THE RELEVANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS DIMENSION IN THE EDUCATION TO UNIVERSAL CITIZENSHIP

The relevance of the religious dimension in the education to universal citizenship (Giorgia Pinelli, Michele Caputo, Maria Teresa Moscato – Università di Bologna) This essay highlights the potential role of the religious dimension in the positively utopian hypothesis of an education to universal citizenship as a fundamental pedagogical target. Starting from some specific philosophical and theoretical studies (Fowler, 2000, 2017; Moscato, Gatti, Caputo, 2012), we carried out several exploratory surveys (Caputo, 2012; Caputo, Pinelli, 2014), and we also acquired some empirical data during some interreligious formative seminars (Draghetti, Pinelli, 2019). We also carried out a national research by survey in Italy, involving a significative sample of 2.675 religious people, which provided many data about the representations and experiences connected to the religious dimension (Moscato, Caputo, Gabbiadini, Pinelli, Porcarelli, 2017). When we speak about the “religious dimension”, it is necessary to distinguish some elements in it. First of all, religiosity: an interactive and dynamic connection between an institutional, historical religion and the psychological and spiritual dynamisms linked to it. Religiosity has a subjective, concrete dimension, composed by psychological, anthropological and philosophical elements. Secondly, the religious sense, which we hypothesize to be the transculturally characterized generative element of the religious experience. Both of the above mentioned elements have to be differentiated from religion, which is an institutional symbolic system characterized by a proper theological and philosophical apparatus, a specific rituality and an organized structure. The interreligious dialogue does not happen among religions, but first of all among people’s religious experiences (Draghetti, Pinelli, 2019). The scientific and social disqualification of religion itself (Caputo, 2019) has delegitimized religiosity as well, reducing it to a mere emotive-affective dimension. On the contrary, as we will try to demonstrate, religiosity presents a positive potential also with respect to civil cohabitation, on condition that it is understood and promoted through conscious educative processes. The evolution of the religious conscience toward tolerance can be born only from a religiosity able to understand the human limits in receiving any possible “revelation”, and consequently able to presume that the one God may have been known by different names or perceived tentatively. Under these conditions, we will be able to reduce conflict among human interpretations, even in religious matters.