School Patronage, Educational Experience and Religious Teachings

There’s an important distinction to be made between how religious teachings are introduced in a church, mosque or synagogue, and how such teachings are to be introduced in schools. Where this difference is overlooked there is a danger that the need to distinguish between educational experience and faith formation will be similarly disregarded. Both generally involve systematic learning. And religious teachings can feature in both. But properly understood, educational experience is mainly exploratory in character while faith formation is, from the start, evangelising in purpose and in practice