Christian Religious Education

...The six foundational questions serve as the major divisions of the work and are entitled: Part I, The Nature of Christian Religious Education (the What) Part II, The Purpose of Christian Religious Education (the Why) Part III, The Content of Christian Religious Education (the Where) Part IV, An Approach to Christian Religious Education: Shared Praxis (a How) Part V, Readiness for Christian Religious Education by shared Praxis (the When) Part VI, The Copartners in Christian Religious Education (the Who...

...James Fowler's work on faith development is summarized in Chapter Four...

...It is one thing to operate out of a specific religious tradition and to use that tradition as the context and content of the educative interaction, but it is an entirely different matter to presume the participants have appropriated this context and content...

...it should at some time be on every seminarian's reading list...

...1) I believe Groome fails to adequately reconstruct the term "religious education...

...Groome begins by highlighting the biblical understanding of to "Know the Lord" as a unity of love, obedience, and belief, which maintains the quality and mutuality of theory and practice...

...In Part I, Groome systematically establishes the nature of education to be a concern for the already, the present, and the future as well as concern for the political, i.e., the attempt to influence how people live their lives...

...Part IV outlines the author's approach to Christian religious education which he entitles "Shared Christian Praxis...

...There is a problem with any understanding of religious education that assumes that the question of God's existence is at any point resolved in the lives of the learners...

...If such an assumption is made one may be catechizing or proselytizing but not educating...

...In fact the religion teacher's task is to continually reformulate this question...

...Without this ability individuals are in danger of becoming creatures of their context rather than creators...

...The difference is Groome's emphasis on promoting "critical consciousness," i.e., the ability to think creatively and critically...

...Christian Religious Education by Thomas H. Groome, an Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Education at Boston College, is a scholarly and systematic effort to deal with the founda-tional questions that underpin the various Christian churches' attempts to educate...

...In fact, it is certainly one of the books...

...2) I would have liked Groome to speak more thoroughly to the issue of church membership which refers to the participants' understanding of religious norms, customs and convention (Elliot Turiel's conventional domain) and the development of religious faith which would appear from Fowler's research to transcend denominational regulations and consensus...

...For as Henry Ward Beecher noted, human nature is never so weak as in the bookstore...

...Christian religious education, he maintains, is "a political activity with pilgrims in time that deliberately and intentionally attends with them to the activity of God in our present, to the Story of the Christian faith community, and to the vision of God's Kingdom . . ." Part II, the Why, specifies the metapurpose of religious education as the leading out of people to the " Kingdom of God" in Jesus Christ...

...In Chapter Three, Groome presents a comprehensive resume of consensus statements from contemporary exegesis of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures concerning the "Kingdom of God...

...Judging from the blurbs surrounding its rather inauspicious title, one would conclude that Christian Religious Education: Sharing One's Story and Vision is the book on religious eduction...

...Part III centers on the context of Christian religious education...

...Parts V and VI, dealing with readiness (When) and the participants (Who), while well done, especially the summary of Piaget's developmental theory (Chapter Eleven), add little to the book's central thesis...

...This section shows Groome, with one essential difference, to be in sympathy with the religious education theorists and practitioners who espouse the socialization model...

...Two things trouble me about the book...

...He establishes in Chapter Eight the philosophical roots for his praxis approach by tracing a history of "praxis epistemology" from Aristotle to Jurgen Habermas and Paulo Freire...

...Not only will this book be useful for professional religious educators...

...This is to be accomplished by enabling people to live lives of Christian faith and by promoting human freedom...

...The book consists of twelve chapters dealing with six foundational topics that are characterized by the interrogative pronouns - what, why, where, how, when, and who...

...In Chapter Nine the "Shared Christian Praxis" approach is described as a dialectical interpretive activity in which members of the Christian community critically share their own respective stories (past) and visions (future) as well as the Christian community's Story and Vision...

...This emphasis is a key contribution of the book...

...Having pointed out what I consider to be weaknesses, I applaud Thomas Groome's effort to provide an adequate, comprehensive theoretical base for "re-ligious education...

...If the answer is presumed and one begins to teach on the assumption that the learners are believers, one is into a different enterprise than that termed "religious education...

...Thomas P. Walters BLURBS are blatant attempts by publishers to seduce an already compromised person - the book buyer...

...The dialogical exchange is comprised of five movements (Chapter Ten) which are designed to result in the mutual transformation of both the individual and the community...

...The work draws heavily on the themes of liberation theology and stands as a welcome change in an era of moral majorities, moonies and irrational right-to-lifers and pro-abortionists...