Search Results (18)

According to European organizations, intercultural competence is considered a prerequisite for achieving social cohesion. Even though its development calls for a lifelong learning approach, the formal education system has a primary task in its development through all school subjects, i.e., the entire school curriculum. In the last twenty years, international and European organizations have emphasized the importance of religious education in developing students’ intercultural competence. The Republic of Croatia has applied European recommendations in its educational documents and defined intercultural competence as one of the fundamental competencies in the national educational curriculum. The question arises of how religious education in the Republic of Croatia helps students achieve and develop intercultural competence concerning knowledge of other religions and worldviews. This paper is focused on Catholic Religious Education in primary and secondary education. Data are collected using semi-structured interviews among nine Catholic RE teachers in Zagreb County, Republic of Croatia. Qualitative research is based on findings of a quantitative survey conducted among Catholic religious education teachers in 2022. The research questions are: (1) Why are guest lectures and visits to religious communities less represented forms of learning in confessional Religious Education? (2) Which methods are used to develop specific dimensions of intercultural competence (conflict resolution, analytical and critical thinking, attitudes)? (3) Does interreligious learning lead to changes in students’ behaviour, and what are the obstacles to interreligious learning? This paper aims to examine the methodical approaches of RE teachers in the development of intercultural competence, as well as the obstacles they encounter in the process of imparting knowledge about other religions and worldviews within Catholic religious education. Results have shown that the teaching process remains at an informational level; the development of attitudes, critical thinking skills, and conflict-resolution skills is lacking. The absence of experiential learning can largely be attributed to external factors, such as administrative obstacles and teacher’s/parents’ attitudes. Full article

Population growth in Austria means that school classes—including those in apprenticeship training—are no longer homogeneous. Apprentices, too, often come from different cultural backgrounds and therefore belong to different religions and worldviews, which makes the classes “multi” in every respect. This can lead to encounters in their everyday working life that are not always smooth because they are accompanied by prejudices and misunderstandings. Can cooperative religious education based on didactics of facilitation and TCI help to gain new insights into religions/worldviews and thus reinforce social cohesion? It has been shown that cooperative religious education gives pupils an insight into religious communities to which they themselves do not belong but does not give much concrete knowledge. It creates an awareness of being different without devaluation and the importance of dialogue that leads to a better mutual understanding and consequently to an awareness of one’s own prejudices and judgements towards others. It cannot be said that the attitudes towards religions/denominations/worldviews that were foreign to the pupils have changed with KORU but effects on social interaction are recognisable. The evaluation according to Philipp Mayring (content analysis) was carried out using a triangulation of data: Observation of religious education lessons, lesson preparations and interviews with the participating teachers and two group interviews with students and their written reflections. Full article

Challenges and tensions that arise in a pluralistic society with differing worldviews among its citizens must be addressed from the outset in school education. To enable social cohesion within a heterogeneous society, students must learn to harmonize their own worldviews with other interpretations of the world in a spirit of “reciprocal inclusivity” (Reinhold Bernhardt). This article argues that this task particularly falls within the responsibility of subjects in schools that address the existential “problems of constitutive rationality” (Jürgen Baumert), specifically religious education, ethics, and philosophy. In Germany and Austria, multiple subjects within denominational religious education, as well as ethics and philosophy, are offered in schools. When these subjects collaborate on projects, students learn to engage in dialogue with the various religious and secular, individual, and collective interpretations, perspectives, and worldviews they encounter. Since 2002/03, and in teacher training since 2011, such a didactically guided Sharing Worldviews approach has been implemented in school projects in Southern Germany through a four-phase concept. This concept can be flexibly applied to the local conditions of the school, contributes to internationalisation and digitalisation, and does not require additional teaching hours. By incorporating secular worldviews, Sharing Worldviews goes beyond interreligious learning and has also been realised digitally in other European countries. The following article begins by considering the educational requirements in a heterogeneous society (1), describes the prerequisites needed to positively influence students’ attitudes (2), outlines common foundational concepts for interreligious and inter-worldview dialogue (3), and recommends “Mutual Hospitality” as the basis for such dialogue in schools (4). The article then explains how “Mutual Hospitality” can be practically implemented in a four-phase concept of Sharing Worldviews both in schools and in teacher training (5 and 6) by tracing the origins of this concept (7). The Sharing Worldviews concept has been both internationalised and digitalised in schools and teacher education (8), aligns with the educational principles of the OECD (9), and demonstrates significant benefits in empirical studies (10). Full article

