Paper delivered at the Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Brisbane, 30 November- 4 December, 1997

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN NEW TIMES

Robert Crotty

Professor of Religion Education

University of South Australia

New times have introduced Australia to the fact of multiculturalism. Our policy makers are still struggling to discover how to cope with the fact, how to foster a program whereby multiculturalism actually works. Part of that program impacts heavily on education. We are realising that it is not sufficient simply to include a segment of curricular content that can be identified as 'multiculturalism'. Multiculturalism must permeate the entire curriculum. But the Australian multicultural fact has also brought with it a multifaith society. That creates its own issues, and these must be faced in the future educational context.

We need to be clear about the phenomenon that we blithly call religion and I would like to broaden the definition to include categories that would not, in everyday parlance, be named as 'religion'. In this context, I understand religion as a unique cultural system. Like any cultural system, religion is a meaning-seeking activity. It offers to its adherents a system of significant symbols by which life can be interpreted in a very particular way.1 What differentiates religion from secular or everyday culture? Humans are less genetically determined than other animal species; unlike other animals too, they seek not just everyday order, a need catered for by secular culture, but ultimate order. Other animals seek everyday order; humans seek both everyday and ultimate order. Only humans, as far as we know, ask the ultimate questions of life: who are we? is life worth living? what happens after death? why do innocents suffer? It is religious culture, a religious symbol system, which allows humans to seek this ultimate order, to interpret the cosmos and life itself ultimately.

In this sense, all human beings who have attained a certain level of intellectual maturity, a point of rational discretion, are 'religious', using a broader definition of the term 'religion'. Whence have they derived the religious symbol system whereby they can ultimately interpret the cosmos and life? For most people, the world religions or primal religions have supplied a ready-made system, either in a conventional or in a syncretistic form. For others there are philosophical systems which function in much the same way as the conventional religions, systems such as Humanism, Existentialism, Nationalism or Marxism, even though these -isms would not normally be covered under the definition of 'religion' and presumably would not themselves seek to be included under that definition.2 I would contend that all humans who have reached a certain degree of rational discretion are 'religious'.

A religion, taken in this broad sense, will provide for its adherents an ultimate focus through which the individual can discover ultimate order. The focus can take on such symbolic shapes as God the Father, Allah, the ancient Greek pantheon, Nirvana, Brahman, the 'classless society', Existence, Humanity. This ultimate focus may therefore present itself as personal or impersonal. The world's diverse religions and some philosophical systems can thereby be considered as different ways of experiencing and achieving ultimate order. But are all these ways valid?

Just as there is a variety of possible attitudes to secular culture, stretching along a continuum from ethnocentrism to multiculturalism, so there is an analogous continuum of attitudes towards religious culture. Three major points along the continuum can be isolated. The first is exclusivism, the attitude that one religious cultural system is valid and all others are invalid and misleading, even if they might be right-minded and sincere. Midway is inclusivism, the view that one religious system is certainly valid while certain other, but not all, systems share partially and imperfectly in that valid system. Sometimes the others are seen as only inferior approximations of the true religion.

Thirdly, there is religious pluralism. It holds that all existing religious cultures are valid. They differ simply because they employ variant symbolisations of ultimate order, providing alternative foci. They relate the individual to ultimate order by a different route. If then transcendence, the ultimate order of things, is differentially conceived, experienced and consequently achieved from within the many religious systems by a number of foci, then choice between one of these systems and another is simply a matter of prior enculturation, of later choice, even of serendipity.3 I should be clear that I am not claiming that there is a universal religious tradition which underlies all religions. Each religion is unique, a unique configuration of symbols.

It needs to be said at this point that religious pluralism, taken as a stance arguing for the validity of ongoing religions, rather than as the de facto recognition that there is a plurality of religions, is a difficult attitude to sustain. Assertion of 'validity' would be the recognition that a religion performs the proper function of any religion: it provides the adherents with a focus on ultimate order. Religious pluralism in this particular sense requires considerable emotional adjustment and philosophical argument to be maintained.

