The Integrity and Provenance of Religious Education: Modernism, Deconstruction and Critical Realism Andrew William Wright Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1995 University of London Institute of Education Abstract This thesis focuses on contemporary religious education within the state system of England and Wales. It explores the influence upon religious education of epistemology, theological and religious formulations, and educational philosophy in the context of the decline of modernism and concurrent emergence of programmes of post-modernism and critical realism. Within this developing context the question of the ability of religious education to make possible the emergence of authentic religious understanding is asked. In Part One, the provenance of religious education between 1944 and 1988 is identified as being that of the tradition of liberal modernism that grew out of the Enlightenment. The basic dualistic epistemological contours of modernism are identified, and it is shown how these give rise to a liberal experiential-expressive understanding of the nature of religion. In similar fashion, modernism engenders specifically modem forms of educational philosophy. Religious education has elected to work within this modernist provenance, making uncritical assumptions that are dependent upon modem philosophical, religious and educational debate, and as a result is unable to uphold the integrity of its subject matter. In Part Two, the nature of deconstructive post-modem responses to the limitations of modernism are outlined, together with the understanding of the nature of religion that such a reaction produces. It is suggested that the implementation of a programme of religious education within this alternative setting would also fail to do justice to the integrity of religion. In Part Three, the response of critical realism to modernism is set out, and the implications of this for an understanding of the nature of religion are explored. A philosophy of education within critical realism is proposed, together with a revised framework for religious education, one able to uphold the integrity of religion, both in terms of its intrinsic diversity and its intrinsically realistic self-understanding. Page - 2 The Integrity and Provenance of Religious Education Modernism, Deconstruction and Critical Realism Contents Introduction Agenda, Method, Structure and Evolution Analytical Summary Part One Modernism and the Emergence of Liberal Religious Education Chapter One Enlightenment: Constructing the Modernist Project 1. From Method to Ontology 2. The Dislocated Self i) Cosmology: deity v. world ii) Psychology: certainty and contingency iii) Epistemology: tradition and reason iv) Anthropology: mind and world v) The ontology ofthe dislocated self 3. Truth, Meaning and the Mirror of Nature i) Idealism and empiricism ii) The Kantian watershed iii) Rorty: mirroring reality 4. The Displacement of Value i) The place ofthe human sciences ii) Aesthetics: the subjectivity of beauty 5 .The Liberal Compromise i) Value and reality ii) Locke: the emergence ofliberalism iii) The poverty ofliberalism Page- 3 Chapter Two The Emergence of Religious Liberalism 1. Theology and the Modernist Legacy 2. Dualism and the Collapse of Deism i) Cosmology: transcendence and immanffice ii) Deism and the impasse of natural theology iii) The c,Titique of deism iv) Polarization: atheism and fideism 3. The Foundations of Theological Liberalism: Kant and Romanticism i) Kant: the tum to the subject ii) The romantic mirror image 4. The Emergence of the Experiential-Expressivism Model of Religion i) Sdlleierrnadler and modem theology ii) The extension ofthe experiential-expressive model iii) The nature of experiential expressivism 5. A Critique of Theological Liberalism i) Theological critique ii) Humanistic critique Chapter Three Religious Education: The Emergence of a Formative Tradition 1. Education within Modernism 2. Locke. Traditionalism and Society i) Pragmatic education and enlightffiment ii) Locke on religious education 3. Rousseau. Progressivism and the Turn to the Self i) Education and romanticism ii) Rousseau on religious education 4. The Deficiency of the Confessional Consensus i) The nature of religion ii) The appropriation of religion iii) The function of religious education 5. Loukes and the Problem of Modernity i) On re-reading Loukes ii) The problem ofherrneneutical distance iii) Loukes' c,Titique of confessional ism Chapter Four Religious Education and Modernity: the Liberal Consensus 1. Dualism. Legitimation and the Identity of Religious Education i) Dualism and idffitity ii) Dualism and legitimation 2. Goldman and Implicit Religion i) Linguistic confusion ii) Conceptual confusion iii) Theological confusion