Resource Paper

Ecumenical Perspectives in Religious Education: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Asia Religious Educators Forum, October 2001

by Simon Oxley

If ever there was a time when ecumenical learning, formation or education is needed, it is now. In every part of the world, we see the terrible human cost of failing to learn with and from those who differ from us in culture and in faith. Religious education within state systems and faith communities that is narrow minded, sectarian and doctrinaire is the fertile ground in which misunderstanding and hatred is nurtured. The purpose of a religious education that is ecumenical is to grow within individuals and communities a broadness of vision and a depth of sympathy which goes beyond tolerance to mutual respect and understanding. An ecumenical perspective in religious education is imperative.

Education in the modern ecumenical movement

We will begin thinking about the ecumenical perspective in religious education by briefly placing it in the context of the development of the modern ecumenical movement and, particularly, the work of the WCC. In the 19th century, lay people met together, often to the annoyance of their churches, to support the work of Christian education - usually in the form of Sunday Schools. Inter-church groups came together to prepare teaching resources by for use by local congregations and Sunday Schools. National associations were formed in many countries and in 1889 the first World Sunday School Convention was held. The resulting global organisation became known as the World Council for Christian Education. (It merged with the World Council of Churches in 1971.) If this was not ecumenical education, it was the beginning of ecumenical collaboration in education.

From the early part of the 20th century, the practice and outcomes of ecumenism have been the subject of study. Following the Evanston Assembly of the World Council in 1954, the newly created Division of Ecumenical Action reflected on ecumenical education and reported to the 1957 meeting of the Central Committee:

Therefore, ecumenical education can no longer be limited to the history of attempts to reunite churches or the growth of ecumenical organisations. Ecumenical education essentially means fostering understanding of, commitment to and informed participation in, this whole ecumenical process.

We might be surprised that, at this early stage, while enthusiasm for the ecumenical movement was still running high, a tradition had begun of ecumenical education as a study of the past rather than as inspiring and equipping for participation in an ongoing and future directed process. Over forty years on, we may wonder whether the practice of ecumenical education has yet completely followed the conceptual change from studying the phenomena of Christian unity to participation in a process.

Participation in ecumenical education was again emphasised at the 1975 WCC Assembly in Nairobi. However, we see a development in the understanding of ecumenical. The assumption in 1957 was that ecumenical education was basically about the unity of the church. Now ecumenical education is about the human community in interaction with the community of the church.

.... programmes should challenge the churches beyond the brokenness of our human situation as well as beyond the partial, incomplete character of our ecumenical effort towards deeper sustained and sustaining relationships. If this is to happen, all member churches must be helped to participate in the process of ecumenical education that is so fundamental to our pilgrimage.

In addition to a development of understanding of education, there has also been an expansion of the domain of ecumenism. Taking the root meaning of the word in the Greek of the gospels oikoumene as the whole inhabited earth, ecumenical education developed a concern for all that made for fullness of life for humanity. The dynamic unity of the church was integrally connected with broader issues of justice and peace. The context of humanity, the planetary environment, also became important for the ecumenical movement. The roots through which the ecumenical movement draws its life and purpose are in the churches. The WCC remains no more and no less than a global fellowship of churches. In recent years, however, we have seen the further extension by some of ecumenism beyond the Christian faith to a movement of world faiths. This is not to be confused with the work of dialogue with the other world faiths which for many years has been an important aspect of the ecumenical movement. Some metropolitan ecumenical bodies in the USA, for example, are inter-faith organisations.

Philip Potter, giving his General Secretary's report to the Vancouver Assembly of the WCC in 1983 emphasised the churches as a community of learning. Through relating to God we should be opened up to a wider vision and to common action. In the 1980's, the WCC twice brought people together from around the world to reflect on the understanding and practice of what was by then known as ecumenical learning. The fruits of this are seen in the publication in 1989 of "Alive Together - a practical guide to ecumenical learning". The book offers three definitions of ecumenical learning:

1. Learning which enables people, while remaining rooted in one tradition of the church, to become open and responsive to the richness and perspectives of other churches, so that they become more active in seeking unity, openness and collaboration between churches.
   Learning which enables people of one country, language, ethnic group, class or political and economic system, to become sensitive and responsive to those of other countries, ethnic groups, political and economic situations, so that they become active participants in action for a more just world.