But let us look to new times. Australian society is being forced, willingly or unwillingly, to confront not only the need to coexist with Asian, European and Negroid peoples but also with Hindus, Muslims and peoples who follow Aboriginal Australian religions. How would the pluralist regard these religions, side by side with systems such as Existentialism? The pluralist, to my mind, should conclude that each had produced a valid symbolisation of ultimacy, providing a variant but valid system of relating to the ultimate order. Each system would be considered valid, but incommensurable. No value judgement on other systems could be made from the vantage point of any one of them. A Christian, for example, could not adjudicate on the Hindu religious system. A Christian could only critique Hinduism by entering into the religio-cultural world of Hinduism and discussing it from within its own cultural parameters.4 In new times I see definite movement towards such religious pluralism. How could a revamped religious education curriculum respond to this societal development and sustain it? Before making a decision on this, we need to unpick more consciously this complex cultural situation. In the first place, given widespread acceptance of something approaching religious pluralism, religious identity, using 'religion' in the broad sense justified above, would not be seen as an optional addendum to societal living. It would be acknowledged as of the essence. All people who had achieved a minimum level of rationality would be considered 'religious', just as they would be considered to have the potential for literacy. If this was accepted by a growing majority in society, then religious identity would be looked upon as important and something to be cultivated by the educational process.

In this context, the religious pluralist would not need to put aside any specific, personal religious attachment, just as the multiculturalist does not need to reject an esteemed and personal ethnic culture. In Australia, a Greek can be multicultural but still preserve the Greek culture. So, too, in the scenario we are discussing, the Muslim might be an avowed religious pluralist while still maintaining an Islamic conviction.

What is required as the educational substratum, in this complex cultural situation, can be termed religious literacy. The attainment of religious literacy would entail the study of religion, not in cold objectivity but in warm breadth. It is not a matter of students studying a phenomenon that is 'out there', one which might or might not have a personal dimension. By definition, they are studying something personal. The developing youth would need to know the structure of religion, the interrelationship of its parts and need to appreciate the direction and purpose that religion could give. Certainly there would also need to be an introduction to a variety of religious traditions in order to make the theory concrete and understandable and, importantly, to give the individual parts some organic wholeness. Just as we teach students in secular education how to read (the practical skills), how to understand and critique what they read (critical analysis), how to apply these skills to different forms of literature (for example, how to read a science book as against reading poetry or reading biography) and to different literatures (for example, French Literature and Latin Literature), so we need to teach religious literacy.

What would be the content of such a course in religious literacy? The answer requires some statement on the commonality and overlap within the many religious traditions. It may be best to take a living tradition and extricate its functional elements. Let us take the example of Islam and its founder, Muhammad. Muhammad did not come from a neutral, non-religious background. The religious cultural discourse to which he originally had access included elements of tribal religion, Judaism and Christianity - exactly in what proportion is a matter of conjecture. At a certain moment he underwent a profound religious experience. From the infinite possible permutations of religious discourse he made an individual and new choice. He fashioned a new, ultimate focus by which he might achieve a personal ultimate order and ultimate direction. He attained mediation with ultimacy. Thereby, he at once experienced the resolution of his own alienation and found personal 'salvation'. While his personal situation was stabilised, the question was open as to whether that experience could be replicated. If not, then Muhammad's individual religious culture would have been aborted with his death.

The most vital element in the establishment of a religious tradition has to be this ability to replicate. Can the founding experience have a successor? Can the original mediation established between a founder and ultimacy be experienced by others? Founders are somewhat akin to artists. Most people have, at some time, profound experiences of life, nature, human relationships. These experiences are usually incommensurable and incommunicable. The artist is that gifted individual who is able to use a medium - whether it be words, paint, musical sound - to communicate a personal, original experience. The religious 'founder' is the person (or group) who has undergone a mediation process and experienced ultimate order and, most importantly, is able to establish a mediatorial system which can convey the original religious experience. Sometimes the religious founder or group may disappear from human memory, and the experience is thereafter conveyed by a myth and ritual complex or a text which functions as the mediatorial system. Thus whoever might have been responsible for Hinduism has long disappeared from the historical record, but a complex of myths and rituals (in fact, variant forms of the complex) remain which can act as the mediatorial system. At other times the religious founder remains personally identified with the system, as has been the case with Muhammad. Muhammad is remembered as the one who established the Qur'an, its traditions and the ritual surrounding it, the Islamic mediatorial system. This is the prime reason why a Muhammad is revered in Islam, why a Jesus is revered in Christianity.

