The Problem of the Erosion of Religious Identity

	Cardinal Clancy Centre for Research in the Spiritual, Moral, Religious and Pastoral Dimensions of Education.
Spiritual, Moral and Religious Education is a Flagship area for Research in Australian Catholic University

The Problem of the Erosion of Religious Identity: Implications for Religious Education

A feature article in Time magazine, April 28 1997, was entitled 'Sparse at Seder?' It was about the Jewish community in the United States at Passover time worrying and debating about whether Jewish people were 'vanishing into America'. The sort of culture distinctive of the United States, and of other Western countries like the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, tends to have an homogenising effect on people's religious identity. They can become so identified with the values, cultural norms and lifestyles of their society that they lose a sense of distinctive religious identity.

The debate in the Time article centred on two recent books: Dershowitz's The Vanishing American Jew and Abrams' Faith or Fear.

Dershowitz wrote about the problem of the erosion of Jewish identity. His conclusion was grim: "Saving an unforeseen reversal of current trends, it appears ... that the history of the Jews as we have known it ... is probably approaching the end."

Abrams, too, thought that there was a distortion of the self-image of Jews in the United States. He considered that the more well-to-do Jews have traded a distinctive religious identity for the less controversial 'faith' of secular liberalism. He thinks that this is "Jewishness without Judaism".

The concerns of Jews in the United States about the issue of distinctive religious identity are just as pertinent to Catholics and the various Christian denominations in Australia. (Some attention to this was given in the second issue of Word in Life this year -- with reference to the role of Catholic school religious education.)

Some of the questions that need consideration are as follows. A number of these are addressed by students in various religious education units at Australian Catholic University, particularly at Doctor of Education level.

* Just what constitutes a distinctive religious identity (Eg. Catholic) in a pluralistic, multicultural democracy?

* How does a community of faith help to communicate such a sense of identity to its young people?

* What is the most appropriate role of a school, and of formal religious education, in promoting religious identity?

One of the problems for Catholic schooling and for Catholic religious education is that the approach to these issues is not as complex as it needs to be. There are no simple answers and there many factors which have an influence.

The concept of identity itself is problematic. Some tend to approach the question from a psychological angle. This has to do with the way in which individuals answer the question: "Who am I?" Getting a satisfying definition of identity is difficult. The problem of identity by stereotype needs to be avoided; as also generalisations about identity: for example "In the 1950s there were no identity problems for Catholics? Why should they have any in the 1990s?"

One definition of identity that is helpful for religious educators looks at identity not as a fixed entity, or defining stereotype, but rather as the process through which individuals draw on elements from their cultural heritage, including their religious tradition, for their self-understanding and self-expression. This definition is useful in the way it focuses on how to give young Catholics access to the identity-building raw material in Catholic theology, Scripture, liturgy, spirituality and morality. They may not make full formal use of these resources just now (including identification with the Church) but it can help them relate to the spiritual and moral dimensions in life and it may become an increasingly important spiritual resource as they grow older.

The Catholic school and its religious education programs cannot impose or inject some workable sense of Catholic identity for its students. However, what it can do is ensure that in the school's education program and in its social practice, that students are provided with the access to religious traditions as noted above. Through both knowledge and experience of those traditions, young people are given the reference points that will enable them to construct some sense of ongoing Catholic religious identity. This is not easy to define, but it is possible to develop a good working hypothesis about what elements of the tradition and what elements of practice need to be there for minimal exposure.