Philosophy and religious education in public schools

The papers published together in this Special Issue reveal synergies as well as much complexity in the relationship between philosophy and Religious Education (RE) in public schools. The call for papers noted that the status of RE in publicly funded schools around the world, almost always has a strong relationship to historic relationships between church and state in each nation (see Bråten Citation2014). We find that not only did Christian Churches frequently have strong influences in securing RE into the early days of statutory curricula in public schools but were also able to influence the development of whole education systems. This can be observed, for example, in England where a ‘dual system’ of faith and non-denominational community schools established in the late 19th century persists today, and RE for children in non-denominational schools most closely resembled the theological perspective of the ‘established’ church. Further, such political/church influence in wider education systems was, as Jackson (Citation2020) notes, exported all over the Anglo-world as a mechanism of colonisation. It is interesting therefore to find, as the papers in this collection show, that political and religious influences persist today, influencing decisions made in many nations regarding the presence of philosophy and/or RE at a curriculum level in public schools.