The mediatorial system, the hub of the religious culture, is the organising framework of the religion's phenomena.5 The mediatorial system, the mechanism, is itself driven by a myth and ritual process. This mechanism produces a religious experience, considered to be comparable to the original mediation experience. In the case of Islam the system (consisting of a network of Islamic sacred stories and ritual) generates the experience of islam, submissiveness. The same mechanism also establishes a social structure, a group of like-minded people who share the experience and are socially stratified accordingly. Adherents become muslims or 'submitted ones', sharing the outcome of the common experience but not always in a uniform manner. Sometimes stratification dictates that certain adherents are hierarchically superior either because of birth or vocation. In this way a religious tradition can identify, according to the particular tradition, priests, ministers, prophets and other elite. The entire system and its concomitant religious group are safeguarded by a code of ethical practice, a catalogue of ordered beliefs or creeds and, in literate societies, a text.

It must be made clear that the phenomena described above are not discrete realities. They are constructs which are put together by an observer, and perhaps more especially by a Western observer. They overlap; they are approximations of the ineffable experience, of the reactions of religious believers, of the unique structures of religious communities. Not all the phenomena mentioned are to be found in all religious traditions. Yet, if we want to describe religion, and if we want to teach religious literacy, they are valuable constructs.6Accordingly, from what has been said of Islam, it seems to me that we can describe, in an approximate manner, any particular religious tradition by analysing its phenomena. I would insist on the applicability of the phenomena to all systems included under the broad rubric of 'religion', as described above. These phenomena would therefore apply to Marxism or Existentialism as well as Hinduism. We can identify the key phenomena as:

EXPERIENCE: All religions affirm the importance of a specific inner experience. In some way the religious experience is the outcome of the adherents of a religious tradition making contact with ultimate order, by means of the focus provided by that tradition. It is primarily the religious experience that differentiates any religious tradition.

BELIEFS: Beliefs are religious teachings about God or gods, about impersonal world-meanings, about the ultimate focus that is central to the religious tradition, about sacred people from the past, particularly the founder, about the human person generally and the nature of the world, about how humans can find salvation, in the sense of self-definition and self-liberation, and achieve what they most want to achieve. Beliefs are the rational outcome of the religious experience which instinctively stimulate a knowledge that is deemed to be revelatory.

STORIES: These include stories about the world and human beings 'in the beginning', about the original act of religious mediation, before things were as they now are. Stories about the 'beginning' are sometimes called myths while other sacred stories are classified as legends, stories about influential sacred people in the religion's tradition, or parables, fictional stories, usually about everyday topics, which carry an important message for the followers of a religious tradition.

RITUAL: Religious people not only think about religion or speak about their religion but they act it out, and this sacred action tends to become fixed, stabilised and replicable. This sacred action or ritual is capable of recreating the founding experience amid the believers. Life-crises (such as birth, death, marriage, puberty) are placed within the context of specific rituals in order to bring the religious person, at these vital yet dangerous moments, into contact with ultimate order.

SOCIAL STRUCTURES: All religions organise adherents into social groups and we can perceive certain features of the structure of those groups such as sacred space (certain buildings and even parts of the landscape used by the group take on a special religious importance), sacred times (religions remember the dates of sacred moments in their history and relive them), sacred persons (religions organise people and give special roles to some men and women).

TEXTS: In those societies that are literate, religious writing plays an important role. Traditions associated with the foundation of the mediation, key points of development and change are recorded in writing and become themselves part of the religious structure. Sacred texts allow a religious tradition to be portable.

ETHICS: Every religion has a code of approved conduct for its social group, although what is considered to be good or evil will not be the same in all religions.

SYMBOLS: All religions have symbols. The more important symbols act as visual summaries of the whole religion and are capable of activating the founding experience.

