Religious education and the creative arts : A critical exploration

In religious education, students may more readily engage with biblical texts if they investigate various representations of scriptural stories in the creative arts. Using the arts merely as a way of interesting or entertaining students, however, is not what is envisaged. What is being called for is a critical engagement with the arts as a means of interpreting and learning about religion. Such critical engagement requires multiple sources so that students not only gain skills to analyse various representations but also increase their visual, multimodal and religious literacy. This book demonstrates the relationship of religion and the creative arts, establishes the educational context for the discussion by examining the history and development of approaches to religious education. The work suggests some critical implications for teachers of religion and develops an approach to the teaching of religious education using the creative arts.