O ensino religioso na Inglaterra entre 1988-2011: desafios e perspectivas em uma sociedade confessional e multicultural

Abstract

The objective of this research is to analyze Religious Education course in England, an Anglican confessional country, in the transition from the 20th to the 21st century, in order to understand the place it occupies in the face of the new challenges and perspectives of an increasingly multicultural , multi-religious State and with high levels of secularization, hate crimes and violence. The hypothesis presented in this work is that the government and Church of England, which historically have as premise the valorization of the religious aspect in the educational formation of the English people, as an identity and confessional value, have sought to maintain this status quo from a greater openness with local communities from different confessionalism in order to propose a Religious Education curriculum that is committed to providing young people knowledge and respect for ethnic, religious and cultural differences, in order to ensure compliance with constitutional rights, such as freedom of religion, without, however, giving up the Anglican Christian confessionality of the State. The methodology used to understand how the mediation between Church of England, State and local religious communities affects the profile of Religious Education courses was carried out from the analysis of documents that mediate these relationships, such as British legislation from the beginning of the 20th century to the first decade of the 21st century associated with Religious Education, national curriculum, specific Religious Education curriculum and the 2011 Census applied in England and Wales. The research work focused on the analysis of six textbooks for Religious Education from the “Living Faiths” collection, published by Oxford and aimed at students in phase 3 in England, the equivalent of Elementary School II in the teaching system of Brazil. The analysis of the collection, considered a sample of the profile of Religious Education courses, was elaborated and applied systematically based on the principles of the Science of Religion. The problematization of the analysis of the collection aimed to identify the epistemological line of the material and how it reacts to local and world historical implications, contributing, even without being the main objective of the discipline, to the formation of students capable of identifying differences and ethnic, cultural and religious diversities in a dialogical and peaceful way, and not as a threat