological content. The
socialised person is embedded in society, whereas the indoctrinated person is
embedded in the doctrines. The institutional process for securing socialisation
is schooling.
Evangelising,
Catechising, Nurturing
The processes of teaching and learning that we have
discussed so far are full of implications for the nature of the person,
freedom, and time. Nevertheless, they
are not specifically religious processes.
As we come closer in our discussion to explicit theological motifs, it
is appropriate for us to include some consideration of a number of explicitly
religious teaching and learning processes.
Evangelising is the presentation of religious faith
so as to persuade or convert, whereas catechising and nurturing are processes
intended to deepen the faith commitment of believers. Evangelism is directed at outsiders; catechising and nurture, at
insiders. If the borderline between
outsiders and insiders is blurred or uncertain, then the distinction between
evangelism on the one hand, and catechising and nurturing on the other, also
becomes uncertain. Evangelisation differs from indoctrination
in that it is not by nature intended to produce irrational commitment. On the contrary, the evangelist hopes to
secure the free and voluntary commitment of the listeners. Certainly, the evangelist may use methods of
emotional pressure and repetition that bring his or her techniques close to
those of the indoctrinator, but this does not affect the fact that
conceptually, the processes are distinguishable. The evangelist proclaims in order to persuade; the indoctrinator
disguises in order to subvert.
Catechising and nurturing are both processes
intended to deepen faith. Whereas the
evangelist speaks from faith to unbelief, the nurturer and catechist speak from
faith to faith.
Catechesis tends to be used today within the
Catholic tradition (Durka 1995), while nurture is more typical of the
Protestant churches (Bushnell 1975; 1979; Green 1996). Catechesis suggests a
kind of religious instruction, whereas nurture is a metaphor based on
growth. We must distinguish the general
sense in which parents nurture their children from the more specific religious
sense we have in mind here. One may
nurture the general religious potential of a child; one may also nurture the
child within a particular religious tradition.
Thus we may speak of Christian nurture, Islamic nurture and so on,
although the word itself is from the Christian tradition.
Whereas the intention of education is to develop the
personhood of the pupil, to promote the humanisation process, the intention of
the Christian nurturer (or catechist) is to christianise the person. There is a sense in which the Christian
faith has as its ultimate intention the achievement of true humanity, and in
that sense there may be little difference between education and Christian
nurture. However, in the reality of
pluralistic modernity, where Christianity is conceived of as a religious belief
system in distinction from other similar or perhaps dissimilar belief systems,
a sharp distinction must be made between Christian nurture and education,
because even if the ultimate purpose of the Christian faith is to humanise the
pupil, the instrument of that humanisation is the Christian faith, whereas in a
pluralist society it is necessary to recognise that there may be other
instruments of humanisation. In
addition, the models of humanisation springing from various religions may
themselves vary somewhat.
Religion in
Teaching and Learning
We have now distinguished several processes of
teaching and learning, all of which have implications for the nature of the
person and the nature of time. All of
the processes are implicitly religious by nature, insofar as they imply values,
commitments, and beliefs, and in some of them the religious orientation is
explicit. We must now realise that
religion can be linked with any of these processes in an explicit way, so that
we may speak not only of training but of religious training, not merely of
instruction but of religious instruction.
Similarly, we may speak of religious indoctrination, religious
socialisation, religious schooling and so on.
To speak of religious evangelisation and religious catechising would be
a pleonism, since these processes are already explicitly religious, but we
certainly can speak of religious nurture, since nurture can be used in a
general and nonreligious sense, as we have seen.
Since religion has to do with worship and mission,
the general character of the human response to the Ultimate and to each other,
there seems little scope for religious training. On the other hand, we have seen that training may be the gateway
to personal growth, and so we may think of training in meditation or in prayer
as an example of the role of religious training.
Religious instruction may suggest an authoritative,
teacher-directed, one-way process whereby a body of information or knowledge is
passed from the ones who know it to the learner, who does not know it.