The article, which is written by an interreligious team, provides comprehensive insights into the conception, implementation and accompanying research of a project on Christian–Islamic religious education in team teaching. The aim of the project is to expand the denominational religious education lessons anchored in Austrian schools through religious-cooperative units taught jointly by a Christian and an Islamic teacher. The analysis of the teaching units is carried out in the format of design-based research and thus encompasses numerous aspects of interreligious educational processes, which are examined in this article. Firstly, the design of the project is described and the legal framework associated with it is explained in the context of the Austrian school system. Subsequently, learning requirements on the part of Christian and Muslim pupils are presented, with a particular focus on their preconceptions and attitudes towards religion in general as well as other religions. Special attention is paid to the specific framework conditions of Islamic religious education teachers, which differ in many aspects from those of Catholic religious education teachers. Furthermore, interreligious competences they consider necessary are described. Specific insights into the teaching units and the complementary research provide information about the opportunities and challenges of interreligious education in team teaching by two teachers. After this focus on the teachers, an outline of the students’ perspectives on the teaching units completes the presentation of the research results. In the concluding summary, the local theories developed from the overall project are presented and discussed. Full article

On the level of fundamental didactic decisions and hermeneutic clarifications, this article examines the possible orientations of Shared Religious Education. The prerequisite for this is the assumption that in such lessons, the opportunity should be used to empower children and young people to become personally and creatively involved in teaching and learning when different denominations, religions, and worldviews come together in education. Against this background, four modes of possible activation are proposed as a structuring aid for didactic decisions: Pupils can (a) plan appropriate forms of encounter themselves and develop ways of dealing with mutually experienced foreignness and with bridges and gaps between traditions; (b) they can be activated to engage in existential discussions about ultimate questions, (c) they can carry out small-scale “research” projects into each other’s religious practices and concepts; and (d) they can get involved in joint (ethical, ecological, neighbourly) projects that have an impact on the region around the school that may also have global applications. The model of these four modes can be represented graphically and this helps to analyse and locate existing concepts and approaches to RE. The article concludes with a closer look at the underlying concept of religion and current research. Full article

Hamburg’s “Religious Education for All” (RUfa 2.0) is a confessional multifaith approach to shared religious education and a new and unique concept in Germany and Europe. All large religious communities in Hamburg collaborate their legal responsibility for its content. RUfa 2.0 is neither grounded in neutral religious studies nor in pluralistic theology of religion but relies on differentiated learning arrangements. They enable students to learn about their own religion, to learn about other religions and to develop their religious identity through dialogue. This article outlines development, legal and organizational frameworks, goals and competences, didactical principles, teacher roles and teacher training and places them in a European perspective. Full article

This article adds an empirical contribution to international discussions on interreligious education, taking the point of view of the academic study of religion. It presents results from a Viennese research project that used a participant observation design to analyze one of the more recent pedagogical formats to deal with religious plurality at school—the so-called Interreligious Encounter Day (IED). More precisely this article focuses on the role of Ethics Education (EE) within the context of a specific IED that was organized in 2019. Along those lines, it highlights the ambiguity of IED practices at a school by presenting a threefold argument: first, the article makes the point that the IED opened up a space to explicitly make religion a subject of discussion at school. Second, it argues that—within the context of the IED—religion is constructed in a specific way that can be described as ‘school religion’. Third, it proposes that the observed IED format has the tendency to prioritize specific individual constructions of religion—especially those prompted by theology. Full article

