2013 REA Annual Meeting

Com­ing Out Reli­giously
Reli­gion, the Pub­lic Sphere, and Reli­gious Iden­tity Formation

Dur­ing the last decade great thinkers like Jür­gen Haber­mas have addressed the impor­tance of reli­gion in the pub­lic sphere. In liberal-democratic soci­eties, accord­ing to Haber­mas, mutual learn­ing processes and dia­logue between reli­gious and sec­u­lar cit­i­zens should flour­ish. The state needs to take a pos­i­tive stance towards the con­tri­bu­tions of reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties and per­sons in the pub­lic domain because they can pro­vide sec­u­lar soci­ety with impor­tant and nec­es­sary sources for attribut­ing and cre­at­ing meaning.

The philoso­pher Charles Tay­lor has shown that in most west­ern demo­c­ra­tic soci­eties, belief in God is under­stood to be just one option among oth­ers, and it is usu­ally not the eas­i­est one to embrace. That most peo­ple are look­ing and long­ing for mean­ing in life is a char­ac­ter­is­tic of our sec­u­lar age, Tay­lor says. Their pil­grim­age should be taken seri­ously. It is impor­tant to encour­age them to pur­sue their search to the end and to facil­i­tate their jour­ney, while also tak­ing into account the plu­ral­ity of spir­i­tual choices peo­ple make.

What is the impact of these views on the posi­tion and func­tion of religious/worldview edu­ca­tion in pub­lic and pri­vate schools? Should reli­gious edu­ca­tion be banned from or neglected in pub­lic schools, or should reli­gion and world­view be included in the core cur­ricu­lum? Should the state deny funds to reli­giously affil­i­ated schools because reli­gious edu­ca­tion is a pri­vate mat­ter? Here the rela­tion of state and reli­gion is at stake. Should all schools rec­og­nize that cit­i­zen­ship edu­ca­tion nec­es­sar­ily includes teach­ing about and from an approach that aims at the religious/worldview iden­tity for­ma­tion of the stu­dents? In what way do reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties fos­ter the iden­tity for­ma­tion of their chil­dren and young peo­ple with an eye on their par­tic­i­pa­tion in social and pub­lic spaces?

These are the press­ing ques­tions in the new national and global con­texts that urgently need to be addressed by reli­gious edu­ca­tors and related pro­fes­sion­als. Our 2013 theme, “Reli­gion, the Pub­lic Sphere, and Reli­gious Iden­tity For­ma­tion,” can bring together par­tic­i­pants work­ing in dif­fer­ent domains of reli­gious and world­view edu­ca­tion as edu­ca­tors, politi­cians, aca­d­e­mics, com­mu­nity reli­gious lead­ers, and other stake­hold­ers from all over the world.

We will explore these com­plex, highly rel­e­vant issues dur­ing our time together in Boston.

Please join us!

Novem­ber 8–10             Boston, Massachusetts

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The Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion: an Asso­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sors, Prac­ti­tion­ers, and Researchers in Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion is an incor­po­ra­tion of the ven­er­a­ble 100 year old Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (REA), who have gath­ered semi-annually, pub­lished and taught reli­gious edu­ca­tion dur­ing this past cen­tury, and the Asso­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sors and Researchers in Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion (APRRE), a group of pro­fes­sors, schol­ars and researchers who for the past 30 years have gath­ered annu­ally as a guild of schol­ars build­ing and shar­ing a body of the­ory and research.

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