Nevertheless, there is nothing, in principle, wrong with instruction, or wrong
about religious instruction. The moral
quality of training and instruction depends upon the content. If children are instructed in a tribalistic
and prejudiced form of religious faith, that would be a misuse of instruction;
but if they were instructed in the basic beliefs of, let us say, the Eastern
Orthodox church, that would be a normal and efficient form of teaching. As was said earlier, not all person-centred,
freedom-enhancing education needs to be separated completely from other forms
of teaching, and in judging the adequacy of religious instruction we would need
to survey the total repertoire of teaching processes used. If religious instruction is open to
questioning, discussion, and criticism, and if the instructor is ready to
learn, acknowledging the exploratory character of the instruction itself, then
instruction would indeed be a partner of education. On the other hand, if the instruction is dogmatic, if questions
are discouraged, if the authority and total competence of the teacher is
asserted, then we have something like Paulo Freire's "banking"
concept of education, which under extreme circumstances may come close to
indoctrination (Freire 1972, 57).
If religion is conceived of as mere transmission, an
initiation into conformism and passive acceptance, then we could describe the
process as a kind of religious socialisation, the school being the agent. Once again, the process of person-centred
education should not be contrasted too harshly with religious socialisation. It has often been observed that
socialisation into religious awareness and sensitivity is an important part of
religious family upbringing, and children who have been denied this fundamental
socialisation, and may be surrounded by the values of the money-mad society,
may become so alienated from religion that it may prove difficult to help them
to appreciate the value of religion later in life. On the other hand, if
religious teaching consisted in nothing but socialisation, if it never rose
above mere transmission of conventional practice and belief, if the prophetic
element in teaching were entirely missing, it is hard to see how a young person
could ever identify with religious faith with any passion, integrity, or
creativity.
The Nature of
Religious Education
Having gone around the circle of our vocabulary of
learning and teaching, we are left with the character of religious education,
in the distinct and specific sense.
What is religious education as
compared to religious training, religious instruction, religious socialisation,
religious nurture and so on?
The process of religious education is whatever we
have attributed to the concept of specific education itself when the content is
religion. In other words, insofar as
education is a process of maturing persons into critical openness, a process of
learning the main purpose of which is to make further learning possible, then
religious education would be the same process, the content being religion. After all, specific education must always have some content or
other. You cannot just encourage a
critical awareness of interdependent living, spiritual solidarity with others,
and a commitment to further learning in a vacuum of content. Although the process of instruction is
particularly emphatic in its content-centred nature, every process of teaching
has its content.
There is, however, a difference in the ethical
relationship between the process and the content in the case of training,
instruction, socialisation, evangelisation and so on, on the one hand, and
indoctrination and education, on the other.
In the case of the former group of processes, the ethical character of
the process depends upon the content.
It is good to evangelise people with the beliefs and values of a noble,
life-enhancing faith, but it is bad to evangelise people into the doctrines and
values of nationalism, tribalism, or religionism (Hull 2000b, 75-85). The
processes themselves are neutral.
However, in the case of education and
indoctrination, which are located at opposite and contrasting poles of the conceptual
circle, the processes themselves are charged with ethical content. Of course, if you must indoctrinate, it is
better to indoctrinate with the doctrine of a God of love than with the
doctrine of a God of vengeance and hatred.
However, even to indoctrinate belief in a God of love is a contradiction
in terms, and is harmful to the growth of the student. Love can only exist in freedom, and the
whole point of the indoctrination process is to deprive the pupil of freedom
through a process of dogmatic deception.
What Kind of
Religion?
