Thirteenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

The main task of Christian theology is to interpret and update the faith of the Church through a fruitful and creative dialogue with culture and the various achievements of humans in every place and in every age. Nowadays, Christian theology must once again creatively dialogue with the diversity of the contemporary world and culture, without retreating into its glorious past. However, in order to participate in the course of the modern world and culture, it is necessary to leave its pre-modern security and its confessional introversion and to engage in fruitful dialogue with the modern pluralistic world. This approach has led to the design of new open and flexible curricula in Religious Studies, no longer as teaching and learning of a confessionally enclosed subject that does not dialogue with the cultural and religious diversity of contemporary societies, but as a process that perceives religious education through the fascinating dialogue between theology and culture. The introduction into education in 2016-2019 gave rise to intense controversy and eventually their withdrawal. Nonetheless, these new curricula created and offered for the first time in the history of the Religious Studies course in Greece a comprehensive Teacher’s Guide, but also a large database and a digital application with a variety of artworks, monuments, texts, musical archives. In this way, religious education in the public-school domain made the most of the interactive relationship between theology and culture.