2. Ecumenical learning is what happens when diverse persons, rooted in their own faith traditions and complex experiences of culture, gender, nationality, race, call etc, become open and responsive to the richness of perspectives in the struggle of others, together seeking to know God and to be faithful to God's intention for them in their world.

3. Ecumenical learning is a process by which:
   - diverse groups and individuals
   - well rooted in their own faith, traditions, cultures and contexts
   - are enabled to risk honest encounters with one another before God
   - as they study and struggle together in community
   - with personally relevant issues
   - in the light of the scriptures, the traditions of their faith, worship and global realities
   - resulting in communal action in faithfulness to God's intention for the unity of the church and humankind, and for justice, peace and the integrity of creation. (3)

It might seem that the recommendation to the WCC Central Committee in 1957 that ecumenical education should encourage and enable participation had really had an effect. There is no trace of an ecumenical education which examines the past. The only concern of ecumenical learning, as it is described here, is the present reality. If there is any engagement with the past it is with the traditions of the churches, not of the ecumenical movement. Is this a satisfactory position?

From my observation, the tendency observed in 1957 for ecumenical education to concentrate on the history of the work to bring unity to the churches and of the activity of ecumenical organisations is alive and well. If there is a weakness in what we do, it is still in enabling participation. It is important that we know the ecumenical journey we have taken to come to this point in time. We do need to be able to access all that has been learnt in the ecumenical movement through success and failure along the way. We are already familiar with this general principle, otherwise we would have given up on reading the Bible!

"Reception" and "ecumenical memory" are two terms frequently used within the ecumenical movement. The need for these is often stressed. Reception refers to a process by which the outcomes of a study process or a conference are taken in to the thinking and activity of the churches and related networks. Ecumenical memory is the knowledge of what has already been done within the ecumenical movement in terms of issues considered and actions taken. However, both terms can be problematic for ecumenical education.

Reception can so easily be taken to imply a process whereby some do the thinking and the rest should receive the results of their work and put it into practice. I hear complaints that this or that piece of good work was done ecumenically but the churches took no notice of it. Sometimes there is an implicit criticism that, if the educators had done their job more effectively, everyone would be aware and engaged. It is easy to identify some of the problems with this in terms of both attitude and process. It betrays an 'us and them' attitude. It clearly separates those who discern, reflect and strategise from those who are to act and the ecumenical from the churches. It also indicates a process which has not directly involved anyone else apart from the participants in the particular study or conference. Asking the question about reception once the work has been done or presuming from the beginning that all we need to say is "now get on with it" are sure signs of a fatally flawed process.

In addressing the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order, Catholicos Aram I, currently Moderator of the Central Committee of the WCC, reflected on the bilateral theological dialogues which have taken place between churches. He called for a process of reception that was not simply about the formal adoption of statements but "in terms of effective communication, dynamic interpretation and ecumenical conscientisation. This process of reception implies ecumenical education and conversion and mutual accountability". The role of ecumenical education is not to sell ecumenical thought or action to the churches at national or congregational level. Rather it is engaging with people and opening up attitudes and processes.

The Biblical roots of an ecumenical religious education

Learning from one another has always been the experience of the churches. The diverse group of women and men who met for prayer following the Ascension (Acts 1.12-14) had already had an intense learning experience through their involvement in the ministry of Jesus. The snatches of conversation between the disciples recorded in the gospels and the significantly different interpretation of Jesus in each gospel suggests that even at the birth of the church there was the potential for learning from each other. However, it is not simply the case that the Old and New Testaments record many examples of learning experiences which can encourage present day believers. The message seems to be that learning is of the essence of faith. We tend to use the word disciple in the sense of being a follower and forget its root meaning of being a learner. Faith is dynamic, implying constant learning, and not a static state where all answers are known.

There are two powerful motifs in looking at Biblical examples of learning as a paradigm of faith - journey and encounter. It is as we travel together that we learn. The new experiences shared on a journey prompt a communal an individual learning. Likewise, encounters with those whose differences from us challenge our self-understanding.

To begin with the motif of journey, the story of the Exodus dominates the thought of the Old Testament. Among the many ways of interpreting this story is to see it through the lens of learning. Liberation came as much from what the people learnt together on their journey as from the physical escape from slavery in Egypt. The story describes three particularly significant and inter-related aspects of learning.

