ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a summary account of an interesting, cautionary contribution to the place of worldviews in religious education by one of Germany’s foremost religious educators, Friedrich Schweitzer. The RE Commission has helpfully distinguished two senses or uses of the term worldviews, that of institutional systems of making meaning and structuring how one sees the world, e.g. Christianity, Islam or Buddhism as well as non-religious worldviews such as Humanism. One of the most controversial issues that has arisen in relation to the RE Commission Report is its recommendation that the subject be named ‘Religion and Worldviews’. There are three basic responses to this new title: the first is straightforwardly positive; the second is chiefly negative and the third is ambiguous in an important sense. The essential point he makes is that the religious education curriculum is in a constant state of transition and contestation, historically and contingently evolving, with no abiding structure or even rationale.
