Religion Meaning and Life

Religion, meaning and life

This is an alternative non-accredited course for Year 11 and 12 students within the Archdiocese of Brisbane.

In this course, learning builds on Religious Education Curriculum from the Archdiocese of Brisbane P-12 (Brisbane Catholic Education (2013;2020). Within Religion, Meaning and Life, students in Year 11-12 complete four Units of work (two per year). In this course, students will have an opportunity to access quality theological material in multiple learning modes and engage in a variety of religious experiences and service-learning opportunities.

Rationale

If religious education does not deal directly with contemporary life in a systematic and challenging way, then the perception of students that it is nominal and irrelevant will increase even further.

(Rossiter, G. 2018. Life to the Full - The changing landscape of contemporary spirituality: Implications for Catholic School Religious Education, p. xi).

Young people are confronted by complexities, dilemmas and conflicting interpretations of life’s meaning and purpose. They require, more than ever, critical thinking skills to navigate an uncertain and pluralistic world. As there is no final answer to life’s ultimate meaning and purpose in which intellectual certainty is possible, human knowledge is always partial and limited. Consequently, students are invited to explore within Religion, Meaning and Life the inexhaustible mystery of human existence, as glimpsed primarily through the lens of the Catholic Christian Tradition, as well as other religious traditions.

Within this course, students will have an opportunity to access quality theological material in multiple learning modes and engage in a variety of religious experiences and service-learning opportunities. Furthermore, opportunity for a personal response to key religious ideas through dialogue and an evaluation of a range of secular perspectives will be offered. Pope Francis encourages dialogue as a way to thwart “the syndrome of Babel” in which we fail to listen to the other and believe that we know what the other thinks and what the other will say (O'Connell, 2019). Informed by the Catholic Christian Tradition and other wisdom traditions— specifically Judaism, Islam. Hinduism, Buddhism and ATSI spiritualities—this dialogue may address the meaning and purpose of human existence and what that may mean for students’ lives.

Students may develop twenty first century skills of critical thinking, creative thinking, communication, collaboration and teamwork, personal and social skills and information and communication technologies skills (ICT). Students may develop an ability to engage in an open narrative and dialogue with other religious traditions as well as their own. This course meets the Archdiocesan requirements for quality Religious Education in Senior Secondary Years, is rigorous but differs in modes of delivery and content presentation. The course monitors student progress and achievement by way of ongoing evidence of learning opportunities in which students demonstrate their learning in a variety of modes.

Course outline

Learning builds on P-10 Religious Education curriculum from the Archdiocese of Brisbane (Brisbane Catholic Education, 2013). Within Religion, Meaning and Life, students in Year 11-12 complete four Units of work (two per year), 50 hours per unit. Each Unit consists of two topics, 25 hours per topic. While not formally assessed, it requires portfolio entries to be made as a record of learning entitled Learnings for Life. There are three modes of delivery – For each topic within respective Units students complete a minimum equivalent of 10 hours of face to face learning, 10 hours of self-directed learning and 5 hours of learning service/religious experience.

 

 

Unit 1	Unit 2	Unit 3	Unit 4
The Spiritual and Sacred Dimension to Life	Holy Words, Sacred Stories	The Implications of Belief	Church: Learning from the past, living in the present, creating the future
How does the Sacred and Spiritual make meaning for us? How do we make meaning of the Incarnation today?	How can ancient worlds create meaning in contemporary contexts? How about edited sacred texts with the best of every religious tradition?	Religion and the fun bits of life go together like …? Religion in the public square: Where and how does the conversation confront and challenge?	How might religious communities contribute to personal religious faith? Being spiritual and not religious – How can this be? OR, in place of (2), you may do Identity and Meaning: How do people construct personal identity and community in a consumerist culture.

Alternative Topics
To allow schools greater curriculum choice, two opportunities are provided for alternative topics to be chosen:

Schools are permitted to replace any of the provided unit topics with a school-based alternative. This may be suitable if a school considers that doing so would more effectively address their context and clientele. Depending on the unit topic being replaced, the same content descriptors—identified in the scope and sequence chart (pp. 9-12) for that unit topic—would need to be covered by the proposed topic. Schools would need to submit a proposed outline of their alternative topic to Brisbane Catholic Education for approval prior to offering it to students. It would need to show how proposed core content aligns with the required content descriptors from the P-12 curriculum for the topic it is replacing.

Instead of completing Unit 4.2: Being spiritual and not religious – How can this be? schools may offer an alternative topic: Identity and Meaning: How do people construct personal identity and community in a consumerist culture? This topic addresses the same content descriptors from the P-12 curriculum as Unit 4.2. It is fully resourced and comes with a unit booklet, worksheets, and activities.

