The future of religion and belief literacy: reconnecting a chain of learning

Abstract

This chapter summarises what each learning sphere suggests about religion and belief. Religion and belief continue in a public sphere that largely thinks of itself as post-Christian, post-religious, and secular, while having limited understanding of either religion and belief or the secular. This makes it a particularly difficult subject for discussion and learning. As the previous chapters show, messages about religion and belief are messy and often contradictory within learning spaces, as well as between one learning space and another. While this might be said of all sorts of topics, this one has some particular features that single it out. First, the woolly secular-mindedness at its root often stops the conversation before it begins. Second, what is being discovered in this space is a lack of ability to talk about religion and belief. Third, at their core, religion and belief engage with existential questions in which everybody has a stake, regardless of how they answer them. Fourth, religion and belief deal in both certainty and doubt. These characteristics of religion and belief both strain the chain of learning and make it more difficult to reconnect. The chapter then applies a religion and belief literacy analysis to explore how the chain of learning might be reconnected.