Religious Values Assignment Sample

Religious Values Assignment

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In a secular context, religious education is considered as a type of teaching of a specific religious belief and various aspects associated with it, such as doctrines, customs, rituals, and personal roles. In Western culture, it is associated with largely separate academia and considers religious belief as operating modality and tenet. In this report, a reflection on values and attitude such as humanity, family, trust, loyalty, and honesty towards the religious education has been provided, wherein the bond or link between them is discussed. In addition to this, their impacts on approach and motivation to religious education are also discussed in detail in this report.

Ques1: Reflect on your values and attitude toward religious education.

Religious education is all about education which is associated with religion. I believe that such education can be gained from various religious literature, religious centres, and religious organisations. There are certain human values that I would like to relate to religious education. These are humanity, family, trust, loyalty, and honesty. Talking about humanity, I have learned that humanity is the primary acceptable condition of human society and it is also the most underestimated condition. I have noticed that people help each other in order to get hearty and mental satisfaction. Religion, on the other hand, is an idea or belief system. From my experience, humanity is the belief that unites people from all religion and combines their learnings and beliefs. There is a famous quote that there is no religion higher than humanity. People learn from their experiences while helping others as driven by the feeling of humanity. However, it has been seen that humanity's quality is eventually fading away in human beings. According to Walsh (1997), people should live their religion as a courtesy to humanity and should help the people across the world. Religion education considers humanity as removing poverty, engaging oneself in the service of others, and respecting other fellow beings. I would like to add more into this that humanity is also about minimising mental suffering.

Talking about the other value which is trust and its influence over religious education, I believe that trust helps us in becoming a better religious educator. Leaders and teachers in religious education must have a trusted relationship so as to have an effective religious education and united bond. Usually, trust is built on the basis of reliability of one person over others. In religious education, if the trust level drops down, all involved relations might start getting affected by the conflicts and contentions. Researchers are studying trust as an attribute, situational feature, behaviour, and ethical principle. Koehn (2012) argues that religious education setting is having the strongest influence than another administrative leader. The main concern that I realised how to build trust as a part of religious education. Campbell (2012)emphasises five facets of improving trust in the education setting, namely reliability, competence, openness, honesty, and benevolence.

Talking about honesty, I believe that it is a congruence of one's sayings and actions. I perceive people as honest after estimating their truthfulness. For being considered as honest, the principal in any education system should be behaving genuinely. I have seen that educators who are consistently honest are more likely to earn the trust of their friends and relatives. Being honest teaches a person to be authentic. I believe that in the religious education field, one's words should be congruent with the actions otherwise, the authenticity might get weakened. A leader in the field of religious education cannot ignore trust in a relationship as it cannot be counterfeited.

Loyalty is another value that I believe is one of the pillars of the religious educational system. People usually see religion as a mix of feelings, such as honesty, love, unity, joy, peace, etc. I believe that it is developed through some consistent and valuable interaction between two people over a period of time. Loyalty cannot be built just by presuming its existence. It is built just by maintaining continuous bilateral exchange and undermining instances of negligence. I think that level of trust, honesty, loyalty, and humanity are a quintessential factor for the success or failure of the religious education and leaders are the best persons to influence the level of these factors between two people. Religious educational institutes can be improved through regular opportunities. Religious education pupil would be benefited by researching the role of strategies and trust between teachers and leaders.

Ques2: How do they affect your motivation and approach to religious education?

Talking about the effect of the aforementioned values over my motivation and approach to gain religious education, it all depends on their level of influence. The significance of these values has been considered in a various publication on organisational leadership, human relations, and management. For instance, Koehn (2012) emphasise that trust is considered as more significant than love. Rovai& Baker (2004) believe that addressing religious education in school is important for learning and can adequately result in diverse exposure of student to the outer world. All that is required from the religious institutions is to teach unbiasedly. There are many impacts on a person's value on religious education. For instance, it would decrease the number of religiously motivated crimes (Miller, 2013). All that is required is to make the student body a bit of diversified and enhancing scholars’ education. By developing a value like humanity, religious educational institutes can control the religiously motivated crimes as nowadays they are increasing. If educators make students learn about respecting other human beings and their religious beliefs, then this would surely be reducing the number of hate crimes. I have seen in those schools where religious education is banned, students usually assume that crime is acceptable (O’Grady, 2009).

It has been noticed that trust and reliability makes a person associated with the religious education institute emotionally and socially intelligent. Such religious leaders understand the value of the person that has the ability to manage emotion and perceive and also show genuine empathy towards others. Honest and trusted leaders are socially intelligent that are adaptive and flexible, accept full responsibility for their mistakes and they are also lifelong educators. Trust, honesty and loyalty reduce vulnerability (Miller, 2013). Religious literature like the Bible has taught me that "there can never be any growth without real freedom." One of the significant prerequisites of honesty is benevolence that focuses on increasing trust for teachers and other leaders. Religious leaders often become worried and anxious for their welfare. It is required from an honest leader to be optimistic, confident, and providing sincere compliments, protecting rights, and apologising sincerely (Goodlet& Collier, 2014). In the religious educational institute, even a small visit of leaders can bring or boost confidence and increases the trust levels.

Talking about religious education and the family values, some literature supports the argument that marriages and family relationships are strengthened by religion. Individuals are benefitted by religious preaching. Majority of the Americans are more accustomed to Western monotheistic faith due to their religious involvement. I have read about the theories that emphasise more on Judaism, Islam, and Christianity than the Western faith. Religion is a widely discussed a topic that helps in widening the knowledge of local community and family members (Abbott, et.al, 1990). Due to a large number of religions, it is necessary for the religious educational institutions to provide knowledge of all the religions that bring people from different race and class together. The impact of the aforementioned values is seen on religious literacy which is considered as a key to the right education. Honesty, family values, loyalty, trust, etc., help the scholar to gain more knowledge related to religious beliefs followed around the world. Being a student in a foreign country, I realised that understanding of religions has a great influence on the students' learning. They get a better insight into society, culture, history, and politics. It is quintessential for students to gain religious education in order to understand and respect the diversity of which they are a part of (Koehn, 2012). In addition to this, students are also a part of the lives of different types of people and this knowledge will have a positive impact on their learning and relationships. Such students have a better command over reality and values. However, in the majority of the cases, I have noticed that education institute are reluctant to discuss religion.

Conclusion

The following report discussed the religious education in detail, wherein it was discussed that honesty is a congruence of one's sayings and actions. In addition to this, the role of trust was also elaborated. It was determined that trust help us in becoming a better religious educator. In addition to this, the impacts of honesty and family values were also enlisted in the report. For instance, trust, honesty, and loyalty reduce vulnerability. It was also highlighted that honest and trusted leader is socially intelligent that are adaptive and flexible, accept full responsibility for their mistakes and they are also lifelong educators.

References

• Abbott, D. A., Berry, M., & Meredith, W. H. (1990). Religious belief and practice: A potential asset in helping families.  Family relations, 443-448.
• Barr, A., Gillard, J., Firth, V., Scrymgour, M., Welford, R., Lomax-Smith, J., ... & Constable, E. (2008).  Melbourne declaration on educational goals for young Australians. