ABSTRACT
We have suggested so far that religious education needs to take more account of the political implications of teaching and learning, especially in the representation of religious traditions. It is in those aspects of political and religious life where the greatest ideals are present that realities often fall shortest. In politics, as in education, the utopian agenda for religious education is often confronted with the global and too often dystopian realities of cultural conflict. And there is no area of political life or international relations more contested than the universality of human rights – in their justification, in their use and abuse, in their manipulation for self-interested ends, in their clearly inequitable distribution; nor any area where religious traditions are more set to challenge international standards with their own culturally determined traditions.
