ABSTRACT

News stories concerning the occupation and subsequent siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, around the time of Easter 2001, presented some of the most compelling reasons why religious education needs to make a constructive contribution to citizenship. Whatever judgements we make of the situation, of all instances of Israeli incursions into the Palestinian Authority Territory, those into Bethlehem seemed to provide the sharpest focus for the conflict between worldviews – political, religious, social, cultural, economic. The clash of worldviews in extremis? Six months later we had the headlines detailing events from the bombing of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001.