Within political theory of conflict, religions are regarded more likely as a conflict-increasing than a decreasing factor. Currently there are three main views of the conflict-increasing potential of religions.[1] The first view has been called the position of the Primordialists, whose main proponents are Samuel Huntington, Gilles Kepel, and Bassam Tibi.[2] The Primordialists think religions are causally related to political conflicts. According to Huntington, one of the central representatives of this theory, the power vacuum after the end of East-West conflict was filled up by clearly defined religious-cultural allied blocs, such as Western Christianity, Islam and Asian Confucianism, which inevitably drive their followers into violent conflicts. Huntington is heavily criticized by the second view, labelled the Instrumentalists, mainly presented by Dieter Senghaas, Thomas Meyer, and Graham Fuller[3] who maintain that religious attitudes are being instrumentalized by violent elites in order to intensify ongoing political or economic conflicts. Under existential pressures people are particularly susceptible to simplified, fundamentalist messages of salvation and religious stereotyping. Finally, the third view, the Constructivists, whose main protagonists are Ted Hopf, Lewis W. Snyder and Valery Tischkov,[4] agree with the Instrumentalists on the political instrumentalization of religious attitudes but assert that political elites have to convince their followers first.
Religious attitudes may indeed increase prevailing conflicts by polarization and radicalization, especially as far as value and identity conflicts are concerned. Furthermore they might destroy any communicative relationships between the conflicting parties by religious stereotyping and condemnation. There are two main factors that are commonly taken to prevent the political instrumentalization of religion and to decrease religious conflict potentials: religious education and interreligious dialogue. In the following I want to link both factors to a systematic approach to interreligious learning. The key question in this context is: How can religious and interreligious learning in particular contribute to an adequate understanding and resolution of both properly religious conflicts as well as conflicts where religion is instrumentalized? The thesis I want to develop in this paper is that the internal structure of religious consciousness, as represented by certainty and diversity, facilitates both the creation or intensification of conflicts as well as their mitigation or resolution. Once the internal complexity of religious consciousness as an “interpretive” stance is fully in view, it also becomes clear that religious education and interreligious communication and learning are primary prerogatives. To argue this claim, I first expound the relevant concept of religious consciousness (section I). In section II, I explain what this conception of religious consciousness implies for a future implementation of interreligious dialogue. In section III, I present systematic structures of religious learning based on the conception of religious consciousness sketched in section I. Finally, in section IV, I combine the results of section I, II, and III to describe what interreligious learning should aim for on the suggested “interpretive” view of religious consciousness.
It is controversial whether religion, in view of its historical and phenomenological diversity, can at all be defined in a general sense. There is an ongoing debate about the adequacy of substantial, functional, or pragmatic definitions of religion, resulting occasionally in the verdict that religion cannot be defined at all. Nevertheless, in order to discuss the role of religion for conflicts, one must proceed from a general concept of religion, so I suggest, for this purpose at least, we need to operate with a notion of religion that combines two perspectives. The internal perspective of religion as religious consciousness (certainty) must be joined with an external perspective on religion as a highly pluralistic phenomenon (diversity) that nevertheless exhibits some common traits. That being said, such a concept of religion can be be established only from within a certain religion, otherwise it would not be able to work out the specific meaning of religion.
This understanding of religion relates to two basic insights of Western theological-philosophical discourse: 1) Human existence differs from other modes of being in that it is essentially hermeneutic, that is, it consists in continuous self-interpretation; and 2) Since Kant, it is understood that any cognition of reality always relates to basic conditions of subjectivity and is therefore perspectival.
The protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher transferred both insights into an interpretive understanding of religion. In order to distinguish religion from metaphysics and morality, that is, from the supernaturalistic and rationalistic paradigms for its understanding, Schleiermacher conceived religion as a distinct region of self-experience, which, in view of the elementary passivity of its makeup, is grounded in “feeling” as an “immediate self-consciousness.”[5] Thus, according to Schleiermacher, religion represents a mode of self-experience and correspondingly self-interpretation of finite subjectivity on the foundation of ultimate certainties about man and world, based upon a constituting reference to a transcendent ground of reality. As an individual life-determining certainty, faith arises from irreplaceable, individual disclosure experiences conveyed by positive religions. According to Schleiermacher, it is crucial to see that these disclosure experiences, as well as the formation of religious certainty itself, remain contingent and indeterminable.
