ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some alternative ways of describing the 'religiously educated' person; not as recommendations but as descriptions introduced to highlight the problems that can arise from the phrase. The 'religiously educated' person is: a person who knows a lot about religion; he is well informed about the function of religion in society; he can distinguish between different belief systems. 'All education rightly conceived', says the 1924 Cambridge Agreed Syllabus, 'is religious education.' This might be described as a 'total paradigm' in which all that is said and done in education directly relates to a religious view of life. Educationists in the Christian tradition who appear to advocate the total paradigm of alternative claim, for example, 'that human life has a religious dimension and that religious questions are inescapable'. Certainly Religious Education would be suspect if it were the case that teachers took it for granted 'that the religious subject matter is straightforwardly factual'.
