The Exploration of Religion and Education

Abstract

The theory and practice of religious education and more generally of the study of religion are entangled in unnecessary confusions. We shall see why. In the meantime it is, in my opinion, a straightforward task to exhibit the principles of the study-or as I should prefer to call it the exploration-of religion. True, there are some problems about defining religion and some questions about how understanding a religion is possible, but essentially these are marginal and have been unnecessarily inflated. What then is the study or exploration of religion?* First, religion means religions. It is elementary that in exploring religion we are at least involved in exploring religious traditions. Maybe in Britain we pay more attention to Christianity than to Buddhism, and conversely should pay more attention to Buddhism than to Christianity in Thailand or Sri Lanka. But there would be something irrational and insensitive in simply studying religion through one tradition. It would perhaps be analogous to studying political behaviour by concentrating on Wilson and la Thatcher; and forgetting altogether about Brezhnev, Mao and L.B.J. So first of all the study of religion is plural. I do not imply that every university and school should teach concerning all possible religions. Decisions about resources and selection need, obviously, to be made. Second, the exploration of religion ought not to be defined from a standpoint within the field. That is, it should not assume the existence of God or alternatively the nonexistence of God. No doubt an explorer may believe in God or come to believe in him; or may come to be a Buddhist or a Marxist. But this does not mean that individual conclusions should be built into the shaping of the study. This has two consequences. First, the exploration would involve institutional openness (for which reason it could not be easily undertaken in a totalitarian society). Second, its methodology must involve a certain style, a phenomenological style. Thus the study has to do justice to two points-firstly that the foci of religious belief and behaviour are real, and not just abstractions; secondly that their actual existence can be made subject to epoche, i.e. the suspension of disbelief or belief. To illustrate these two points: he who wishes to explore Hinduism will need to get a feel of the impact of Siva and Visnu upon their adherents. He fails properly to understand them if he cannot grasp their rich reality in the eyes of the faithful. But this grasp neither entails accepting or dismissing Hindu theology. Thus though the exploration of religion can be considered from one point of view the attempt to describe and understand a certain aspect of human behaviour, from another point of view it deals with the supernatural and mysterious foci of religious behaviour.