Religious literacy: spaces of teaching and learning about religion and belief

Religious literacy has emerged as a commonplace term (amongst other identified and multiple literacies, e.g. media literacy, financial literacy, coding literacy) in education over the past 20 years, deemed to be a necessary component for successful citizenship across contemporary societies. Specifically, religious literacy is said to entail ‘the ability to discern and analyse the fundamental intersections of religion and social/political/cultural life through multiple lenses’. A religiously literate person is described as possessing: ‘a basic understanding of the history, central texts (where applicable), beliefs, practices and contemporary manifestations of several of the world’s religious traditions as they arose out of and continue to be shaped by particular social, historical and cultural contexts’ and ‘the ability to discern and explore the religious dimensions of political, social and cultural expressions across time and place’. Crucially, the religiously literate person will understand ‘religions and religious influences in context and as inextricably woven into all dimensions of human experience’ (Moore 2015, 30–31). Far from simply knowing the ‘facts’ about religion/s a religiously literate person will have managed to get ‘under the skin’ of religious life. They will, to use different terminologies, be able to imagine what it is like to exist within the schema of another’s worldview.