Teaching and Learning

Objectives

By the conclusion of the course of study, students will be able to:

Identify that religions, religious traditions and other belief systems are both diverse and internally pluralistic.

Demonstrate a post-critical understanding of religious ideas, narratives and practices within respective religious traditions and the recontextualising of meaning within a contemporary context.

Understand that horizons of meaning shift, historically speaking, requiring that the deeper questions about life’s meaning and purpose be asked in accordance with the prevailing horizon of meaning.

Reflect on and evaluate diverse hermeneutical viewpoints enabling a critical and productive encounter of belief system and context.

Develop skills that contribute to dialogue with alternative religious and secular narratives and discourses in accordance with the hermeneutical-communicative model.

Apply learnings through focused engagement in the religious life of the school via Service-Learning, Experiential Learning and Ritual and Reflective Practice.

Develop and demonstrate effective time-management and self-monitoring skills.

Produce artefacts that typify and reflect a range of deep learnings across the course content.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives

Within all topics across all four units of study, Aboriginal perspectives and Torres Strait Islander perspectives have been embedded in the subject matter.

World Religions and Secular perspectives

Within all topics across all four units of study, World Religion perspectives and secular perspectives have been embedded in the subject matter.

Reconceptualist Approach

Since 2008, the classroom learning and teaching of religion in the Archdiocese of Brisbane has been characterised by a reconceptualist approach. In short, it operates from an educational framework rather than from a catechetical or ‘shared Christian praxis’ framework. The most prominent proponent of the reconceptualist approach has been Gabriel Moran upon whose work the Brisbane Catholic Education Model for Religious Education is based.

In a reconceptualist approach, the classroom religion program becomes a primary arena for dealing with the critical religious issues and concerns of life. There are three key considerations for teachers using this approach: The Avoidance of Presumptive Language, Teaching ‘about’ the Tradition and Powerful Pedagogies. (Archdiocese of Brisbane 2013, 22).

A new way of engaging with religion

This course takes as its guide the Religious Education Curriculum P-12 Archdiocese of Brisbane: Vision for Religious Education (2013;2020,p.10) which challenges students to be a religious voice in the world. The Vision gives greater prominence and a renewed orientation to the critical interpretation and evaluation of culture. The aim of this course is for students to become active constructors of culture rather than passive consumers; intelligent, thinking, religiously aware adults. In doing so, it aligns with the aim of the NCEC Shape Paper on Religious Education (2018) to expand students’ spiritual awareness and religious identity, fostering their capacities and skills of discerning, interpreting, thinking critically, seeking truth and making meaning. It seeks to challenge and inspire their service to others and engagement in the Church and the world (p7).

What’s this course about?

As they progress through the course, students will access multiple presentation and learning modes (usually in a digital format) and religious experiences in order to explore and record their current personal faith and belief stances.

Students will have the opportunity to reflect on and articulate a personal response to key aspects of modern Catholic/Christian belief contained in fertile questions and stimulus material for topics which will be well-researched, with breadth and depth, and incorporate a range of different perspectives, within and beyond the Christian tradition.

Students will participate in and reflect on experiential aspects of Christian faith: for example, prayer and worship; social action and justice outreach; personal spiritual formation; Christian leadership and evangelisation.

Throughout the course, students are invited to complete a Learnings for Living folio which will be a collection of responses and quotations on Faith and belief to take into adulthood.

What are our hopes for participants who engage with this course?
Students will engage enthusiastically, critically and experientially with a variety of text types and experiences related to the four Core Topics, and record their reflections and responses using multiple modes in their Learnings for Living.

Students will be informed about the mission and service of Christian communities through engagement with multiple expressions of service learning as part of the religious life of the school and in the wider Christian and secular community.

Students will access and continue to access religious websites and the blog postings of spiritual leaders and directors; Christian publications and courses on spirituality, prayer, meditation and mindfulness.

Students will compile a personal Learnings for Living folio over the life of the course, which may help them to make informed choices about how and where they can continue their connections with the institutional Church and formal religion.

Learning Spaces

Engaging powerful pedagogies

In order to facilitate the use of powerful pedagogies, four ‘Learning Spaces,’ based on the model developed by David Thornburg, are integrated into the learning experiences for each topic within respective units (Thornburg, 2014, pp. 11-30). These four spaces are:

Campfire: Didactic presentation by Teacher – home to the lecture.
Watering Hole: Social Learning among peers – home to dialogue.
Cave: Reflective Learning – home to cognitive construction of understanding of individual learner.
Life: The meaningful application of things learned as a demonstration of knowledge and skills acquired.

