Abstract
This paper arises from our concerns regarding the documented increases in xenophobia in the UK and more widely around the world. This is evidenced by a rise in religiously motivated hate crimes, especially against Muslims and Jews. Our enquiry is into the potential religious education has to mitigate xenophobia and educational justification for it to do so. We suggest that a religious education seeking to mitigate xenophobia will need teachers who take plurality seriously. Such teachers will need courage as well as the capacity to navigate complexity of lives lived with a religious orientation, with open mindedness. This means not only appreciating there is a great deal to know in terms of history and the lived human religious experience but also that religious life has an existential dimension which cannot be reduced to beliefs and practices. We ask what it is that the public sphere needs educationally from religious education at this point in history. This paper concludes by making the point that religious education is uniquely placed, to bring humanity to the heart of education and in so doing mitigate xenophobia, in light of its close connection to human experience. Finally, we alert the religious education community to the significance of doing this at this time, and the danger of ignoring it, for the continued well-being of the public sphere itself.
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Notes
See e.g. Tell Mama https://tellmamauk.org/, CST https://cst.org.uk/ and Home Office Hate Crime statistics 2018–2019 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crime-england-and-wales-2018-to-2019.
In this discussion we acknowledge the current debate about the place of hermeneutics in religious education. This debate has at least two aspects. The first is philosophical in relation to internal debate within the field of hermeneutics itself, for example between Gadamer, Heidegger and Ricoeur (see Hannam 2019, pp. 63–64 for a brief exploration of the disagreements). The second concern is educational and the risk hermeneutics presents if the focus of teacher and her teaching shifts too far away from the subject of education (who is the child) and instead onto the material being studied (for further discussion of these points see Hannam and Biesta 2019 and Biesta et al. in press).
And will continue as the Purpose of RE in Living Difference IV to be published November 2021.
‘Emperor Jahangir (reigned 1605–1627) Triumphing Over Poverty’ by artist Abu’l Hasan, circa 1620–1625 (Los Angeles County Museum of Arts).
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Hannam, P., Panjwani, F. Religious education and the potential for mitigating xenophobia. j. relig. educ. 68, 385–396 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40839-020-00120-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40839-020-00120-8