Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book exposes key assumptions regarding both religion and education. It shows these assumptions are historic, that they underlie the critical issues facing religious education in the present time and persist into much current and ongoing development of religious education theory and policy in the United Kingdom and internationally. The book begins with a critical re-examination of historic literature gaining an overview of the main influences on and kinds of thinking present within religious education from 1870 until the present. It shows how Arendt's work on action brings a different way of conceptualising and emphasising the importance of plurality. The book concludes that education should bring the child to action. Indeed Arendt's extensive work on totalitarianism is likely to have a particularly timely relevance for religious education.