Teaching religion in a plural world
نویسنده
چکیده
As a theologian working in Western Europe, religious plurality is unavoidable for me. It seems that our context can no longer be identified in terms of secularization. Competing worldviews and complementing religious stories dictate the religious landscape (and increasingly so, due to migration and global communication). The religions present in my country, however, are not monolithic and stable systems. Within these religions we find more and more different religious views, behaviors, and experiences. Religion is more and more deinstitutionalized: individual attitudes and religious styles have become dominant at the expense of church structures and traditional doctrines. This situation raises important questions for theology and education, aiming at a contribution to peace, dialogue, and reconciliation. One issue regards the aims and vocation of the theologian/educator and the relation between his or her faith and professional duties or intentions. One can opt for a detached teaching about religious points of view, for a committed teaching from a religious point of view, or for a dialogical teaching between religious points of view. The implications of these options will be explored. Another is the issue of religious identity that we seek to develop and support in students and the question what type of religious identity is desirable in a context of deinstitutionalized and plural religion. If religion is seen as the way we deal with transcendence, then religious identity should always be open-ended. In that sense, a pluralist environment can be seen as a stimulus for religious education.
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