Interreligious engagement (IE) has been experienced and theorized mainly as the pursuit of a shared respectful awareness of the beliefs, practices, and social experiences of multiple religious communities. In rare instances, it has been possible to create architecture specifically to foster IE, as in the “tri-faith” Abrahamic campus in Omaha and the Berlin House of One. The theme is: Here we are, accepting that we share the world. Another form of IE that deserves to attract more interest is multireligious collaboration in civic work (addressing homelessness, urban blight, illiteracy, etc.). Some adherents of the intrinsically cosmopolitan “world” religions are actively cosmopolitan to the extent of seeking this engagement. The theme is: Let us share the work of the world, including sharing our religiously inflected processing of what the practical issues facing us are. There is a new initiative of this sort in my city, Jackson, Mississippi, named (from M. L. King) the “Beloved Community”. An architectural thought experiment may prove helpful in articulating the ideals for such an endeavor. What would be the physical desiderata for its headquarters? Let us imagine a new downtown building, The Meeting, dedicated to housing meetings where mixed religious groups learn about civic issues and coordinate efforts to address them. Full interreligious sharing of a space seems to require a neutral design lacking any definite religious inspiration. But there are nonsectarian ways to create an appreciably special, non-ordinary space, as in courtrooms and classrooms. Could a civic IE headquarters be special, expressive of practical optimism, and contain a sufficient religious allusion to qualify as a “next-to-sacred space” in which religious actors felt supported in the civic extension of their religious lives? I offer suggestions for discussion, including (1) a pavilion-style building suggestive of being set up for a special purpose—not soaringly grandiose but with a vertical feature such as a central roof lantern; (2) at least one major porch, with benches and tables; (3) an outside water fountain with public water supply (a historical allusion to the Islamic sabil); (4) inside, right-sized meeting rooms around the glass-walled periphery; (5) a big “living room” lounge in the center, usable for larger meetings, with access to a kitchen, and with a big project board for tracking work completed and work in hand next to a large map of the city; (6) a moderate descent of several steps into each meeting room so that there is a feeling of commitment in attending a meeting and a sense of challenge in going forth from one; (7) otherwise a main floor levelness and openness facilitating movement in and out, as in a train station; and (8) upstairs small offices for religious and other qualifying organizations. Answering the aesthetic and practical questions these suggestions raise takes us into imagining civic IE more concretely. Full article

After many years of neglecting the religious dimension within intercultural education, today there is a broad consensus in Europe that religious education represents an important dimension in the intercultural education of young people. Awareness of the connection between intercultural and interreligious learning is becoming increasingly stronger and more present. One of the important questions related to intercultural education in general, and especially to the religious dimension of that education, relates to the qualification of the confessional religious education teachers with regard to the achievement of intercultural goals and especially the qualification to develop intercultural competence in students. This paper consists of two parts. The theoretical part elaborates on issues related to the development of intercultural competence in confessional religious education. The second part presents some of the results of the quantitative research (descriptive statistics methods were used), which was carried out in the Republic of Croatia and aimed to examine the attitudes and opinions of religious education teachers regarding the necessary intercultural competence for work in schools. The results have revealed that religious education teachers highly value the development of intercultural competence in students, as well as great motivation and openness of religious education teachers of confessional classes for the development of intercultural education. At the same time, they point to the relative scarcity of methods within religious teaching that promote intercultural and interreligious learning. Full article

In this paper, a conversation is initiated about the relationship between religious education (RE) and comparative theology (CT). It is the first time that these are both addressed explicitly in an international academic discourse. The authors are colleagues in a university setting of RE teacher education and are both involved in local RE research programs. Our approach is theological, and our shared interest is the existential lifeworld of children and young people. Firstly, we wish to bring RE and CT into conversation with each other, based on five common characteristics. Secondly, we describe how this conversation can possibly stimulate discussion on new pathways of intercultural encounters in the RE classroom, and this not only from a German (mainly confessional) perspective but also in light of other forms of non-confessional RE. After a (1) contextualization of RE in Germany, the authors describe (2) five central features of contemporary RE, followed by (3) five CT observations, connecting to these features. In (4), the relationship between the two is discussed as common ground for intercultural encounters and as a promising praxis and research field awaiting further development. Full article

This paper will analyse a series of dialogues that features kings named Janaka, which appear in the Śānti Parvan of the Mahābhārata. Although there is some variation among these episodes, kings named Janaka tend to be characterised as exemplary rulers who engage in dialogue with learned philosophers and who are strongly associated with the ideals of self-cultivation, renunciation, and liberation. I will argue that the name Janaka functions as a conceptual repertoire for ideas and practices associated with a particular understanding of royal authority. As I will show, the dialogues featuring kings named Janaka characterise sovereignty as both dynamic and fragile because the king is always in the process of displaying his knowledge and self-control. In this way, the different dialogical episodes featuring different Janakas conceptualise political authority differently, thus contributing to an ongoing, inter-textual and inter-religious discussion about sovereignty in ancient India. Full article

