The Community of Philosophical Inquiry and Religious Education: A Pragmatist Perspective

In the proposed paper, I will engage with the theme of education in a multi-religious scenario from a philosophical-educational viewpoint and, more specifically, in reference to a pragmatist theoretical framework. I will take my cue from one of the few papers that John Dewey (1908) has dedicated to religious education. Reflecting upon “Religion and Our Schools”, on the one hand, he dismisses the viability of religious education in the school: “But we do not find it feasible or desirable to put upon the regular teachers the burden of teaching a subject which has the nature of religion. The alternative plan of parcelling out pupils among religious teachers drawn from their respective churches and denominations brings us up against exactly the matter which has done most to discredit the churches, and to discredit the cause, not perhaps of religion, but of organized and institutional religion: the multiplication of rival and competing religious bodies, each with its private inspiration and outlook” (pp. 174-175). On the other, however, he does not write off a religious role for the school; indeed, quite the contrary, he seems to insinuate that precisely through the school a kind of religion attuned to the new era will emerge: “Our schools, in bringing together those of different nationalities, languages, traditions, and creeds, in assimilating them together upon the basis of what is common and public in endeavor and achievement, are performing an infinitely significant religious work. They are promoting the social unity out of which in the end genuine religious unity must grow” (p. 175. Emphasis added). Thus, Dewey formulates his great theme that the democratic community itself (and the school as its “miniature” [Dewey, 1900]) takes the place of the “kingdom of God” (Rockefeller, 1991). Against this backdrop, the core of the paper lies, however, in the discussion of a contemporary recontextualization of this pragmatist heritage. Indeed, I will refer to the community of philosophical inquiry approach, which – while referring to a Deweyan matrix – develops it in an original way. This reverberates on a much more open attitude to the issue of religious education (Gregory & Oliverio, 2018; Hannam, 2019): one of the creators of this approach, Ann Margaret Sharp, not only reclaimed the affinities between the vocabulary of philosophical inquiry and that of spirituality and the religious dimension of experience (Sharp, 1994a, 1994b) but she went as far as invoking the “sacred as relationship in the community of inquiry” (Sharp, 1997) and indicating the latter as the (educational) space for creating new “metaphors” for the religious experience, more in keeping with the mindset and the sensibility of contemporary wo/men. In this sense, while maintaining the Deweyan thrust of considering education as a privileged domain where a religious work is performed, she does not simply dissolve religion into education or make education a secularized form of religion. After presenting Sharp’s conceptual device, I will explore its relevance for contemporary scenarios but also indicate some qualms it raises and some inadequacies in making sense of religious experience and education.