Religion as cuckoo or crucible: beliefs and believing as vital for citizenship and citizenship education

The importance of motivational beliefs and, more specifically, religion, is identified as central for both citizenship and citizenship education. Whether they take an expressly religious form, or appear in a purportedly more open form, such as faith or world view, beliefs are at the core of human being. The tendency to speak more of shared values than beliefs in the context of educating citizens is open to question - values are not necessarily any more universally agreed, since they too are affected by beliefs. Moreover, the presumption of secularisation, that religious believing is fast disappearing, is itself now exposed as strangely dated. Beliefs, often explicitly religious beliefs, are fundamental in national constitutions. Thus, religion may inspire a critique of a nation's behaviour; religion will also need to be subject to critique. How to build an opportunity for understanding and critiquing beliefs into any public educational system is a major challenge. The provision for Religious Education in England is taken as an example of this challenge being directly addressed as a necessary complement to any separate policy for character education, citizenship education and/or moral education in whatever form they exist. RE is able to home in on the religious plurality which figures in national and international life. Understanding of the insights and contentions of religions in all their plurality is a source of illumination for citizens wherever they are in the world