Balancing Tolerance,Autonomy and a Framework for Social Cohesion

Abstract

JOHN HULL'S LIBERAL model of religious education offers a diagnosis of the aspects of religion that are sources of intolerance, and a programme for their deconstruction and removal. He sanctions a certain level of intervention in the religious development of students in order to fulfil the central liberal objective of producing harmony in diversity. This article argues that there are problems with the legitimacy of this programme of intervention because there are fundamental flaws in the theory of knowledge through which Hull's system is justified. These flaws lead to an unnecessary restriction of both student autonomy and the autonomous self-understanding of religious traditions. However, it is possible to replace Hull's qualified modernism with a more adequate and more postmodern epistemology without losing what is valuable in its liberal objectives. Andrew Wright's critical realist theory accepts the contingent nature of rationality and its ramifications, provides a potentially unifying system for social cohesion, and returns to students and religious traditions alike appropriate forms of autonomy.