Oderisia Knechtle (1900-1978): a pioneer for a holistic approach in religious education

Abstract

Sr. Oderisia Knechtle developed the symbolic approach to religious education while working with disadvantaged and disabled children in Germany from 1925 onwards. Her fame spread from the 1960s, after members of the swiss Grenchener Kreis, who were engaged in the renewal of religious teaching, encouraged her to return to her home country Switzerland and dedicate her activities to courses for catechists and teachers. Didactically innovative and theologically conservative, and not part of the academic establishment she got little academic reception, not even through the revival of the symbolic approach in religious education since the 1980s which now has become part of the mainstream.