What is broadly meant, therefore, by religion can be described as a system which weaves together experience, beliefs, stories, rituals, social structure, texts, ethics and symbols. A factual description of the phenomena that make up Christianity, Hinduism or Humanism could be adequately achieved by means of these categories or components. Within this woven web of components, this religious 'world' as it were, believers can live a life which achieves ultimate purpose, direction and meaning. This template of a religious world, analysed by the components, is precisely the realm of knowledge into which the student needs to be inducted. The student needs to understand it in itself, to respect it as separate from the world of science or the world of secular literature or the world of aesthetics. It is specifically a religious world. Most importantly, students need to see it as a personal world in which they are necessarily implicated. They are studying their own personal situation.

The educational outcome of a religious education curriculum, geared to this task, should be a 'fluency' in dealing with such realities as myth, ritual, religious experience, religious ethic, together with the ability to give concrete examples from living religions. By secondary level, the student should be able to pick up the Bhagavad Gita, the Gospel of John, the Qur'an or, in the case of the more perspicacious student, Das Kapital and appreciate its religious form and religious rhetoric as it would be appreciated by the adherent. The same student should be able to appreciate that Jews, in their Passover ritual, are given the context in which they can achieve the Jewish experience of liberation from slavery, that the rituals associated with the hajj to Mecca reproduce the founding experience of Muhammad for Muslim believers, that a flag-raising ceremony on Australia Day could well reproduce for an avid Nationalist the experience of the founding event of national belonging and identity.

This form of the study of religion should be provided by all educational institutions within Australian society, state or private. It should be regarded as essential as literacy or numeracy in secular education, and indeed it could be compared analogously to the teaching of English literacy, as one of the overarching values that holds the secular, multicultural society together. For the pluralist, religion, in the broad sense, binds society together even more profoundly. Ignorance of its mechanism and inability to use it effectively would be an admission of educational failure in a society. The best curriculum and the best pedagogy should be employed.

At the same time youth should not be left in a religious vacuum, but require instruction in one or other 'religious' tradition. The literate person obviously requires a mother language and mother literature. This second phase constitutes the second and complementary aspect of the study of religion. It has been traditionally known in Australia as religious instruction.7 This would not be the primary concern of the state system, although it could provide the venue. The analogue here would be the teaching of a community language and its attendant culture, such as some Australian Greeks do in their Saturday schools. Primarily, this religious instruction would be the prerogative of family or religious institutions (including private religious schools) but could include all those institutions which would claim responsibility for inducting youth into those other systems that come under the broad heading of 'religion'. The best curriculum and the best pedagogy should be employed to bring youth to an understanding and practice of one or other 'religious' tradition.

How can a choice be made? It is similar to asking how the young Greek chooses to study Greek? Because of birth, because of familial pressure, becaue of upbringing, because of some degree of choice. There should always be the acknowledgement that the youth has the prerogative to change from one 'religion' to another, perhaps one to which there has been superficial exposure in the religious literacy course. The analogue would be the Greek student who decides to drop Greek language studied at Saturday morning class and take up Vietnamese. Whatever of parental reaction in this case, only pluralist or inclusivist parents would be at ease with the decision to change religious orientation, but exclusivist parents presumably would not have accepted the religious literacy curriculum in the first place.

