(Download) "Imperial Aspirations, Religious Freedom and Public Education." by Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Imperial Aspirations, Religious Freedom and Public Education.
- Author : Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table
- Release Date : January 22, 2007
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 267 KB
Description
I. The Modern Religious Problematic If the foundation of democracy is public education, and if democracy presupposes the possibility of rational debate then public education is imperiled by the classical formulation of Christianity which has denied the place of reason in the validation of matters of comprehensive convictions. Because the dismantling of public education, as many Christian conservatives demand, implies a self-contradictory argument for a democrat (ie a citizen of a democracy) and because the alternative is also self-defeating, I argue that an appropriate and credible formulation of the Christian faith must be open to rational validation. The implications of this essay are that Christianity must be so understood as to formulated according to the humanist commitment and that indeed some of Christianity as it is practiced and preached today is dangerous to the foundations and current institution of democracy. I do not take aim here solely at the fundamentalist and conservative Christians, though they do seem to be on the forefront of efforts to eliminate public education. I am instead convinced that a broader critique is necessary and have discovered in the work of some of today's postcolonial theorists, a method in cultural critique which allows Christian theology to see in its own history and culture, patterns of imperialism which deny the impulse behind the central ideological concern of Jesus of Galilee, namely to establish a kingdom of God.