ABSTRACT
The religious systems embrace the concept of man up to the point where the nature and destiny of man begin to assume an increasingly central place; the ‘humanist’ systems embrace the concept of religion up to the point where man’s activities as myth-maker or as spiritual being begin to imply religion as the prime human activity. Two intimately related aspects of the secularization process may be distinguished. The first is the shift in the Western mind away from a world-view in which God looms large to one where man himself assumes such dimensions. The second is the concomitant differentiation and development of the disciplines of history, science, moral philosophy and the like, in their own right, distinct from theology. For purposes of clarity in discussion, four principal segments in the matrix will be distinguished: knowledge and values; ‘approaches’ to religious education; selection of subject matter; and personal and professional teacher stances.
