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A Theological Framework for Multicultural Religious Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Kathleen T. Talvacchia*
Affiliation:
Union Theological Seminary

Abstract

In the practice of multicultural religious education a conflict arises between two competing understandings of the term multicultural. In one understanding multicultural religious education means the incorporation of racial and ethnic diversity into a Western, European paradigm of Christianity. In another understanding, multicultural religious education means the implementation of theological and educational procedures and rationales that would account for the reality of social structural differences within the diversity of society, allow those differences to shape the content and form of the Christian tradition, and, therefore, challenge the Western paradigm as the dominant expression of Christianity. This article expresses the conviction that the term multicultural is most appropriately understood as that which embraces the reality of diversity and social structural difference. Based on this conviction, the article makes the case that theologies of liberation provide an important theological framework for a multicultural religious education that embraces both diversity and difference.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1997

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References

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14 See Thomas H. Groome, “Religious Education for Justice by Educating Justly,” and Mary C. Boys, “A Word about Teaching Justly” in O'Hare, ed., Education for Peace and Justice.

15 Potter, Mary Engel and Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, “Introduction: Making the Connections among Liberation Theologies Around the World” in Lift Every Voice: Constructing Christian Theologies from the Underside (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1990), 56.Google Scholar

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18 For example, I am thinking of the stories of the Minjung, and their power as tools for critique and transformation. See Commission on Theological Concerns of the Christian Conferences of Asia, eds., Minjung Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis 1983).Google Scholar

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23 Ibid.

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25 Foster, , Religious Education, 171.Google Scholar