ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that human rights are highly relevant to an inclusive form of religious education which should be available to everyone in publicly funded schools of democracies. A process of 'dialogical liberalism', utilising John Rawls's idea of 'overlapping consensus' was presented as a means to reconciling, or at least attempting to make an accommodation between, personal commitments and articles of the human rights codes. The dialogical view acknowledges different moral, religious and cultural sources for ideas of human dignity, but also recognises some close overlap between the different ideas. One example of 'dialogical liberalism', using human rights as provisional moral principles in dialogue with moral ideas derived from particular cultural sources, relates to the idea of human dignity. It is maintained that knowledge and understanding of religions is intrinsically worthwhile as an aspect of a liberal education which should cover all areas of human knowledge and experience.