Different religions, or perhaps it would be more
accurate to say different forms or traditions within every religion, will find
themselves at ease with one or the other of these teaching and learning
processes. There may be religions with
a substantial commitment to ritual, a great deal of whose teaching will involve
training. There may be religions or
traditions within a religion that place an emphasis upon the authoritative transmission
of their teachings. These may tend to
adopt an instructional approach. There
may even be some religions, which the sociologists might regard as
representative of the cult or sect variety, which prefer to isolate their
members from the outside world, to expose them to uninterrupted teaching,
denying them sleep, requiring memorisation and repetition, then suddenly
changing the atmosphere into one of warmth and support and so on. Many people might describe such techniques
as being indoctrinatory. It also seems
likely that there will be some religions, or some people within religions, who
will regard it as their overriding responsibility to persuade their students to
convert to their own faith. These are
the teachers whom I have described elsewhere as being convergent rather than
divergent teachers (Hull 1986, 175-85). Rather than regarding religion as an
instrument toward the goal of education, such people will regard education as
the instrument toward conversion or commitment to the faith that is the content
of the teaching. However, it is not
really education that is being used as the instrument, for in the hands of such
religionists education has been turned into evangelisation, instruction, or
even indoctrination.
This brings us directly to the theological
question. Is there some characteristic
within the personality or cognitive structure of the believing teacher, or
perhaps some element within the nature of the religious tradition itself, which
can be regarded as generating the various approaches we have indicated? We may respond to this question by
considering the implications of each of the teaching and learning processes for
the image and concept of God. We have
already seen that the teaching and learning processes imply certain beliefs
about the nature of being human and different views about the relationship
between the teaching processes and time.
Now we can discuss a similar layer of implications, which have to do
with God.
The God whose nature is expressed mainly by training
may be a magical God, for whom the performance of repetitive manipulations is
in itself satisfying and, from the point of view of the obedient practitioner,
efficacious. The God whose nature is
best expressed through the process of instruction may be the authoritarian God
who has nothing to learn but is the all-competent, all-knowing teacher. The God behind the process of
indoctrination may also be the authoritarian God. When we say that God is an authority or has authority we have in
mind certain criteria of experience, knowledge, compassion, and so on by which
the authority of God may be recognised as legitimate. The authoritarian personality recognises no criteria other than
the word and the will of the one that speaks. ‘It is so because I say it’.
If we ask about God as understood within Christian
faith, and how such a one might be expressed through the processes of Christian
evangelism, instruction, nurture and catechesis, we will have to speak of the
many forms that the Christian faith may take. Christian faith is expressed
through a family of closely related religions.
The God of Christian evangelism, Christian
catechetics, and Christian nurture may be thought of as an exclusively
Christian God, a God who is thoroughly embedded within the Christian faith,
does not usually acknowledge any salvific authenticity in any other faith and
may also have a convergent view of the future.
This God, who is really the instructional God, may become the tribal
deity of the Christians.
Christian
faith, however, may approach education
in the specific sense, as we have
described it without trying to turn education into evangelism, nurture,
instruction and so on. This would be a
Christian faith prepared to accept an instrumental role in the service of the
person a Christian faith that maintains it was made for human beings, not that
human beings were made for it, a Christian faith willing to take up the basin and the towel and be a servant.
The God that corresponds to the education process in
the specific sense is the One who goes on learning. This is the God who rejoices in the ever-expanding novelty of the
world, the partner of the world’s experience, the participator in human
learning, the One in whom freedom, love, and enquiry are grounded (Hull 1985,
220-35). This is the God of the Protestant principle, although it is not at all
necessary to suggest that the Protestant Christian faith has a unique claim
upon such a God and upon such an educational process. The God who knows how to
teach because knowing how to learn is characteristic of Protestantism but not
exclusive to Christian faith, let alone exclusive to this kind of Christian
faith.
The expression
'Christian Education'
The expression 'Christian Education' seems to mean
at least three things. First, Christian
education sometimes means that process of teaching and learning the content of
which is made up of Christianity. It
would be clearer if this was referred to as Christian studies, and in this
sense, the study of Christianity forms part of every religious education
programme in Britain and in most European countries. It would be possible to study nothing but Christianity, although
a wide-ranging religious education would normally include studies of other
religions alongside the study of Christianity.