In the light of these specific disclosure experiences (e.g., the revealed significance of Jesus Christ for Christianity), religious individuals seek to interpret themselves, the world, and life in general. With regard to the presupposed transcendent foundation of reality, every religious self-understanding remains provisional and fragmentary. The differences, although being interpreted, cannot be transformed into an ultimate unity. Religious consciousness understood as a “consciousness of differences”[6] entails an internal reflexivity: aware of its own constructive character, faith is equally aware of its fundamental perspectivalness and thereby of the irreducible plurality of religious world views. Due to this internal reflexivity, religious individuals can differentiate themselves from their own convictions and thus differentiate between an internal and an external perspective on their religion. Religious consciousness is therefore essentially “bifocal.” Religious conflicts often arise from mixing up the internal and external perspective.
Acknowledging the fundamental perspectivalness of any certainty does not mean to deny the right of truth claims since any cognition of reality is considered to be perspectival. Furthermore religious statements also include intentional and cognitive claims about life, humanity, and the world in general, interpreting them with reference to transcendence and individual disclosure experiences. Therefore, religious certainty both entails truth claims and, by changing perspectives, can relate to the fact that there are also other certainties with corresponding claims.
Nevertheless, religious certainty is dependent on communication in order to clarify and ensure its own self, world and transcendent understanding. Religious consciousness therefore is by its very constitution geared to dialogue, which leads to the issue of interreligious dialogue.
Ecumenical dialogue as well as interreligious dialogue or “interfaith dialogue” seem to have arrived at a turning point, even marked as the “end of dialogue,”[7] which is connected with the fact that up to now interreligious communication mainly focused on the issue of consent and reconciliation by leaving actual differences aside. The understanding of religious consciousness I sketched in the previous section would suggest precisely the opposite. If we understand religious consciousness as a consciousness of differences, intra- and interreligious differences are acknowledged as a presupposition of peaceful coexistence and cooperation among different religions and religious communities.
The crucial problem for interfaith dialogue with a pluralist outlook is how to connect the validity of one`s own religious certainty with a positive appreciation of other religions. This is the task of a “theology of the religions” insofar as theological thinking comprises both the internal perspective of a positive religion in the sense of ultimate certainty as well as the external perspective on religious diversity. There is an ongoing debate on how to conceptualize such a theology of the religions,[8] a closer consideration of which goes beyond the scope of this paper. For the purpose of introducing interreligious dialogue as a precondition for interreligious learning on the basis of an interpretive understanding of religion, it will suffice to introduce briefly the three main models defining interreligious relations:[9]
Religious certainty, as in aiming for ultimate certainty, is, in view of the internal perspective of religious individuals on their religion, necessarily exclusive. One cannot be a Christian and a Muslim at the same time. But, since religious consciousness is always aware of its own perspectivalness and the contingent character of its disclosure experiences, it also entails a principal recognition of other religious certainties and thereby a principal recognition of the independence of other religions, while neither relativizing them inclusively nor transforming them into an ultimate unity. Thus, a theology of the religions must be unfolded in the sense of a strict pluralism, that is, as a “hermeneutics of differences”[10] in the interests of a mutual clarifying and ensuring of the religious understanding of self, world, and transcendence. Real interfaith dialogue can only take place if the partners involved are willing to concede to each other the right of religious exclusiveness and self-definition, which finally leads to a mutual granting of religious freedom.[11]
All in all, interreligious dialogue includes a continuous dispute about conflicting truth claims that should not be harmonized rashly. It is on this basis of a mutual recognition of difference, even strangeness, that the strife for common ground and ethical consensus may fruitfully contribute to one’s own and others’ religious self-understandings. This of course requires a well educated and enlightened religious consciousness.
Political instrumentalization of religious attitudes, as well as crucial tensions within interreligious dialogue, arises from the fact that religion (religious certainty) is strongly related to the question of identity, which is also a central pedagogical issue. Therefore I will first set out the interrelation between identity, religion, and education before I discuss basic structures of religious learning. Finally I will turn to the issue of inter-religious learning.
Identity itself is generally considered to be complex and dynamic, shaped in a continuous process of combining mutually modifying self-interpretations, external attributions, functional and situational demands.[12] Thus, individual as well as social identity is a highly constructive phenomenon (patchwork and multiple identities), especially since traditional patterns of identity ascriptions are no longer taken for granted in a pluralistic setting. Since identity is to be realized in a coherent way of leading one’s life, synthesizing and orientating certainties are required. An enlightened religious consciousness that knows itself as a consciousness of differences can contribute to a successful treatment of differences and fragmentary experiences of identity by interpreting them in the light of certainties that are known to be both ultimate and perspectival.[13]
Developing an identity is a central task undertaken during the period of adolescence; therefore, this development should be stimulated and accompanied by pedagogical action.[14] Since religion is an important factor in identity formation, adolescents will fare better who are given the chance to engage with the orienting and spiritual potential of religious self-understanding as part of the conditio humana. Therefore the argument can be made that religious education should be an integral part of public education and consequently a distinct subject in school. Nevertheless it should be stressed that the successful formation of religious consciousness and even religious identity can never be produced by instruction, it always remains contingent upon the response of the learner. How then can religious learning take place?