In 1996 the German Länder started the ‘mission’ to interculturalize all subjects, including religious education (RE). Interculturalizing also applies for RE taught in conformity with the oldest model for RE. In so-called ‘confessional RE’ at state schools, it is the Catholic teacher who teaches children of several classes of the same year in one denominational RE group. The Protestant teacher teaches children whose parents ticked off “Protestant RE”. How this model came into existence is displayed in a historical introduction of this chapter. However, a newer model called ‘cooperative RE’ is gaining popularity. In various schools there is ecumenical education by both Catholic and Protestant staff or multireligious education by Jewish, Christian, or Muslim teachers. New publications on this latter model have a focus on organizational matters, but also shed a light on interreligious learning. However, in this chapter the focus is on how intercultural issues are dealt with in the classroom within the first model. After all, confessional RE is still the standard and most common model in Germany. Therefore, this article will focus on Protestant confessional RE that is not organized in cooperation with Islamic, Jewish, or Catholic colleagues. Full article

Today there are many occasions when persons from various religious traditions gather together for some type of observance. These gatherings are referred to by various names: Interfaith “Worship”, Multireligious “Prayer,” Interreligious “Services,” and “Integrative Religious Prayer.” People come together to learn more about one another, to protest injustices, to mourn disasters, and to join together to work for the common good. In some gatherings, there are also people in attendance who claim no religious affiliation at all. In other gatherings, like a community ritual event designed by the religious leaders of the town the eve before Thanksgiving, there is often an assumption that all who attend “pray” to a “God” even if the content and forms of “prayer” and the names and understandings of “God” differ. However, while Buddhists use the term “prayer,” they do not have a “god” to whom they pray. This article addresses the models of host/guest, serial interfaith occasions (when people are participant observers at a gathering where each religious tradition maintains its own integrity and contributes something to the whole in a serial fashion), and “inter-riting” (when the event is designed so the people can pray together in a unified fashion, often blurring the boundaries that commonly separate each religion). The Shinnyo Lantern Floating Hawaii, a large Buddhist-designed interfaith ritual gathering that combines the personal and the global, and offers insights into guest/host, serial interfaith, and inter-riting models, will be used as a basis for understanding these issues to assist religious leaders in their interfaith work. Full article

Evidence has shown that interreligious dialogue is one of the paths to build bridges among diverse cultural and religious communities that otherwise would be in conflict. Some literature reflects, from a normative standpoint, on how interreligious dialogue should be authentic and meaningful. However, there is scarce literature on what conditions contribute to this dialogue achieving its desirable goals. Thus, our aim was to examine such conditions and provide evidence of how interreligious dialogue enables human agency. By analyzing the activity of interreligious dialogue groups, we document the human agency they generate, and we gather evidence about the features of the conditions. For this purpose, we studied four interreligious dialogue groups, all affiliated with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Association for Interreligious Dialogue (AUDIR), employing in-depth interviews and discussion groups. In these groups, which operate in diverse and multicultural neighborhoods, local actors and neighbors hold dialogues about diversity issues. In so doing, social coexistence, friendship ties, and advocacy initiatives arise. After analyzing the collected data, we conclude that for interreligious dialogue to result in positive and promising outputs, it must meet some principles of dialogic learning, namely equality of differences, egalitarian dialogue, cultural intelligence, solidarity, and transformation. Full article

This article focuses on how practical theology and interreligious education can utilize pedagogy for disrupting white supremacy and coloniality. It draws primarily from postcolonial studies, practical theology, ethics, and interreligious studies. Creating learning crucibles that privilege those most impacted by systemic injustice, incorporating their knowledges, their experiences, and their agency in countering specific oppressions, has the capacity to change how students approach scholarship, change what they consider knowledge, and change their relationship to religious leadership. This article also draws upon the scholar’s experiences teaching at Starr King School for the Ministry (SKSM), which has an institutional commitment to creating religious leaders in the world dedicated to structural change through their Educating to Counter Oppressions (ECO) philosophy. Full article