ABSTRACT
The enterprise of the State in the religious education of the people began eleven years later, with the passing of the 1870 Education Act and the creation of schools owned and maintained by local government. The history of religious education in this country may be understood as an attempt to create a subject which would be faithful to its natural content, and which would be impartial but not arid, personal but not proselytizing. The objective study of world religions has sought for his, impartiality and his refusal to bias pupils’ minds; the concentration upon facts and reasons is leading to a reaction in which, through poetry, religious education seeks to avoid the worst – the inert imparting of facts. The impartiality of this religious education in publicly-provided schools was secured, by insisting that if and when the schools provided for the teaching of religion such religious education should include ‘no religious catechism which is distinctive of particular denomination’.