They learnt who they were. It was not just the Egyptians who forgot who Joseph was and why the Israelites were in their land. The first chapters of Exodus are a reminder of the way in which dislocated and oppressed people can forget their identity. The Israelites came only to know themselves as slaves. The group self image was so powerful that when things became difficult at the start of their journey they complained that they would be better off in the 'normality' of slavery (Exodus 14.10-12 & 16.1-3). In the course of the Exodus they claimed or reclaimed their identity as people of God.

They learnt who God was for them. The loss of identity was related to the atrophy of the memory of the source of that identity - the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. The story describes Israelites calling out to the Lord in their misery. That is no more surprising than many contemporary post-Christian fellow citizens who in moments of crisis will turn to a God who is all but forgotten in their living. Even Moses had to be convinced who God is. It was no sudden awakening of faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob which led to the start of the journey out of slavery but the persistence of Moses and Aaron. The rediscovery of God came as they travelled. It is interesting to note that the journey begun but not completed by Abraham, another foundational story of the people of Israel, is also initiated by a call from a God who was only dimly apprehended (Genesis 12.1-9). The Exodus journey, like all such journeys, is the difficult process of coming to faith in God.

They learnt how to live in community. The part of the Exodus story which is described in Leviticus and Deuteronomy could be caricatured as a list of rules and regulations which seem to make little sense to twentieth century readers. As slaves, the Israelites lived by their master's rules and for their benefit. They had lost the art of living in their own community. We can, therefore, see these rules and regulations as exemplifying the attempt to work out how a just and healthy community could function. Liberation comes from being set free and in learning how to live together in freedom.

The story of the Israelites once they had arrived in the promised land contains a warning to those who would only see the journey as an image for a process of learning which is a means to an end. A feeling of having 'arrived' is the prelude to disaster. Time and time again the people of Israel forgot what had been learned about their identity, about God and about how to live in community. It was only as they were in travelling mode again, either metaphorically or literally by exile, that the learning process was restored and there was salvation or health for the community.

In the gospels, the call of Jesus to the disciples was 'follow me'. For them, following Jesus meant leaving a settled existence and living with the uncertainties of life on the road. The gospels include several accounts of the conversations Jesus held with the disciples as they made their way from place to place. They witnessed the healings and listened to the teaching and the stories. The disciples discussed things from how to pray to who was the most important. Jesus took time with them to reflect on why things had gone wrong - for instance, while Jesus was on the mountain for the transformation, the rest of the disciples failed to help an epileptic boy (Matt 17.1-21). Jesus even gave them direct experience of doing his work and then engaged with their experience on their return (Luke 9.1-10). The journeys around the Holy Land were potential learning experience for the disciples. Jesus recognised this and on occasion expressed frustration that the disciples had seen and heard but not understood (eg Mark 7.18; 8.14-21) They had been making the physical journey and had probably been making an emotional journey too. However they had not travelled far in the kind of learning for which Jesus was looking.

It is usual for Christian writers on education to refer to Jesus' teaching style in responding to those who came to him with questions. In the context of demonstrating that learning can be seen as a necessary Christian paradigm, it is more instructive to look at Jesus himself learning through encountering the "other". This will be controversial for those who understand Jesus to be so "at one with the Father" that he knew everything and, consequently, had no need to learn. The writers of Matthew and Luke and the subsequent editors of the New Testament were quite radical in preserving the account of the encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite or Syro-Phoenecian woman (Matthew 15.21-28 and Mark 7.24-30). The woman approached Jesus to ask for her daughter to be healed. According to these accounts Jesus strongly resisted her request on the grounds that his mission was only to the people of Israel. However, the woman's faith in Jesus caused him to change his mind. In this encounter with a person whose gender and ethnicity made her a culturally unacceptable counterpart, Jesus learnt about his own mission. I can only describe this as ecumenical learning!

