Religion and education, an emerging dialogue: from theoretical to practical for establishing an area of knowledge

This article explores the matter of Religious Education in the classroom as a curricular subject and presents what may be the basis for an epistemology that subsidizes an area of knowledge so as to analyze the religious phenomenon under the teaching scope. We are cautious to talk about Religion as an education process that puts itself beyond the domain of the confessional debate. We assumethat religion, among other activities that define the contemporary man, should be addressed though a pedagogical stance for the understanding of much of the data concerning the constituents of human relations in the plurality of contemporary societies, which are marked by the peculiarity of secularism and its original context, defined as secularization. To respond to that challenge and proposal we adopt the pragmatic/critic approach based on Richard Rorty's ideas and articulated by the proposition of a post-metaphysical Public Theology. The teaching activity should not only undertake the transmission and exposition of contents but also explore the many different and plural places as well the languages of the production and development of knowledge that identifies the uniqueness of human existence. The pragmatical need (and sometimes in a strong utilitarian sense) and the emergence of a symbolic (and also mysterical) view of the capabilities and skills that must be present in the human actions when facing the world with which we are confronted is a central point in our concerns. Nonetheless, education must be constituted by the appropriate "tools" that perform such task in a satisfying fashion.