Rediscovering the Past: Writings on Religious Education in Religion in Education Quarterly, 1934‐39, Raise Some Questions for Today's Religious Educators

Abstract

In the decades after the 1944 Education Act, its provision for Religious Education seemed so significant that what had gone before was largely forgotten. Yet the short period 1934‐39 saw a number of issues develop in RE that would not re‐emerge until the 1960s or even later. These issues were reflected in the new journal for the subject, Religion in Education Quarterly (REQ). They included: the problems of pupil antagonism to the subject; the issue of effective teaching and learning; early attempts at world religions teaching; research enquiry into what was happening in the classroom; and the question of values in RE. There was also an attempt to develop a vision for the role of religion in education which included divergent views of what constitute religions. These issues were swept away by the war, apart from the quest for agreement on the wider role of religion in education as a whole, not merely in the RE curriculum. By the early 1940s there was a perceived need to achieve a settlement with the churches that would deal with religious teaching and worship and also the problems in the dual system, notably the costs of maintaining church schools. This article identifies the key issues from 1934 to 1939 and argues that although UK religious educators in the thirties were essentially Christian religious educators sharing common beliefs no longer generally held, some of the questions they faced have potential relevance to the current scene where religious educators represent a wider variety of beliefs, both for research and professional classroom practice.