Journey and encounter come together in the Acts of the Apostles. It was as the gospel travelled out from Jerusalem, that the early followers of Jesus learnt what it meant to be Christian. The story told by the Acts of the Apostles is of the opportunities for learning from each other's experience, and of the barriers to such learning, as the followers of Jesus were driven out into the wider world by persecution and the Spirit. In spite of the positive encounters between Jesus and a Roman centurion (Matt 8.5-13) and the Syro-Phoenecian (above), the movement out from Jerusalem began as a Jewish mission. It took encounters with gentiles and the work of the Holy Spirit (eg Acts 10.1-48) for the early Christians top learn that "God has given even to the gentiles the repentance that leads to life." (Acts 11.18).

We need to remember that what we now read in the New Testament as the 'givens' of Christian faith began as pieces of learning in response to events, individuals and communities. The correspondence between Paul and young churches he had helped to establish or had visited is an example of people exploring who they are, who God is and how they could live together in community. Again it can be argued that problems arose in these early Christian communities when they began to feel that there was no more to be learned - that they knew all they needed to know.

Faith in both the Old and New Testaments is a dynamic concept. We see the learning happening by individuals and community. Ecumenical religious education must stand in that biblical tradition.

Ecumenical religious education as education

It may also help us to think about education itself. All too often we think of education only as what happens in school, college or university. The late Paulo Friere questioned conventional thinking and practice in the schooling types of education. His writing and his own educative activities challenged a 'banking concept' of education. That is, information is paid in by the teacher who is knowledgeable and saved up in the individual learner who initially knows nothing. Selected, pre-packaged information is conveyed by a teacher to passive learners. Rather, education should be liberating, about the action of knowing or understanding rather than the transfer of information. Control of the process of learning does not rest with the teacher but is a shared responsibility through which teachers and learners all grow through a process of dialogue. Rather than being required by an externally imposed curriculum, learning begins with the themes at the heart of peoples' own experience - their concepts, values, hopes and fears. For Friere, education is always a collective experience. It is a process of empowerment for the community as well as the individual.

There are two significant words associated with Paulo Friere's educational work which emphasise the distance from conventional schooling - conscientisation (conscientização) and praxis. Put simply, conscientisation is a process in which people discover and understand for themselves the social and cultural realities that shape their lives and develop their ability to change them. Praxis is a learning cycle that lies at the heart of conscientisation. It is a process where action is followed by reflection. From the reflection on the action, a new action emerges and the process repeats itself. My personal conviction is that ecumenical education should not just note this as a useful approach but use it as foundational.

Influenced by Paulo Freire and other educational thinkers, a distinction is now often drawn between transmission and transformation as the objective of education. Transmission, which we can compare to the banking concept, implies that knowledge comes from external sources and authority figures. The principal skills required by learners are those of listening, reading, observing and memorisation. Personal ideas, emotions, contributions or questions are not welcome or important. The roles of the teacher and the learner are clearly defined as giver and receiver, as the one who knows and the one who does not.

In education as transformation, learning is motivated and directed by the learner. Aesthetic, moral, emotional, physical, and spiritual needs stand alongside the information and ideas. The creation and development of knowledge is through a dynamic interaction between teachers, learners and multiple resources of all kinds. Teaching and learning functions become interchangeable. Unlike education as transmission where the learners acquire a greater quantity of information, education as transformation results in a qualitative change in the learners and their contexts.

We can draw a distinction between education as transmission and as transformation but we should not assume that the aim of handing on knowledge implicit in transmission cannot be effected by transformational education. Educational traditionalists argue that abandoning schooling models of education means that such transmission will not happen. Young people, they fear, will grow up without a knowledge of what has been experienced and learnt by previous generations. Particularly sensitive areas are those of national identity and history, values and religious faith. Transformational education does not begin with a blank sheet of paper. One of the givens is that of existing knowledge. Learners have to engage with that. However, they do not just receive it uncritically. That is the real problem for the traditionalists.

By its nature, any education in and around the Christian faith has to be transformational. The gospel is about change and the kingdom comes by "turning the world upside down". Ecumenical education, in particular, has the intention of transforming individuals, communities and the world in which they live. Ecumenical education can never be content with simply handing on an ecumenical history.

Coming from a more institutional direction, the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century, established by UNESCO, produced a report in 1996 "Learning: The Treasure Within" which identified four pillars of education - learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. The four are inter-related and of equal importance. Learning through education is recognised as a lifelong and a life-related process which is not confined to any stage of life or institutional system. Formal and informal education are not in opposition to one another and should cross fertilize each other.

