'O que é o "subalterno" da filosofia da religião? / What Is the “Subaltern” of the Philosophy of Religion?

The The 18th-19th centuries orientalist preoccupations with mythology and ancient perennis lacked both a critical-theoretical sensitivity to historiography anchored in radical historical consciousness and a deep sense of philosophical argumentation, as distinct from discerning mythic patterns of textual (intra-textual or internal) disputation and its interpretative ramifications from another felicitous perspective, usually theology mitigated by whatever remains ‘modern’ in the arts. Philosophy of Religion on the other hand remained heavily straddled in the rigors of logic, reason, analysis, dialectic, reason, reductio, aggressive refutation, within established frameworks drawing from the other branches of philosophy, namely, again, logic, epistemology, ontology and metaphyics. This paper presents a view 'from below' to demonstrate and argue how philosophy o religion must change in the post-colonial era and pay more attention to indigenous patterns of theological thinking and critiquing of Western enlightenment-centred philosophy of religion. It is in Portuguese though.

Religion should be taught secularly in our schools

Religion in schools is being debated once more in anticipation of findings from the controversial Review of the National Curriculum. This is a challenging topic locally and internationally. Can, and should, religion be taught in a secular context?

Nazism, political religion and 'ordinary' Germans

This paper examines the topic of Nazism and religion by taking one of the dominant schools of thought––that Nazism was a ‘political religion’––and dealing directly with an issue that is often encountered when teaching the history of the Nazi Party. A common question raised by students is this: what could be known about the Nazis when they came to power? While formulated in different ways and sometimes with a different chronological focus the core of this question is one of historicism. It may be abundantly clear to us now what the Nazis stood for, how racist and antisemitic they were, but what could be known by people then, and how did they view the Nazis? Given my sense that many teachers encounter this questions I believe it may be a useful prism through which to view Nazism and religion. The paper does so through using a case-study of the 'Temple Society' (Tempelgesellschaft), examining how members of this Christian community understood Nazism on the cusp of 1933.