Pedagogy and religion in the third millennium. A frutiful encounter

Abstract

Objectives The essay analyses religious experience, which today is far from connoting itself as a rationalistic practice. Especially in the 20th century, the religious has acquired a renewed vitality, more detached from dogma, but more open to faith and the transcendent. Material and methods The treatment of the subject involved a critical analysis of the scientific literature, both pedagogical and more specialised, with reference to the meanings assumed by religious experience in recent decades. From a methodological point of view, recourse was made to the heuristic method and a historical-pedagogical method was also followed in order to precisely interpret the relationship between the aspiration of contemporary pedagogy to promote a subject that is indeed socialised but in a critical and divergent perspective and the religious dimension. Results The research has brought to light two fundamental concepts. The first is the desire to bring religiosity back into its formative dimension, thus linking it to the process of the person's development; the second relates to the recovery of the marginalised dimension, with the elimination of what hinders an effective pedagogical-educational reading of man. Conclusions To conclude, a circularity is re-established between religiosity and development, starting from the incisiveness of religious experience in the development of human beings in the third millennium. Above all, self-centered reasoning loses every fundamentalist presumption, it relates to human realities and responds to the concrete experiences of men thus revealing its essential relevance and importance for better thinking about the complete education of modern man as an intellectual and spiritual being.

Keywords

• pedagogy
• religiosity
• rationality
• education
• human experience