In the Finnish National core curricula for religions, the aims of religious socialisation have been replaced with aims of personal identity development. This shift of aims is also prevalent in many other countries, but the practical implications of it are not clear. This paper presents the results of a case study examining different ways of…

There have been persistent allegations that the South African political authorities misused religious education (RE) during the years that Christian National Education (CNE) philosophy held sway, in order to achieve political ends. In this article, an attempt is made to locate and evaluate evidence that will demonstrate whether or not the…

This paper problematises clean distinctions between secular and religious by tracing the history of modern higher education of Muslims in British colonial India. Grounded in the interpretive research tradition and with an empirical focus on the formative mid-nineteenth century, the article argues that relational notions between singular secularism…

Studies of the image of Muslims or "the Other" in general have been done to a certain extent by Western scholars showing that stereotyped images have been prevalent. In the case of Islamic studies, the long tradition of Orientalist scholarship is a clear example of this, but, as researchers have shown, generalisations and stereotypes are still…

Within the UK and in many parts of the world, official accounts of what it is to make sense of religion are framed within a rhetorics of neutrality in which such study is premised upon the possibility of dispassionate engagement and analysis. This paper, which is largely theoretical in scope, explores both the affordances and the costs of such an…

Religious education at school should be more than just the acquisition of knowledge. It should not only provide cognitive facts on how religious people act according to their moral and religious convictions, but also on how learners can gain as much profit as possible from these facts in order to build their own identity as religious "tourists".…

The article deals with the impact of Lebensphilosophie on Danish RE in the elementary and lower secondary school--an impact which is subjected to a critical analysis with special attention given to anti-intellectualism, criticism of reason and criticism of modernity as well as the romantic view of the child. The thesis of this article is that…

The paper addresses the relationship between the twin tasks of enabling pupils both to learn about and learn from religion in the state education systems of Finland and the UK. Recognising that the relationship between these two tasks is the subject of considerable confusion, it is argued that the most appropriate way to view the connection is…

In this article, the author makes some further remarks on the legacy of Ninian Smart and related issues in reply to L. Philip Barnes. In his judgement, the exchange between them is worth following up. Substantial issues are raised that are not resolved. In the Editorial of the issue of this journal in which Barnes' response appears, Vivienne…

This paper proposes that the ideas of political philosopher John Rawls could be adapted to offer a new starting point for a pedagogy of religious education (RE) in the non-denominational sector. It is argued that contemporary approaches to RE may infringe the liberal principle of freedom of belief by favouring certain methods of interpreting…

Geoff Teece has recently (in "BJRE", 27, 2005, pp. 29-40) come to the defence of modern religious education and contended that many of the criticisms brought against it are based on mistaken interpretations. More particularly, Teece accuses Andrew Wright of misinterpreting the position of Professor John Hick and of failing to appreciate the…

This article offers a German response to John Hull's recent article on "religious education in Germany and England" (in "BJRE", volume 27, issue 1). The author claims that recent developments have brought religious education in both countries much closer together than in the past and that the differences between the respective systems should be…

This paper is written from the perspective of an Anglican head teacher in the context of UK public educational policy in which managerialism is construed as the prevalent orthodoxy of reform. It seeks to bring the discipline of theology and the field of school leadership studies into closer dialogue around the theme of managerialism in a way that…

Andrew Wright has recently criticized an article penned by the author, which suggests that no good reasons have been given why religious education should be a compulsory school subject. In this article, the author explains the two misunderstandings Wright has about his position. First, Wright characterized the author's thesis as arguing "from the…

In this article, the author comments on Professor White's response to his criticisms of White's attack on compulsory religious education (White, 2004). Religious education, the author contends, raises questions of fundamental importance and complexity that compulsion is necessary if people are to create anything resembling a religiously literate…