Unit 1: The spiritual and sacred dimension to life

Unit Description

Can the Sacred and Spiritual make meaning for us?
This unit explores questions about whether modern (particularly Western) societies have the intellectual and spiritual energy for engaging with divine or sacred forces or beings. Many young people around the world are declaring themselves atheists or “nones”—having no religion. The question is whether they are rejecting the idea of Sacred Beings or Numinous Forces, or rather finding current understandings and beliefs about the Sacred as inadequate for a scientific, rationalist mindset. At the same time, there is a growing trend within various religious traditions of fundamentalist, literalist adherents who are quite militant in proclaiming their faith.

The unit is currently divided into two topics: Seeking to re-imagine the concept of “God”; and modern belief about the person and nature of Jesus Christ. Each topic title is in the form of a fertile question and allow the participants to begin again in encountering the Sacred and explore modern interpretations, understandings and speculation about the existence of a personal God or gods; the impact of a changed understanding of the cosmos and our place in it; and new metaphors for understanding the Divine; prayer; life beyond this one; and traditional doctrines about God and Jesus for Christians.

Opportunity to explore a wide array of religious, philosophical and secular definitions and meanings associated with the word ‘God’ is provided. While exploring an understanding of God within the Catholic Tradition, dialogue with diverse religious and secular narratives is afforded. Furthermore, an examination of Jesus through the respective lens of ‘The Jesus of History’ and ‘The Christ of Faith’ enables students to distinguish between literal and symbolic belief in line with a Post-Critical faith perspective.

Unit Requirements

The learning of the unit consists of two topics that provide students with knowledge and skills associated with the unit.

The unit topics are:
Topic 1: How does the Sacred and Spiritual make meaning for us?
Topic 2: How do we make meaning of the Incarnation today?

Unit 2: Holy Words, Sacred Stories

Unit Description

How can ancient words create meaning in contemporary contexts?
This unit explores the relevance of ancient Sacred Texts for the lives of young people in post-modern context. While many young people today are claiming to have no affiliation with formal religion, they nevertheless demonstrate a deep interest in spirituality and a passion for social justice. Many display particular interest in secular writers and spiritual teachers, such as Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra and Neale Donald Walsh, that suggests a genuine hunger for quality spiritual teaching, coupled with an interest in certain sacred texts. For example, the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, The Prophet by Kahil Gibran and A Course in Miracles by Helen Schucman are enjoying a resurgence today.

The unit is currently divided into two topics. Each topic aims to highlight the importance and centrality of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures respectively within the Catholic Christian Tradition, while also investigating and being open to the wealth of spiritual treasure within the sacred texts of the major world religions and secular traditions. Each topic is guided by a fertile question which allow the participants to begin again in encountering the Holy Words and Sacred Stories important to the Catholic Christian Tradition. Furthermore, students are challenged to recontextualise these in a form that gives fresh meaning and relevance for a contemporary audience.

Opportunity to bring the worlds of Religion and Science into dialogue are provided when analysing the Biblical stories of Creation. Moreover, a candid look at the person of Jesus enables students to confront questions around his existence and historical identity and compare and contrast this with the image of Jesus presented in the Gospels. A critical eye is cast over many sacred texts whereby students are asked to confront and authentically respond to the ambiguities and questions contained within them.

Unit Requirements

The learning of the unit consists of two topics that provide students with knowledge and skills associated with the unit.

The unit topics are:
Topic 1: How can ancient words create meaning in contemporary contexts?
Topic 2: How about edited sacred texts with the very best of every religious tradition?

Unit 3: The Implications of Belief

Unit Description

Religion and the fun bits of life go together like...?
This Unit explores the diversity of responses to particular moral and ethical issues in our world and equips students to discern what may or may not constitute an ethical response to either a personal moral issue or social ethical issue. Informed by the rich moral theological heritage of the Catholic Christian Tradition, students are encouraged to enter into dialogue with the moral and ethical standpoints of various religious traditions, as well as secular viewpoints, and evaluate diverse and sometimes divergent responses to key moral and ethical issues of the 21st century.

The Unit is currently divided into two topics. While Topic 1 focusses primarily on an individual response to ethical issues, Topic 2 focusses on a communal or institutional response. Each topic aims to highlight the importance and centrality of a life of personal integrity and social responsibility within the Catholic Christian Tradition. Additionally, it encourages an openness to the wealth of moral and ethical teachings within world religions and secular traditions. Each topic is guided by a fertile question which allow the participants to focus on key sources and ethical teachings significant to the Catholic Christian Tradition as well as other religious traditions. Furthermore, students are challenged to examine and respond to ethical systems within their own as well as other non\religious traditions and evaluate the extent to which they adequately navigate the seas of moral ambiguity and ethical pluralism.

