What is your theology of Religious Education?

Everyone knows religion can divide opinion. There is a plurality of views, religious or otherwise, strong and less strong, about the ultimate order of things, and to the extent religions should impact on civil society. Much work and thought by religious educators since the inception of state-funded education in 1870 with Forster’s Education Act has been made to ensure publicly-funded and consumed religious education is balanced according to the prevailing attitudes of the day and political and religious status quo. In the Victorian era, this was to provide a non-denominational, non-partisan but Christian-education based on the Bible. This was palatable to the elites at the time, although there was some dissent.

Since the 1970s there has been a conscientious and self-conscious effort to create a subject that is not only broadly Christian but represents all the major religions represented in Britain, and that does not advance any particular religious position or any promotion of religion. One key principle of this broad approach is the necessity of being ‘non-confessional’. To be non-confessional, religious education teachers, classroom resources and pedagogical methods must not proselytise, or confess, any specific or general religious beliefs.

Much has been written about this and good questions abound about non-confessionalism. Is it possible to be neutral about religions? Is it possible not to promote religions in general given that religions are the object of study in religious education? Since Britain is increasingly secular, why should there even be a non-confessional study of religions?

My point in this blog is to advance another related question, and that relates to theology, which surprisingly, as I have argued before, is often ignored in debates about religious education. Indeed, religious education in England is not characterised by the content or methods of academic theology. Religious education teachers do not need to have degrees in it; syllabuses are not based upon it and students not taking A level Religious Studies would not know what it is. Yet, I think that religious education is inherently theological. Moreover, I contend, everyone has a theological position about religious education whether they would like to or not, and whether they know they have or not.

My argument is simple. ‘Theos’ (God) and ‘ology’ (the study of) is relevant to many areas of human endeavor. Christian theology as an academic discipline has evolved over the millennia along with the Christian church, but it has been primarily concerned with the study of sacred texts, religious ethics and systematics – the project of ordering religious thought into a coherent system. Other religions have theologies too. They are concerned with similar questions but use the resources of their own traditions.

While theology centres around questions concerning God, once the worth of seeking answers to questions raised by the possibility of God is assumed, it becomes apparent that everything has a theological aspect. How does God impact on the meaning and purpose of Art, for example? How may God relate to the conduct of military personnel on the battlefield? Equally, what about business ethics, ecology, racism, feminism, political systems? The list goes on. There are also theological questions raised by education, and educational questions raised by theology.

So, what would a theology of religious education be? This would be an examination and statement of how religious education relates to God, and the questions raised by the existence of God. These include knotty, but perhaps familiar problems such as: what claims about God does a particular form of religious education entail? How should different religions and their claims about God be represented and appropriated? What theological principles undergird the curriculum? What theological ideas guide the role of the teacher? Indeed, it would seem that while many things have a theological aspect, religious education, as a subject concerned with religions, may be particularly susceptible to theological problems.

Confessionalism assumes that religious education has the mandate to instruct according to religious truths. A confessional theology of religious education would therefore partially consist in a justification of those truths according to the theology of that religious tradition. For example, a broadly Christian religious education comprising a study of the Bible assumes that as the word of God, the Bible represents a key aspect of the religious knowledge necessary for everyone to know the truth.

A more perplexing theological question is raised by non-confessionalism, however. What view of God is entailed by the principle of not teaching according to a particular faith? The primacy of the individual’s conscience in religion is certainly a Christian principle that is important here, both conceptually and in terms of the political history of this pedagogical view. The liberal theological claim that all religions contain some fundamental truths about God has also been important for the development of multi-faith religious education.

When saying anything about God, we make some theological claim. Even if we contend God cannot be known, that says something about the nature of God. Similarly, if we argue or assume God does not exist, we make a claim about the ontological status of God. As religious education professionals, therefore, it is likely that we are always making theological assumptions. The question remains, therefore, what is our theology? Teachers can ask this about any aspect of their practice, big or small. Thinking this question through enriches and develops the understanding of the task of religious education. Also, I would suggest, it is the beginning of a fascinating journey.