What should this complementary curriculum in religious instruction contain? It should include, most importantly, exposure to the founding religious experience. The Muslim student should be inducted into the experience of submissiveness by taking part in Friday services in the mosque; the Christian student should be involved in eucharistic liturgies in which it was patent that, as the believing group ate the bread and drank the wine, it was identifying with the self-giving of Jesus for others. Other examples would include experiential involvement within key rituals associated with philosophical systems.8The root religious experience, which gives rise to revelatory knowledge, should be subsequently expounded and explained. At this point I have chosen to concentrate on Christianity for my examples. Christian students should be able to name the experience of Christian love and self-giving by reference to the gospels before all else. This will require sensitive treatment of texts by skilled teachers who are aware that they are not teaching history but religious awareness through literature. I would see the religious instruction course requiring an introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures which clearly avoided the pitfalls of historicism and scientism. Some of the movements in the field of Christian biblical studies, which have tried to reverse the trend of the Enlightenment's elevation of history and science to the status of superior knowledge and truth, must be taken on board with new enthusiasm.9 In some cases difficult choices will need to be made between following destructive mandates from religious authorities on high (who tend to be obedient children of the Enlightenment) and teaching religion as it should be done. The religious instruction curriculum, with its admixture of the experiential and cerebral, must be culture specific. Australian Christians of the late second millennium cannot be educated in a cultural vacuum. There is no culture-free religious experience and no culture-free understanding of the Scriptures. In experiencing a eucharistic meal, the student must recognise the self-giving of Jesus by application to this present needy world. The first chapters of Genesis must be understood in their original setting and then its message and experience transferred to the Australian cultural setting of the late 1990s. Likewise, the Gospel of Mark must be understood in its original setting and then its message and experience must be transferred to the Australian cultural setting of the late 1990s. The young must be inducted into a Christian world which is embedded in the cultural world of their present place and time.

But how does the reality of present curricula dovetail with these propositions? I will take two examples. The first is Guidelines for the Religious Education of students in the Archdiocese of Melbourne.10 This is intended to be a comprehensive curriculum document, covering all aspects of a young person's education in religion within a Catholic school. It defines religious education as 'that form of ecclesial action which leads both communities and individual members of the faithful to maturity of faith' 11, while its focus is said to be the 'deeper and more systematic knowledge of the person and the message of our Lord Jesus Christ' and the development of 'an understanding of and relationship with God'12. The ultimate aim of the course is a 'synthesis of faith and life'13. What we are dealing with is clearly religious enculturation.The document certainly recognises that Australia is a multicultural and multifaith community. However, the religious education envisaged within the document is to take place within a 'Christian environment which permeates all aspects of school life' and here 'Christian' is meant to be equiparated with 'Catholic'.14 This form of religious education is intended to be carried out, from the side of the teachers, as a 'service to the church', 15 while the actual teaching is linked with liturgical and other denominational practices.16 This latter aspect certainly fulfills part of the enculturation process.However, there is a colonial mentality demonstrated towards the multicultural and multifaith ambiance in which the students find themselves. One revealing statement is that an 'exploration of the differences, rituals and symbols in a diversity of cultures can enrich the way students understand how Catholics celebrate sacraments'.17 Presumably the curriculum directs the students outside, beyond the cultural parameters of Catholicism, but only to serve the purposes of Catholicism. When it comes to dealing with, for example, Aboriginal Australian spirituality, it is clearly stated that the Catholic tradition must involve Aboriginal people and celebrate their rich and diverse traditions. Students are encouraged to look at Aboriginal culture and religion. But it becomes evident that what is being considered are primarily Aboriginal Christian traditions and ritual. When the original religious traditions of Aboriginal Australians are reviewed we find this statement:

It is intended that students will become familiar with the identities and roles of Spirit Ancestors in the Aboriginal dreaming...(and) know that for many Aboriginal peoples, the Dreaming stories are a means of educating young people about creation, the environment, and about values, beliefs and rules for living. (They will) become familiar with the ways in which the dreaming continues to influence the lives of Aboriginal peoples today (and) understand the significance of sacred sites for Aboriginal peoples...(and) become familiar with some contemporary Aboriginal writers and artists who are communicating beliefs and truth about caring for all creation.18This is done to increase Catholic 'appreciation of our connection to all life forms, and ...help clarify our Christian beliefs about creation'.19 Aboriginal culture and religion are being used for the purposes of a superior religious culture. The model that underlies the document is an apartheid one. The conscience and social needs of others are certainly acknowledged. But the home denomination is seen to be superior. The educational focus is inward looking. Thus, the document states that '[c]ommunities of faith [ie.Catholic ones] are called to support one another and so fulfill the law of Christ'.20 At the same time 'the Church is called to be a sign and instrument of God's justice', 21 that is to other people outside the Catholic community. An enclave is being encouraged.The document attempts to achieve too much. While being unshamedly a curriculum aiming at religious enculturation, it attempts some form of education in religious literacy, admittedly in passing. The former requires an experiential dimension and, in fact, the syllabus does this well. However, when it comes to the literacy component it excludes the experiential and reverts to a purely cognitive approach - elements are extrapolated for the service of the superior religion. The result is the apartheid model.