Learning to know is not so much about acquiring itemized, codified information as of mastering the instruments of knowledge. It is no longer possible to know all there is to know, even within a limited field of knowledge. Education should stimulate intellectual curiosity. It should assist the learner to have an awareness of a broad background and study in depth. Learning to learn is as important as acquiring particular items of knowledge.

Learning to do has always been an important activity, whether through formal training in industrialised economies or the informal learning of traditional skills in communities where formal employment is not the norm. The pace of global change is such that it is now difficult to envisage any such skills training which will remain relevant for the whole of a person's life. The report identifies the need for what are sometimes called 'life skills' (communication, team work, problem solving, conflict management) in addition to manual and intellectual skills.

Learning to live together has not always been so clearly identified as one of the basic pillars of education. Perhaps we assumed (wrongly, as experience indicates) that such learning would happen naturally or that, if we brought people in contact with one another, tolerance and respect would automatically follow. The report advocates two complementary approaches - discovering others and working towards common objectives. It suggests that in order to understand others, one must first know oneself. I wonder whether this is, in fact, a sequential process. It seems equally true that trying to understand others helps me know myself.

Learning to be implies that education should play a role in the all-round development of each individual. The report mentions intelligence, sensitivity, aesthetic sense, personal responsibility and spiritual values. Each one of us should be enabled to develop independent, critical thinking and to form their own judgement. In this way we will be able to determine for ourelves what we believe it right to do in any circumstance. Whilst agreeing with that thinking, I believe that it needs to be qualified in a way which is not done adequately in the report. There must be a dynamic relationship between the learning to be of the individual and the learning to be of the community of which they are a part. Each should enable the other. All the way through, the report is strong on education in relation to the learning done by individuals. It does not give the same recognition of education as a means by which communities learn, that is as entities rather than as a collection of individuals. Unless we ask some searching questions about how the four pillars of education apply to community, then our hopes for their application to individuals are likely to remain unfulfilled.

On the whole, churches have related more closely to the first two of the pillars of education. For some parts of the church, learning to know in the sense of acquiring information and concepts relating to Christian faith has been the prime objective of their educational activity. It is as if entry to the Kingdom of God was by passing an examination in Christianity! Some have placed an emphasis on education in church as learning how to do worship, prayer, pastoral care and service.

Learning to know and to do are important aspects of any church related educational activity, including ecumenical education. However, for Christians, learning to live together and learning to be ought to have a special quality for they take us close to the heart of the Gospel. I say 'ought to' because, in practice, they do not seem to be given that significance. Let us take learning to live together as an example. We can see this, for instance, in the valuable work done through by the churches through the WCC, for example, in the Programme to Combat Racism, the Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation process, inter-faith dialogue and family life education. Most recently, the churches have called each other to participate in a Decade to Overcome Violence - the most wide ranging and dedicated focus on communities and individuals living together in peace. These often seem to be regarded as additional activities for those who have that particular interest, otherwise just another item for report on the agenda.

We know that, from the local to the global, there are groups and individuals who devote time and imagination to the whole business of learning to live together. For some there is no option as their community context demands it. Those of us for whom developing positive, sympathetic relationships with peoples from different cultures and faiths was not a life or death issue will have to reconsider our attitudes after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the USA in September 2001. If learning together and learning to be have a vital ecumenical significance, how do we ensure that they are part of the 'basic curriculum' of churches' educational activity rather than 'optional extras'?

The report envisages education as being able to bring change "from narrow nationalism to universalism, from ethnic and cultural prejudice to tolerance, understanding and pluralism, from autocracy to democracy in its various manifestations and from a technologically divided world where high technology is the privilege of the few to a technologically united world." Teachers are an essential catalyst in the learning process. However, they have to change their role from being a "soloist" to an "accompanist". Their task to not to hand out information and to mould learners. Rather they should help learners know how to find, organise and manage knowledge.

All those involved in ecumenical religious education need to be part of decision making and every learning opportunity should be democratic in structure. More than that, as Freire reminds us, teachers should be learners and learners should teach.

Map readers or map makers

Sometimes it is very useful to be given travel directions. To find your way from the railway station to someone's office in a city you don't know, it helps to have precise instructions - turn right down this street and left down that. However, such directions are of no use for anything apart from going from the railway station to the office. They cannot help us explore the city. If we take a wrong turn, they will not help us find our way again. Seeing religious education as being given travel directions for life, as some people do, is a very limited image.

