The Challenges and Future of Religious Education

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will explore the rapidly evolving landscape of religious education in contemporary societies, paying particular attention to the enduring challenges and emerging opportunities.

A first key point concerns the pedagogical profile of religious education, not only because each tradition draws upon its own formative resources, symbolic languages, and teaching practices, but also because religion is structurally intertwined with educational questions. Religious education is neither a specialised nor a marginal component of the educational process; rather, it raises fundamental questions about it, including the formation of identity, the symbolic interpretation of experience, the relationship between dependence and freedom, and the achievement of personal autonomy.

From this perspective, education and religion are inextricably interconnected. Education cannot be reduced to the transmission of doctrinal or moral content, nor to the acquisition of technical skills; it is a process through which identity is gradually shaped through participation in shared horizons of meaning. Every educational practice entails an explicit or implicit reference to a vision of the human person, of the good, and of possible fulfilment. Similarly, religious experience cannot be confined to a set of beliefs, but manifests itself in symbolic, narrative, and ritual forms that profoundly shape how individuals understand themselves and the world (Moscato 2025).

Religious education therefore operates at the level of deep structures of meaning. It contributes to the development of trust, imagination, symbolic capacity, and moral awareness, shaping the inner configurations through which individuals organise experience and orient their choices (Fowler, 1981, 1984/1990). Research on the development of faith indicates that this process does not simply coincide with confessional adherence, but also involves complex developmental dimensions: the capacity to narrate one’s own story, to adopt different perspectives, and to integrate belonging with personal responsibility (Caputo and Rompianesi 2025, Pinelli 2025). Educational accompaniment within families, communities, and schools plays a decisive role in supporting the consolidation of personal identity.

In a context marked by cultural and religious pluralism, processes of secularisation, and growing demands for neutrality, it becomes urgent to ask which notion of formation is at stake: whether education should be understood as the delivery of ostensibly “neutral” content, or whether it should be recognised as inevitably entailing symbolic and value-laden dimensions. Religious education provides a privileged vantage point from which to investigate these questions, showing how every educational practice is shaped by anthropological assumptions and horizons of meaning that bear directly upon the construction of identity.

Against this background, a further crucial dimension emerges. Across a range of national and cultural contexts, educators are grappling with learning environments shaped by religious pluralism, cultural diversity, and increasing secularisation. These conditions raise fundamental questions about the aims, contents, and pedagogical approaches of religious education, not only within formal systems and within religious traditions, but also in informal and explicitly “secular” contexts (Jackson 2004, Seligman 2014). Concepts such as “religious literacy” offer tools for understanding how religious education can address pluralism and the role of religion in the public sphere (Dinham and Francis 2015).

Growing cultural and religious diversity calls for a reconsideration of educational practice so that religious education is not reduced to doctrinal transmission or standardised protocols but becomes a space in which students develop critical and relational capacities alongside ethical and intercultural awareness. Teaching practices must mediate between tradition and contemporary realities, fostering students’ identity formation in relation to others and to their own religious or spiritual convictions, even in pluralistic or secularised contexts (Aslan and Hermansen 2021, Kittelmann Flensner 2017).

International scholarship highlights how secularisation influences teaching and learning, reshaping the ways in which religious knowledge is transmitted and received. In multicultural and multireligious school settings, religious education must engage with diverse expectations and value frameworks, requiring flexible approaches that promote intellectual competence, moral reflection, empathy, and intercultural dialogue (Edwards and Hobson 1999, Franck and Thalén 2021).

Religious education therefore emerges as central to the integral development of the person, equipping individuals to navigate complex and pluralistic contexts and construct reflective and responsible identities (Campbell 2010). From this perspective, religious education is not reduced to teaching “what to believe,” but also accompanies individuals in processes of meaning-making, self-understanding, and orientation toward the good life in culturally diverse societies (Davie 2013).

In light of these considerations, this Special Issue invites contributions that examine religious education as an integral formative process capable of shaping the deep dynamics of personal and collective identity in response to the challenges of contemporary societies. We welcome original contributions and critical reviews that explore how religious education may engage constructively with present conditions and envisage its future trajectories.

Contributions may address, without being limited to, the following themes:

• The nature of religious experience and its educational significance.
• The pedagogical contribution of narratives in religious education, including their role in moral formation and their transversality across different religious traditions.
• Symbols, rituals, and sacred texts as formative resources and their dialogue with contemporary pedagogical contexts.
• Religious education in multicultural and multireligious societies, including emerging challenges and effective practices in schools and other formal and non-formal settings.
• Initial and continuing professional development for teachers of religious education in a secularised and multi-religious/multicultural world.
• Religious education across different traditions, with particular attention to distinctive pedagogical models, theological frameworks, and processes of identity formation.
• The meaning, role, and scope of religious education in secularised societies, including questions of pluralism, neutrality, and the public relevance of religious knowledge.

By bringing together contributions from diverse disciplinary, pedagogical, and cultural perspectives, this Special Issue will offer a critical examination of the aims, methods, and future directions of religious education in a rapidly changing world.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarising their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors, or to the Assistant Editor of Religions, Ms. Margaret Liu (margaret.liu@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purpose of ensuring their proper fit within the scope of this Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

A tentative timeline:

Deadline for abstract submission: 30 April 2026

Deadline for full manuscript submission: 31 October 2026

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References:

1. Aslan, Ednan, and Marcia Hermansen, eds. 2021. Religious diversity at school: Educating for new pluralistic contexts. Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer.
2. Campbell, Heidi. 2005. Exploring religious community online: We are one in the network. London: Peter Lang.
3. Caputo, Michele, and Tommaso Rompianesi. 2024. Bible narratives and youth religious identity: An Italian exploratory study. Religions 15: 1385.
4. Davie, Grace. 2013. The sociology of religion: A critical agenda (2nd edition). London: Sage.
5. Dinham, Adam, and Matthew Francis, eds. 2015. Religious literacy in policy and practice. Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press.
6. Edwards, John, and Peter R. Hobson. 1999. Religious education in a pluralist society: The key philosophical issues. London: Routledge.
7. Fowler, James W. 1981. Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. San Francisco: Harper and Row.
8. Fowler, James W. 1984/1990. Becoming adult, becoming Christian: Adult development and Christian faith (reprint 1990). San Francisco, USA: Harper.
9. Franck, Olof, and Peder Thalén, eds. 2021. Religious education in a post‑secular age: Case studies from Europe. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan – Springer.
10. Jackson, Robert. 2004. Rethinking religious education and plurality: Issues in diversity and pedagogy. London: Routledge.
11. Kittelmann Flensner, Karin. 2017. Discourses of religion and secularism in religious education classrooms. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
12. Moscato, Maria Teresa. 2025. L’esperienza religiosa nella riflessione pedagogica: prospettive e ipotesi di lavoro. In Religiosità e orizzonti di senso. Verso una pedagogia delle religioni, edited by Michele Caputo and Giorgia Pinelli. Milan: FrancoAngeli, pp. 151–164.
13. Pinelli, Giorgia. 2025. Female religiosity in self-narration: Some indicative elements and suggestions from empirical materials. Religions 16: 56.
14. Seligman, Adam B., ed. 2014. Religious education and the challenge of pluralism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
15. Shanahan, Mary, ed. 2017. Does religious education matter? London and New York: Routledge.

Prof. Dr. Giorgia Pinelli
Dr. Tommaso Rompianesi
Guest Editors

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• religious education
• identity formation
• meaning-making
• horizons of meaning
• narratives
• religious pluralism
• secularization
• personal autonomy
• multicultural society
• integral formation