Knowing, evaluating, constructing” “

What contribution can the teaching of religion in schools make to the debate on the Christian roots of Europe? We put the question to Flavio Pajer, president of the European Forum for religious education in state schools (see pages 13-14). “To be truthful, I would speak more correctly of ‘Judeo-Christian roots’ (and I would speak at the same time of other well-known and not secondary cultural roots of the West, such as Greek metaphysics, Roman law, Germanic religious sentiment, the science of the Arabs, the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the secularism of the modern revolutions…). The contribution that the teaching of religion may make to the discovery and enhancement of the Judeo-Christian roots of European societies is more than self-evident: indeed, it is indispensable”. What kind of contribution? “I would say it is a threefold contribution. First, it is a cognitive contribution, in the sense that it helps us to explore and analyse not only the Bible in itself, but also the ‘history of post-biblical effects’, namely, the immense cultural legacy that the ‘biblical code’ has generated through the centuries of Western Christianity, in cultural and political terms, as philosophical reflection, as artistic and literary expressions. Second, it is a critical contribution, because, as a school discipline, the teaching of religion can and must throw light on not only on religion’s undeniably positive and salutary aspects, but also on the reverse side of the coin, i.e. the less evangelical aspects of Christianity of the past and present (for which the Pope himself asked for forgiveness during the Jubilee). Third, it is a constructive contribution, in proportion as religious teaching refuses to succumb to self-referential forms of indoctrination or moralism or confessionalism, and is able to propose itself as a form of cultural and intercultural education in the highest values (such as promotion of the dignity of every person, love for our neighbour, welcome of the stranger, solidarity, the culture of peace, the universal destination of goods), of which the biblical and Christian tradition has been revealed as the bearer”. In other words? “If we truly believe that there is no rift between the human and the Christian, the best contribution that state schools in Europe can make today to the recognition of the ‘Christian roots’ of culture is that of educating persons and citizens who – as such, and not necessarily as believers – are able to integrate into their individual and social, political and professional lives, those values of freedom of conscience, democracy and solidarity, without which Western culture would not be what it is”.