"This book offers a comparative analysis of religious education and state policies towards religious education in seven different countries and in the European Union as a whole. Most of the cases studied have not been presented previously in the English speaking world. The comparative contextualization of the different countries studied here, Muslim majority, Orthodox Christian, Jewish and secular (or laic) is also new. The challenge addressed by the book's different studies, is quite simply if religiouseducation can itself be a vehicle for civic enculturation and the creation of ties of belonging and meaningful solidarity across different ethnic and religious communities in the contemporary world. In many of the countries studied, the state and the program of state-making was associated with one religio-ethnic community and then the question remains if religious education that privileges that religious community can provide such shared terms of meaning for members of different communities. This is the challenge faced by such countries at Bulgaria, Israel, Malaysia and in a slightly different way (facing not religious diversity but ethnic difference), Turkey. The case of Cyprus, by contrast, is one of a country actually split along lines of ethno-religious difference. Additional studies of the connection between religious education and the terms of citizenship in the EU, France and the USA provide important contrasts to the challenges facing us as we seek to educate our citizenry in an age of religious resurgence and global politics"--
The essays in this volume offer a groundbreaking comparative analysis of religious education, and state policies towards religious education, in seven different countries and in the European Union as a whole. They pose a challenging and crucial question: can religious education effect positive civic change and foster solidarity across different ethnic and religious communities?
In many traditional societies and increasingly in secular European societies, our place in creation, the meaning of good and evil, and the definition of the good life, virtue, and moral action, are all addressed primarily in religious terms. Despite the promise of the Enlightenment and of the nineteenth-century ideology of progress, it seems impossible to come to grips with these issues without recourse to religious language, traditions, and frames of reference. Unsurprisingly, countries approach religious education in dramatically different ways, in keeping with their respective understandings of their own religious traditions and the relative saliency of different ethno-religious groups within the polity. Religious Education and the Challenge of Pluralism addresses a pervasive problem: in most cases, it is impossible to provide a framework of meaning, let alone religious meaning, without at the same time invoking language of community and belonging, or of borders and otherness.
This volume offers in-depth analysis of such pluralistic countries as Bulgaria, Israel, Malaysia, and Turkey, as well as Cyprus--a country split along lines of ethno-religious difference. The contributors also examine the connection between religious education and the terms of citizenship in the EU, France, and the USA, illuminating the challenges facing us as we seek to educate our citizenry in an age of religious resurgence and global politics.
