Abstract This study proposes an interdisciplinary approach to religious education (RE) that integrates multicultural and antiracist pedagogies to better address religious identity, cultural expression, and educational justice. It argues that antiracist education, particularly in Western contexts such as Germany, Britain, and the United States, often reduces race to a binary framework (e.g., Black/white), thereby neglecting cultural racism —a form of discrimination rooted in perceived cultural or religious difference rather than phenotype, as theorized by Tariq Modood. Similarly, multicultural education tends to essentialize cultures, unintentionally reinforcing stereotypes and contributing to microaggressions , such as the expectation that minority pupils serve as “spokespersons” for their entire community. RE also struggles with the abstraction of religion from its social and racial contexts, leading to a form of religious literacy that ignores historical legacies of colonialism, Christonormativity (the default centering of Christian norms), and systemic inequalities. This paper introduces three guiding strategies to redress these issues: (1) Cultivating epistemic humility , a disposition that invites learners to recognize the limits of their knowledge and remain open to alternative religious perspectives; (2) drawing on Bauman’s concepts of dominant (institutional) and demotic (lived) discourses to uncover cultural assumptions in RE; and (3) using collective memory—especially around colonial and racial trauma—as a tool for interreligious learning. The aim is to reshape RE into a more inclusive, historically conscious, and epistemically open educational framework that resists harm and fosters more profound understanding.
Blackmer et al. (Tue,) studied this question.