ABSTRACT
Thematic teaching is the result of many years of change in religious education. By the late nineteenth century the deficiencies of an education which sought to convey information without affecting the deep life of the child were widely recognized. There can be no doubt that the older forms of orthodox religion, and of the accompanying ecclesiastical training, overwrought upon the capacity of the child, to the marring and degrading of his religious experience.’ Experiential religious education seeks to make the Christian faith real to children by showing them that it springs from their own experiences and that it helps to make sense of experience. Since 1965 life-themes have occupied a prominent place in every official Agreed Syllabus and in every handbook of suggestions issued from semi-official sources in Britain. The difficulties arise when one begins to enquire as to the manner in which the daily normal experience of the child can be explored so as to reveal its religious significance.