Opportunity to develop deep understanding of key moral and ethical issues in our world and evaluate a variety of responses to them is provided. Furthermore, the ability to situate ethics, not only as something deeply personal but also as something profoundly social, affords students the opportunity to question institutional responses to key moral and ethical issues and develop a rich appreciation of Social Justice teachings within the Catholic Christian Tradition.

Unit Requirements

The learning of the unit consists of two topics that provide students with knowledge and skills associated with the unit.

The unit topics are:
Topic 1: Religion and the fun bits of life go together like …?
Topic 2: Religion in the public square: Where and how does the conversation confront and challenge?

Unit 4: Church: Learning from the past, living in the present, creating the future

Unit description

This unit explores the role of the institutional Church and its response to the needs of particular communities as well as evaluating this response. The Catholic Christian Church, historically, has contributed positively to the development of people’s and cultures but it has also been, on occasion, a destructive influence. Opportunity for examining this dynamic across history and making informed judgments is provided, whereby, students can look at specific examples, such as the corruption of some forms of Christianity in Nazi Germany and Archbishop Romero with his prophetic challenge to a corrupt political establishment.

The unit is currently divided into two topics. While Topic 1 focusses primarily on the Church, examining and evaluating its influence both historically and in the contemporary world, Topic 2 focusses on the experience of adherents. Topic 2 allows students to examine and evaluate Christian spirituality while also looking beyond the Church for models of spirituality that are life–giving. Each topic aims to highlight the presence of the Church in the world, warts and all, and evaluate to what extent it authentically responds to the Gospel imperative: to love God with all one’s heart and to love one’s neighbour as oneself. Each topic is guided by a fertile–question which allow the participants to explore questions around the role and effectiveness of the Church in a post–modern world.

Opportunity to develop deep theological understanding of the Church in the world and to discern what makes for an authentic Christian spirituality is provided. Furthermore, an exploration of Christian spirituality in comparison to and contrast with a burgeoning secular spirituality, affords students the opportunity to appreciate that the Kingdom of God, while subsisting within the Christian Tradition, is not its possession.

Unit requirements

The learning of the unit consists of two topics that provide students with knowledge and skills associated with the unit.

The unit topics are:

Topic 1: How might religious communities contribute to personal religious faith?
Topic 2: Being Spiritual and not Religious–How can this be?

Alternative topic to replace Unit 4, Topic 2

Identity and meaning: How do people construct personal identity and community in a consumerist culture?

Topic description

This topic investigates the impact of Consumerism on personal identity and community. The openness and complexity of life today can make finding meaning and the qualities that contribute to it – autonomy, competence, purpose, direction, balance, identity and belonging - extremely hard, especially for young people, for whom these are the destinations of the developmental journeys they are undertaking. According to Australian social researcher Richard Eckersley, we have altered profoundly our notions of the ‘self,’ of what it is to be human. We have created ‘the empty self’, stripped of community, tradition, and shared meaning. Our era, Eckersley says, has constructed a self that is, fundamentally, a disappointment to itself, and must be soothed and made cohesive by being constantly ‘filled up’ with consumer products, celebrity news, and the quest for self-improvement and personal growth.

Eckersley pointed out the need to look critically at what we often take for granted as ‘progress.’

A central tenet of modern culture is the belief in progress, the idea that life should get better. Is this the case? If our answer is ‘yes', we can continue to assume that human history is on the right trajectory and needs nothing more than periodic course corrections – the task of governments. If the answer is ‘no', then the most fundamental assumptions about our way of life – assumptions that have long been broadly agreed and taken for granted – must be re-assessed. The task we face goes far beyond the adjustment of policy levers by government; it demands an open and spirited debate about how we are to live and what matters in our lives. (From the Richard Eckersley Website)

This topic explores and evaluates the socio-cultural landscape. It explores the question: How do people construct personal identity and community in a consumerist culture? The topic will provide opportunities for students to explore the interrelationships between a number of cultural institutional identities and personal identity and to evaluate these interrelationships. The chance to develop a rich understanding of consumerist culture and theological understanding to discern and evaluate what makes for an authentic Christian spirituality within this culture is provided. Furthermore, opportunity to research and to reflect on what it means to be authentically human and how this is impacted by consumerist culture will expose students to a variety of secular and religious perspectives.