ABSTRACT
The divide between a 'confessional' education into religion, on the one hand, and a 'nonconfessional' education about religion, on the other, is not unbridgeable. But if its power is released, no amount of clucking over the squeaky-clean professional intentions of the teacher is going to keep the divide divided. Although he is sometimes criticized for not knowing the difference between understanding a religious belief and adopting it, Phillips acknowledges the distinction. Wittgenstein offers the key to the second mode, style or stage of religious learning. Even an in-depth study of the religiosity of Jeff Astley is never going to be an adequate substitute for engagement with the power of the narratives, symbols, teachings, parables, scriptures, prayers, liturgies, doctrines and visions of cruciform living that make up the Christian way. Of course, one must already have been somewhat 'transformed' in order empathetically to understand some of these transforming concepts at all.
