On “Christian Religious Education” (Groome)

“The nature and purposes of Christian religious education require that we promote personal cognition as a critically reflective, dialectical and dialogical process that encourages a “right relationship” between knower and known in a community of discourse and that we broaden our concern beyond simply cognition. The incarnational principle that stands at the heart of Christianity demands a pedagogy that is grounded in and shapes people’s ontic selves – their identity and agency in the world. For instance, our aim is not simply that people know about justice, but that they be just, not only understand compassion but be compassionate, and son on. We are then, to attend to all the dimensions of human ‘being’ and articulate our most basic philosophical foundation and task as ontological rather than simply epistemological. We need to make an ‘ontological turn’ in the very foundations of Christian religious education.” Thomas Groome, from Sharing Faith page 8