iv) Hermeneutical confusion v) JWD Smith: from neo-confessionalism to pluralism Page - 4 3. Smart and Phenomenology i) TIle adoption of the 'phenomenology of religion' ii) The justification of phenomenology iii) TIle hermeneutics of phenomenology iv) The foreclosure ofthe problern of religions truth -1-. Hay and Spirituality i) The spirituality ofiImer space ii) Debate: Hay v. Thatcher 5. The Inadequacy and Illegitimacy of the Liberal Consensus Part Two Deconstruction: A Post-modern Interlude Chapter Five Deconstructing the Enlightenment Project 1. Wittgenstein: Beyond The Enlightenment? i) The reactionary reading ii) The romantic reading iii) The post-modern reading iv) The critical realist reading 2. The Moral Imperative of Deconstruction 3. The Contours of Post-modernism: Foucault and Derrida i) Foucault: beyond reason ii) Derrida: the play oflanguage 4. The Pragmatics of Post-modernism: Rorty 5. On Deconstructing Post-modernism i) The priority of freedom ii) Enlightenment sub-structures revisited iii) A concluding rational postscript Chapter Six The Deconstruction of Religion 1. The Death of Theology? i) Theology and post-moderniSlll ii) Cupitt's post-modern programme iii) The religious agenda of post-modernism 2. Shoah and the Limits of Humanism i) Judaism and deconstruction: the ontological challenge ofnihilism ii) The dehumanisation ofliberalism iii) The silence ofthe drowned, the lamentation ofthe saved Page- 5 3. A Naturalistic A-theology i) Theology deconstructed ii) Nietzsche and the 'Death of God' iii) The poverty oftheological naturalism ..J.. Mysticism and the vIa Negativa i) Derrida and negative theology ii) God beyond being iii) Correlation and hyper-essentiality 5. Deconstruction. Religion and Education Part Three Critical Realism and the Integrity of Religious Education Chapter Seven The Promise of Critical Realism 1. Salvaging the Enlightenment Legacy 2. The Wisdom of Tradition i) The philosophy of science ii) Wittgenstein: beyond ostensive defmition iii) Gadamer: the historicality of understanding 3. The Self in Relation: Decentering the Metaphysics of Presence i) Relocating the Self ii) Beyond 'mental states' iii) Beyond 'private language' iv) Beyond the deconstructed self 4. Value and Ontology: The Rehabilitation of Aesthetics i) Transcending the subjectivity ofthe beautiful ii) Holism. simples and reductionsism iii) The truth of art 5. Contingent Rationality i) Realistic wisdom ii) Critical wisdom Chapter Eight Towards a Realistic Public Theology 1. Theology and Truth in the Public Realm 2. Karl Barth: The Objectivity of Revelation i) The proper object oftheology ii) The development of a theological method iii) Barth, modernism and critical realism 3. Wolfuart Pannenberg: The Critical Appropriation of Revelation i) Pannenberg contra Barth ii) Barthian fideism iii) Pannenberg: the critical appropriation offaith iv) Barth revisited Page - 6 -+. Eberhard Jungel: The Coherence of Theological Discourse i) 111e referent oftheological discourse ii) Dialectical thought: beyond reductionism and fideism iii) Anthropomorphism. metaphor. truth iv) Metaphor and theological truth 5. Theology in the Public Arena i) The theological challenge to moderni~m ii) GUIlton: the claims of Trinitarian theology Chapter Nine An Educational Framework: Realism, Contingency, Truth 1. Education within Critical Realism 2. Hirst's Programme of 'Liberal Education' i) Hirst revisited ii) The rc:jection of progressivism and traditionalism iii) Forms of knowledge and the transcendence of contingency 3. The Eclipse of Hirst: Teleology versus Formalism i) Flaws in the framework ii) Return to relativism 4. The Rehabilitation of Hirst: Evolution of Contingent Rationality i) Habermas and critical theory ii) Dewey: development and truth Chapter Ten Critical Realism and the Integrity of Religious Education 1. The Framework of Religious Education i) Summary: from modernism to critical realism ii) The status ofthe critical realist framework 2. The Structure of Religious Education i) The aims of religious education ii) The presentation of religion iii) The hermeneutics of religious literacy iv) The politics of religious education 3. Summary and Conclusion Bibliography Page-7 Analytical Summary Chapter One aims to sketch a number of key contours within modernism that resulted from the process of differentiation: i) it is suggested that a fundamental flaw within modernism is the failure to differentiate its own method resulting in the transformation of method into ontology; ii) the process of differentiation created a lifeworld focused on the image of the dislocated self: iii) the problem of the relationship between the self and the world was resolved by the picture of the mind mirroring nature: iv) this in term led to a dualistic distinction