Abstract
A consideration of the exclusionary practices and outcomes generated by religious absolutism is perhaps as essential today as it has ever been throughout human history. In this article, the author argues that the exclusionary and anti-dialogical characteristics of religion, which have generated countless atrocities throughout human history, are actually an outcome initially seeded in the exclusion of self – the alienation of man from his full nature. The symptoms of religious alienation supplant the possibility of inclusion on both an individual level, perverting the relationship with ourselves and our fellow man, and on a collective level, diverting the social, political and economic institutions we construct and support with the compulsion of exclusion. Deploying conceptual tools from a range of contributors, including Hegel, Bauer and Feuerbach, this article analyzes these realities. Further, it draws on the writing of Paulo Freire in order to consider the critical role education might play in challenging dogmatic thinking, religious and otherwise, and in counteracting exclusion via the development of individual and collective critical consciousness.