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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
In the practice of multicultural religious education a conflict arises between two competing understandings of the term multicultural. In one understanding multicultural religious education means the incorporation of racial and ethnic diversity into a Western, European paradigm of Christianity. In another understanding, multicultural religious education means the implementation of theological and educational procedures and rationales that would account for the reality of social structural differences within the diversity of society, allow those differences to shape the content and form of the Christian tradition, and, therefore, challenge the Western paradigm as the dominant expression of Christianity. This article expresses the conviction that the term multicultural is most appropriately understood as that which embraces the reality of diversity and social structural difference. Based on this conviction, the article makes the case that theologies of liberation provide an important theological framework for a multicultural religious education that embraces both diversity and difference.
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