XXI. European Forum for Religious Education in Schools

Resilience and Christian Hope.
Religious Education as an essential driving force in times of crisis.

Our lives are marked by various crises. After the Corona crisis, it is above all the war in Ukraine, but also the climate crisis and the economic crisis. What should a modern religious education look like that responds to the crises of our time? Can religion be a source of resilience? Does religious education help out of the crisis?

The theme of our XXI EuFRES Forum on Religious Education in Schools is Resilience and Christian Hope. We want to take a look at religious education and discuss its potential as an essential stimulus and driving force in these times of crisis.

In doing so, we want to take a closer look at the impact of today’s crises on the lives of young people and its effects. How do young people live after the pandemic and in today’s crises? As we can see, the period after the pandemic did not end the crisis situation in young people’s lives. The period of adolescence and early youth is very vulnerable to external influences and the personal search for answers to existential questions (who am I? what should I choose? who should I follow? etc.). It is not easy for young people to find their way in adult society, especially when the changes in different areas are unexpected, multidirectional and often ambiguous in terms of ethical values or interpersonal relationships. It is important to constantly search for appropriate forms and strategies to understand young people and accompany them on their path of choice.

The focus of our theme is the contribution of religious education to resilience and Christian hope in a time of crisis. In this time of crises, many individual crises are interconnected and mutually reinforcing, such as social and ecological crises. (Christian) religion is inextricably interwoven with these crises and (historically) has partly also been a driver of the crisis. Religious education can contribute to reflecting critically and emancipatorily on one’s own contribution to crises as well as constructively pointing out possibilities of dealing with and overcoming them. In this context, “empowerment” becomes a central concept in religious education, which can find its contentual orientation in the Christian tradition and aims at the empowerment of subjects in crisis.