It is much better to have a map to find your way around. Then you can explore without getting lost. There is much to be said for the map as an image for education. It recognises that we need to be equipped to find our way through a world whose complexity is constantly increasing. However, those who read the map the wrong way up will go off in the wrong direction. A compass is also necessary to orient the map correctly. Education should give us more than one tool to help us make our journey at our own speed. The travel directions given yesterday by religion, science or any other discipline can only be rewritten by us if we are prepared to find the way using the maps and compass available to us.

There is a continuing debate in the churches and in educational institutions between those who believe that education is all about giving people the travel directions and those who believe that it is about giving the map and compass so that they can find their way. It can be caricatured as "traditionalist" against "progressive" in educational and theological terms. However, both could claim to be drawing on Christian truth and there are many ways in which the Bible, Christian doctrine and Jesus himself can be enlisted to support either position. It is possible to be very conservative theologically and adopt the map and compass position and to be radical theologically and write one directional travel directions.

However, I want to propose a third image to add those of the travel directions and the map and compass. This one which many will find very uncomfortable. I am indebted to what may seem an unlikely source for stimulating this thought. In his book, "The Way Ahead", Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, observes that there is never a reliable map for unexplored territory and that the journey of discovery into unknown territory is exciting. I see that developments in information technology and genetic engineering or an understanding of how globalisation works are unexplored territory for humanity. Territory that we thought we had begun to explore, such as building relationships between different cultures and faiths, we find that we do not know as well as we thought. It is not a matter of being unsure which way up to hold the map as no map may yet exist. At a more mundane level, changed patterns of living and behaving in many societies are as yet unmapped.

On this view, we have to learn to be explorers and map makers. To continue the analogy, our tools are even more basic - blank sheets of paper, coloured pens, a sense of adventure and an enquiring mind. This may seem to be a long way away from people's experience of church or school. Perhaps this is more a criticism of lifeless institutions than of the image.

Why should anyone, though, want to go to the trouble of being a map maker when there are more than enough maps and travel guides on the bookshop shelves? The World Council of Churches has produced a whole library full of reports on everything to do with ecumenism. A danger of using images, analogies or metaphors is that the concrete actuality may limit the concept it helps illustrate. Our travel is through life and not only through a landscape. Life, which in our context must be understood as to include faith, has elements of global commonality from our humanity and local commonality in our societal and religious communities. To a certain extent, therefore, there is a common 'landscape' to be mapped. However, my life is not the same as yours because you are not me, even though we may have much in common. The same is true of communities, for in ecumenical education we are dealing with the collective as well as the individual. This requires us, individuals and communities, to draw our own map of the territory we occupy or travel through.

Ecumenical religious education should be about creating - understanding, openness, commitment, engagement and action. Rather than only helping adults and children become better direction followers or map readers, we should be encouraging them to be map makers - a more exciting and creative process.

Conclusion

I want to conclude with my own affirmations about ecumenical religious education to encourage you to reflect on your own understanding and practicse.

• ecumenical education begins with people's actual context - religious, social, political - and builds on the experience and knowledge they bring;

• ecumenical education is not only about sharing each other's existing knowledge but discovering the new;

• ecumenical education in encounter opens us up to the "other" to learn from and with them - the other person, the other way of believing, acting or thinking;

• ecumenical education breaks through the barriers we build between us - of race, gender, sexuality, culture, religion, class, politics, economics etc - and enables difference to become a resource for learning;

• ecumenical education builds community towards the unity of the church, of humanity and of creation;

• ecumenical education is people learning together in community;

• ecumenical education means communities as well as individuals learning;

• ecumenical education is open and participatory;

• ecumenical education involves reflection and action;

• ecumenical education is a holistic process which unites the physical, social and spiritual;

• ecumenical education is not so much learning about the ecumenical movement as becoming ecumenical in attitude and practice.

[Simon Oxley is the Team Coordinator, Education and Ecumenical Formation Team of the World Council of Churches. This lecture is based on material written for "Creative Ecumenical Education" by Simon Oxley to be published in 2002 by WCC Publications in the Risk Book series.]