Theology in multi-faith Religious Education: A taboo to be broken?
Freathy, R; Davis, A
Date: 28 November 2018
Article
Journal
Research Papers in Education
Publisher
Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Publisher DOI
Abstract
This article discusses the place of ‘theology’ in multi-faith Religious Education (RE) in English
schools without a religious affiliation, highlighting reasons for its sometimes taboo-status,
particularly since the emergence of Ninian Smart’s phenomenological approach to Religious Studies
in the late 1960s. The article explores a ...
This article discusses the place of ‘theology’ in multi-faith Religious Education (RE) in English
schools without a religious affiliation, highlighting reasons for its sometimes taboo-status,
particularly since the emergence of Ninian Smart’s phenomenological approach to Religious Studies
in the late 1960s. The article explores a diversity of definitions of theology within specific
professional and ecclesiastical discourses, and recasts recent debates by focusing not on whether
theology and theological inquiry should contribute to so-called ‘non-confessional’ RE, but on how
different forms of theology and theological inquiry might do so legitimately. In the process, the article
challenges binary oppositions that have traditionally distinguished the disciplines of Theology from
Religious Studies, and argues in favour of the application of various forms of theology and theological
inquiry within a critical, dialogic and inquiry-led approach to multi-faith RE. What this might mean
in practice is discussed with regard to three concepts: positionality, empathy and critique. Ultimately,
multi-faith RE is characterised as occupying a liminal space betwixt and between disciplinary,
interpretative and methodological perspectives involved in the study of religion(s) and worldview(s).
School of Education
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Item views 0
Full item downloads 0