Pirner M (2025)
Publication Language: English
Publication Type: Book chapter / Article in edited volumes
Publication year: 2025
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Edited Volumes: The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Education
Series: Oxford Handbooks
City/Town: Oxford
Pages Range: 635-650
ISBN: 9780198869511
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198869511.013.40
This chapter unfolds the proposition that the global concept of public theology recommends itself as the ideal theoretical basis for linking educational issues with religion. This goes for various forms of religious education in schools and other institutions of public education as well as for religious contributions to the improvement of public education in general. Public theology is a concept that developed in Christian contexts on several continents in the 1970s, but meanwhile is used also in other religions. Its major idea is to make the treasures of religious traditions accessible, understandable, and beneficial to all humans, irrespective of their religious, agnostic, or atheistic beliefs, thus critically as well as constructively contributing to the common good and human flourishing of all. In this vein, (public) education in general-and religious education, in particular-can be perceived as one important means as well as one major object of public theology. Consequently, philosophy of education and educational science on the one hand, and (public) theology as well as religious pedagogy on the other should be regarded as important conversation partners to each other.
APA:
Pirner, M. (2025). Religion, Education, and Public Theology. In Liam Francis Gearon, Arniika Kuusisto (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Education. (pp. 635-650). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
MLA:
Pirner, Manfred. "Religion, Education, and Public Theology." The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Education. Ed. Liam Francis Gearon, Arniika Kuusisto, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025. 635-650.
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