Second, 'Christian Education' may refer to that
process of teaching and learning the content of which is Christianity and which
has as its purpose the fostering or deepening of the Christian faith of the
students. It will be clear from the
discussion in this article that I would generally speaking prefer to describe
this as Christian nurture, although it would be pedantic to insist upon this.
However, this is probably the most widespread use of the expression. When people in the Christian churches speak
of their Christian education departments, they normally have in mind the
attempt, whether through churches or church-related schools, to transmit the
Christian faith in the context of belief and commitment. It is increasingly common today to find that
various Christian denominations also provide material suitable for inclusion
within Christian studies.
There is nothing in the argument of this article to
suggest that Christian nurture should be regarded as an unethical activity
(subject to the conditions discussed) or to suggest that it is in some way
inferior to the other processes. On the
contrary, I have claimed that the process of nurture itself is ethically
neutral, and its status depends upon what it is that you are nurturing. Far from its being unethical, I believe that
it is a calling of every Christian family and of every Christian school and
church to offer influence or programmes that will nurture children and young
people from Christian backgrounds into a deeper and firmer faith. The same
would be true for Jewish nurture, Islamic nurture, and so on, if teachers
within these traditions should choose to use the word ‘nurture’ for these
activities. However, to maintain the ethical character of these specifically
religious processes, it is necessary that narrow, tribalistic forms of religion
are replaced so that the religions themselves emerge from their competitive
relationships into a situation of mutual nurture, becoming partners in
humanisation.
The third meaning of the expression 'Christian
Education' is that education which flows from or is compatible with or is
justified by the Christian faith. This
is the sense in which I have spoken of a specific educational process which can
be contrasted with the other processes.
I am suggesting that Christian faith can not only generate and justify
processes of Christian nurture, catechetics and evangelism-'Acclaim the truth
of which is self-evident'-but that Christian faith can generate and justify an
understanding of an educational process which is not intended to create, deepen, or foster Christian faith and
commitment. It is possible for Christian faith to extend beyond concerns for
its own transmission and become the partner of an education concerned with the
growth into maturity of persons, whether they adopt Christian faith or not.
Whether any other religion could, or would want to, make such distinctions
remains a possibility but is not the subject of this discussion.
Christian Education in this final sense refers to a
Christian philosophy or theology of education.
This is to be distinguished from a theology of Christian nurture, or a
Christian theology of Christian instruction.
All of these are important tasks of practical theology, but they are
distinguishable. It is upon this
distinction that the viability of a Christian approach to religious education
in a pluralist society must rest.
Is the Relation between Christian Faith and Educational Theory and Practice Necessary or is it Sufficient?
This
distinction between necessary and sufficient relations between theology and
educational philosophy yields a number of possible situations.
First, Christian faith might be necessary but not
sufficient as a basis for education.
This would mean that no philosophy of education would be complete
without an element provided by Christian theology, but that that theological
element could not stand alone. It would
need to be complemented by contributions from other disciplines, such as
psychology, curriculum theory, and so on.
It might be the case that Islam could also provide for a basis of
education, and that this contribution was as necessary, in a multi-faith
Europe, as that provided by Christian theology. Both Islam and Christian contributions might thus be necessary,
but neither would be sufficient.
A second possible position would be that Christian
theology would be sufficient as a basis for a philosophy of education but not
necessary. That would mean that
everything required by a complete philosophy of education could be drawn from
the Christian faith, and that the same might be said of other religions and
ideologies. In this situation, a
Christian philosophy of education would be a viable and legitimate option
alongside other philosophies of education.
Christian faith could, so to speak, go it alone, but so, perhaps, could
others.
A third position would be the very strong one in
which the relationship between Christian theology and educational theory would
be both necessary and sufficient. This
would be the exclusivist position, in which there could be no basis for
education other than the Christian faith, and no rival to the Christian faith
in providing this basis. This is the
least plausible of the four positions, since it refuses to acknowledge
plurality and would maintain an absolute control over education. Moreover, the necessary and sufficient
position would return us to the Europe of Christendom. It would thus be unrealistic in the light of
the conditions in Europe and the world today.
