ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Religious Education (RE) in community schools of Great Britain. Genuine RE that teaches from commitment and for committed openness can only occur within the context of religious schools. Hirst and Hull describe the process of secularisation as something to be accepted, not critiqued; hence old-fashioned approaches to RE involving nurture and initiation into the Christian faith are viewed in a negative light and even described as 'primitive' and 'simple'. Wright's examination of the context of RE raises for me another question concerning the difficulties in describing how to reform RE and he wants to overcome modernist and postmodernist suspicions about the spiritual. He wants a transformative RE that exposes children to the realm of the transcendent. The culture of common schools also includes some basic values of the traditional concept of liberal education with its emphasis on liberation from the present and the particular.
