Religious Education and East Asian Religions. Insights for Rethinking Epistemological and Pedagogical Approaches

his paper explores the relevance of east Asian religions for the field of Religious Education (RE). Critical studies of extra-European, particularly east Asian religions, contributed to the rethinking of the study of religions. Similarly, I argue that this topic helps individuating biases and implicit modernist and orientalist discourses also in RE. I focus on two ‘challenges’ as critical lenses. The first is the inadequacy of the Christian-Protestant paradigm of religion, centred on the inner world of the practitioner and its exclusive religious belonging. The second is the influence of the historical and cultural entanglements between East Asia and the Euro-American regions. Some examples from RE in England and Sweden, two renowned instances of non-confessional RE, are discussed. The last part argues that such challenges can turn into pedagogical opportunities in terms of ‘competences for democratic culture’.