In addition, such a position could not acknowledge the work of atheists,
humanists, and other non-religious people in education, nor would there be any
possibility of partnership with people from other religions.
The fourth and final possibility would be that the relationship between Christian theology and education would be neither sufficient nor necessary, but partial and possible. This is the position that seems best to me. It means that the Christian faith can not claim sufficiency in the attempt to provide a basis for contemporary education in Europe. Christian theology can make a contribution alongside other contributions. Christian theology needs not only the support of the social science disciplines but support from the insights and beliefs of the other participating religions in modern Europe. Moreover, even this shared and partial contribution remains only a strong possibility. Europe has come of age. It is possible to have a philosophy and practice of education that does not explicitly draw upon Christian theology or upon any religious approach. Proof of this can be found by browsing the contents pages of current journals of education and by perusing the shelves of any good educational library in Europe. Such a secular philosophy of education may not be the most desirable, but it is at least possible, plausible, and viable.
On the other hand, we must not underrate the
significance of the claim that Christian theology can make a possibly
legitimate contribution. If there is a
possibility, it is a Christian duty and calling to actualise it. Christian theology is not rendered irrelevant
and illegitimate in this discussion. Christian faith is still on the European chessboard. It does not control the play but at least it is not relegated to
the box of captured pieces. Christian faith remains a player.
The 'partial and possible' position may seem a
modest one, and so it is. Christian
faith, both theoretically and practically, is in the marketplace of educational
ideas in modern Europe. It must hope to
earn a place not for some a priori
truth it possesses, nor on the basis of some privileged position in European
history, but because of the evident value and relevance of its contributions.
These offer a benefit to Christian faith in enabling the churches to formulate
a theology that respects education, and to education in providing much-needed
support for its humanistic ideals (Hull 1997). The logic of this argument may
apply to Islam, just as it does to both Christian and Jewish faith.
It may seem strange that one should offer a
discussion of Christian theology and religious education in a pluralist Europe
without referring to the Bible. One of
the reasons why there is little obvious connection between the New Testament
and education today is the centrality of the concept of salvation in the New
Testament. Insofar as salvation is a
metaphysical reality that concerns our ultimate destiny, before God and after
death, education in modern Europe is not concerned with salvation. If we teach in the light of eternity, it is
because human personhood is not complete within the empirical lifespan, and not
because we believe that education can offer salvation in the next life. A more appropriate biblical metaphor to
describe the role of education would be that of 'flourishing'.
Grace Jantzen (1998, 156-70) remarks that the
concept of flourishing occurs frequently in the Hebrew Bible (Hos 14:3-7; Prov
14:11; Ps 92:12), but is less frequent in the New Testament. In addition to the
ideas of fullness and abundance (Jantzen 1998, 158), one thinks of auxano, to grow. Examples are the
parable of the mustard seed: 'When it is grown, it is the greatest of shrubs
and becomes a tree' (Mt 13:32). In other words, it flourishes. John the Baptist
as a child 'grew and became strong in spirit' (Lk 1:80). The child flourished.
Other relevant New Testament expressions occur in Acts 7:17 and 12:24. There
are various other terms in the New testament that suggest flourishing, such as
being fruitful (Col 1:10).
One of the
purposes of education is that individuals and communities should flourish,
should grow strong and be fruitful, should be creatively at home in a beautiful
and restored environment, in which human life and nature can together be
renewed. When we ask about the contribution
of Christian faith to education in modern Europe, we must ask what stops our
children and our young people from flourishing. It is poverty, ethnic and racial tension and hostility, lack of
community, and above all, the ethos created by the money-mad society. Those who live for money will live stunted
and selfish lives, but those who live for others in human solidarity will
flourish like the tree that is planted beside the living waters. The role of the Christian churches in Europe
is not to control education, not to domesticate it or to turn it into
something it cannot and should not be,
but to enable it to flourish.
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