The Role of Religion in Schools

Religion in public education is a difficult issue. Learning about different religions, beliefs, and churches is essential for understanding history, politics, literature etc. Yet, there are worries regarding undue influence, bias, and misrepresentation. A critical and inclusive religious studies approach developed in close cooperation with different religious groups and sub-groups might offer a promising approach. However, teachers involved in religious education (whether denominational or religious studies based) emphasise that an important part of their role is creating a space for students to approach existential questions on emotional and spiritual as well as on intellectual levels. On classic understandings of neutrality, this would seem impermissible. This Paper explore how a more nuanced understanding of neutrality allows to defend a version of this role. Neutrality has two elements, one relating to respect for people’s two moral powers and one relating to fairness which implies equal respect and concern for people holding different conceptions of the good life. The paper argues that respect for people’s moral powers must necessarily look slightly different when it is applied to people – like school children – that are still in the process of developing these capacities. Assisting students in developing their own conception of the good could involve creating spaces in school to explore the ideas as well as the spiritual and emotional practices of different world views. Ensuring the voluntariness of exploration as well as even-handedness and authenticity in the available guidance might overcome the danger that religious education at school leads to undue influence as well as undue state support for particular views. Whether any such scheme is defensible all things considered will, however, depend very much on its particular form and context.