ABSTRACT
Public Theology is demanding more and more attention. This is to be welcomed, considering traditional theology’s complex trends towards privatization and aestheticization. Questions of communicability, of translatability and presence of faith, of theology and church in the public space of a liberal society are in the foreground. But the question concerning their profile arises. Can the radicalism of the Christian message be conceived appropriately and its option for the excluded be integrated into Religious Pedagogy? Are the borrowings from liberal theology, from a cultural Christianity which is shallow and broken by socio-ethical categories, as well as the reception of foundations of civil religion perhaps too strong in order to actually conceptualize the structures and thus the political dimensions of theology and Religious Pedagogy appropriately?
In this highly complex situation, the present contribution tries to establish the following thesis: Public Theology needs Religious Pedagogy in order to gain contextual, analytical and systematic structure, in short: it needs political sharpness. In order to reach this aim, Religious Pedagogy itself needs to become a Public Religious Pedagogy. It has to enter into discourses of the various public spheres critically and productively. This becomes particularly controversial considering the area of educational justice. After all, the struggle for educational justice can emphasize the intertwining of cultural, social, religious and, individual just as intersubjective-structural aspects.