The second document to be considered is the Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia's (SSABSA) Religion Studies P Syllabus. 22The syllabus explicitly sets out to be an exercise in religious literacy. Because of the sensitivity of teaching religion in a secular setting, the document is adamant that no experience of religion is appropriate within the subject confines. It therefore asks solely for cognitive skills to be employed and requires the student to engage an 'inquiry' approach, such as the sociologist might use.23 The objectives of the Religion Studies P syllabus are to facilitate 'insights into the nature of religion, ways of examining religious ideas and two major religious traditions'. 24 The rationale asserts that it is not possible to understand and appreciate the story of humanity without some knowledge of the part religion has played and continues to play in human experience [and therefore religion studies] has a significant claim for inclusion in the curriculum of religious education. 25In this context 'story' is history, the scientific construct of the historian. To achieve this, an 'objective approach which neither promotes nor denigrates religion or religions' is deemed requisite. 26The outcome is that we have a course which is sociohistorical, with a philosophical introduction that fits into the phenomenological mould. Its avowed intention is not to make the student 'religious'; in fact, the syllabus demonstrates an aversion to the experiential. However, in the definition of the religious literacy course as discussed above, that is the very point. The student is already religious; the curriculum should raise religious consciousness and ability.

These two documents can be said to point in the right direction. However, there needs to be some fine tuning to adapt them to the purposes of the dyad of religious literacy and enculturation. However, the root cause of the problem within the curricula is the inability to distinguish the two phases of the dyad in the first syllabus and the deliberate exclusion of affectivity in the second. Neither would achieve the curricular aims discussed earlier.

I consider that there is still much to be done in formulating a religious education curriculum for the new times ahead. If we are to bring about a truly multicultural and religiously pluralist society then we must apply ourselves yet more to the task of constructing the requisite curriculum.

1 R. Crotty (1992), 'Multiculturalism and Religious Pluralism: Interaction and Overlap' in N. Habel (ed), Religion and Multiculturalism in Australia (AASR: Adelaide), pp.30-46. 2 I would be particularly mindful of Marxism here. When Marx described religion as the 'opiate of the people', he had in mind the conventional religions of his own experience.3 A strident example of how Christian thinking is developing these notions can be found in the works of John Hick. See especially An Interpretation of Religion, Macmillan: London, 1989. Hick has many critics.

4 See F. Hanson (1979), 'Does God have a Body? Truth, Reality and Cultural Relativism', Man, vol 14, pp. 515-529.5 R. Crotty (1995), 'Towards Classifying Religious Phenomena', Australian Religion Studies Review, vol. 8, pp. 34-41.6 For an attempt to use these phenomena as organising categories to teach religious traditions at secondary level see M. Crotty et al. (1989), Finding a Way. The Religious Worlds of Today. Collins Dove: Melbourne.

7 On the history of the distinction between religious instruction and religious education in South Australia see R. Crotty (1986), 'The Teaching of Religion in a Secular School: the South Australian Experience', Religious Education 81, 2, pp.310-321.8 This will raise immediate problems for those private religious schools in Australia where, for example, Christians, Jews and Muslims might be taught side by side. The 'common' religious curriculum which is in vogue might be able to be adapted to the religious literacy course, but specific instruction in the different religions cannot be avoided.

9 See R. Crotty (1996), The Jesus Question: The Historical Search, HarperCollins: Melbourne, esp. chs. 1 and 2.10 (1995), Catholic Education Office: Melbourne11 p. 1312 ibid.13 p.1414 pp. 43-4415 p. 1516 p. 2117 p. 3318 p. 10819 p. 10820 p. 7721 p. 7822 (1986; reprinted with supplement 1996), Peacock Publications: Adelaide23 p. 224 p. 125 p. 2. This rationale actually quotes form the 1973 Steinle Report , Religious Education in State Schools.

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