Within educational contexts, religion should be treated as the complex bifocal phenomenon that it is, namely a life orienting, ultimate certainty of a transcendent self-understanding and a world-understanding, resulting from individual disclosure experiences, aligned with a certain way of leading one`s life, and related to a system of symbolic communication and ritual practice. In other words, religious education and learning should combine the internal and external perspective on religion, instead of operating with the traditional alternative of “teaching/learning about religion” or “teaching/learning from religion.”[15] Teacher and pupils therefore have to differentiate between religious certainty itself and its corresponding interpretive, symbolic, and ritual system, including a change of linguistic perspectives from “speaking religiously” to “speaking about religion.”[16] In this fashion pupils will not only be able to widen their knowledge and understanding of religion, but also to improve their own (religious) self-understanding and, last but not least, learn to deal constructively with divergent religious points of view and truth claims.
This double differentiation or change of perspectives requires a fairly sophisticated understanding of religion; the principal aim of religious education, therefore, is to acquire religious competence. Religious competence comprises the following sub-competences:[17]
Corresponding to the view of religious consciousness as an interpretive consciousness of differences (see section I), religious competence is also mainly to be understood as a competence of coping with differences between oneself and others, traditions and situations, different forms of religious expression, perspectives, claims, and so on. How then can religious competence be at all taught and learned?
Every learning process basically depends upon the relationship between teacher and pupils. With regard to the self-related aspects of religion, this is of central importance to religious learning, especially insofar as the presupposed religious or denominational affiliation of the teacher is concerned. On the one hand, the teacher should clearly express his or her affiliation in view of the internal perspective of religion. On the other hand, he or she should equally respect the pupil’s religious or nonreligious self-determination and corresponding religious or nonreligious beliefs. The teacher is to give an authentic and convincing example of how one might combine an internal and an external perspective on religion, illustrating that religion accommodates both certainty and the acknowledgement of diversity. Since pluralism is already a constitutive dimension of religious learning, religious education self-evidently opens up to interreligious learning.
The pedagogical setting for interreligious learning presents a particular challenge for the development of religious competence as the fundamental competence to cope with religiously grounded differences. Since adolescents are only in the process of acquiring religious competence, they cannot be regarded as experts in their respective religions. Therefore it should be stressed that models of interreligious dialogue, as for instance the diversity-affirming approach sketched in section II, cannot be applied directly to settings of interreligious learning. Nonetheless, any religious education or teaching about religion presupposes a specific view of religion and interreligious relationships, which is to be demonstrated by referring to two current models of religious education in Europe.[18]
Religious studies approach (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Scotland; modified: England and Wales). Religious education is usually a compulsory subject without a general right for students to opt out. In such cases the state is responsible for the training of teachers and for the development of curricula and teaching material; this holds with the exception of England and Wales in the United Kingdom, where state and religious communities cooperatively design the syllabi of religious education. In the sense of “learning about religion,” this phenomenologically grounded approach mainly involves cognitive skills with the aim of transmitting religious knowledge and understanding while strictly refraining from promoting or even imposing a particular religious view. This approach is neutral insofar as it is equally acceptable to all denominations and religions.
Denominational approach (Austria, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Eastern Europe). Religious education is usually a voluntary subject; if pupils opt out, they have to choose alternative subjects, such as ethics or philosophy. Religious communities, either alone or in cooperation with the state, are responsible for the training of teachers and the development of curricula and teaching material. In the sense of “learning from religion,” this approach intends to make pupils sensitive to religious meanings and questions by familiarizing them with a specific denomination or religion as represented by the teacher, and thus provides them with spiritual and moral orientation. Occasionally pointers to other religions may be included, but these remain marginal.
Roughly speaking, the religious studies approach puts an emphasis on diversity without certainty—all religions are considered to be equally true (or false); whereas, the denominational approach, which favours one specific religion, focuses on certainty while neglecting diversity. There are tendencies in both approaches, however, to overcome this one-sidedness. For example, in 2004 the National Framework for Religious Education in England explicitly required elements of “learning from religion” in order to “develop pupils’ skills of application, interpretation and evaluation of what they learn about religion.”[19] In Germany, denominational religious education recently has opened up to include interdenominational and even interreligious cooperation.
Basic Educational Conditions. With regard to these two approaches and the central issue of religious identity, the crucial question arises whether pupils should first be familiarized with one religion, most naturally their own religion, before allowing for interreligious encounters, or whether religious identity should not, from the very beginning, be grounded in interreligious learning processes. Based on a description of seven “stages of faith,” religious developmental psychologist James Fowler claims that “individual-reflected faith” (stage 4) clearly develops before “connecting-relational faith” (stage 5).[20] In other words, constructive dealing with diversity presupposes the individual formation of certainty. Therefore, pupils must first familiarize themselves with their own religion before interreligious learning in heterogeneous learning groups can take place, which also requires specific methodological settings.
Methodological aspects. Given the bifocal structure of religious consciousness as mediating between an internal and external perspective, cognitive skills such as analysis, interpretation and explanation should be applied as well as more integrated methods, such as experiential approaches (relating to one’s own life, gift-to-a-child approach) or contextual approaches (authentic setting outside the classroom, participation in religious festivals). Working in heterogeneous religious groups in particular requires methods of cooperative learning that foster the development of social skills, the ability to employ empathetic communication, and a positive attitude toward diversity. With regard to the sensitive and intimate aspects of religion, it is also necessary to avoid embarrassment, anxiety, or stress by applying distancing techniques (using imagined characters, stories, and artefacts) and simulations (simulated situations, case studies of a religious or moral dilemma).[21]
Interreligious competence. Religious competence comprises a number of sub-competencies, namely, competencies relating to subject, hermeneutic-methodological, aesthetic, linguistic-communicational, personal-social, and ethical aspects. Thus, religious competence leads to an educated, autonomous, but nevertheless dialogical and open mindset. Interreligious competence in particular means to be able to apply these distinct dimensions of religious competence to the more complex situation of interreligious communication and its corresponding reciprocal changing of perspectives. Religious self-understanding is challenged by its external perception through the eyes of another religion and vice versa. One’s own perception of another religion is limited by its own self-understanding. Therefore, informed and empathic communication and understanding by making consistent use of the sub-competencies listed above are key dimensions of interreligious competence.
Another key dimension is tolerance, or more precisely, tolerance of ambiguity,[22] meaning, the ability to bear the tensions arising from incompatible differences and ambiguous communication, which nevertheless comes to a positive appreciation of the other. Consequently tolerance of ambiguity leads to a mutual granting of freedom of religion, which presupposes the ability of religious self-reflexivity and self-criticism on either side.
Thus, interreligious competence comprises key dimensions of understanding, resolving, and preventing religious conflicts. Constructive dealing with diversity in the light of one’s own certainty presupposes educated religious consciousness. Therefore, qualified religious education in an interreligious perspective remains a central cross-cultural task for the future.
To summarize, my main aim is to draw attention to the fact that a sufficiently reflected view of religious consciousness can lead us to understand that the acknowledgment of and constructive dealing with fundamental religious diversity is a constitutive element of religious consciousness itself. I sketched what can be called the essential “bifocal nature” of religious consciousness as an interpretative consciousness of differences, where always an internal and an external perspective are mediated. Religious experience is understood as both certain and perspectival, that is, articulated in one of several historically, contingent, symbolic, and ritualistic frames. Religious conflicts and conflicts instrumentalizing religion often arise from a conflation of these two perspectives. Therefore, religious education, and interreligious dialogue in particular, are considered as main factors to decrease religious conflict potential.
The bifocal nature of religious consciousness implies that interreligious dialogue must explore conflict and difference rather than dodge diversity in order to find a common ground and ethical consensus between different religious self-understandings. This of course requires a well educated and enlightened religious consciousness. Religious competence as the principal aim of religious education must therefore be viewed from the very beginning as a complex competence, including subcompetencies that pertain to conflict mitigation and the accommodation of diversity. If we operate with such a complex notion of religious competence, it becomes clear that religious education must leave behind the traditional alternative between “learning about religion” (prioritizing the external perspective on religion) and “learning from religion” (prioritizing the internal perspective on religion). Pupils must be given an opportunity to develop both their capacities for religious certainty as well as their capacities to accommodate diversity. In other words, religious education should do justice to the bifocal nature of religious consciousness itself, which requires both aspects of familiarization with a specific religion and an interreligious and cross-cultural perspective. Whether it is pedagogically preferable to operate with a temporal ordering of the two perspectives is currently an open question.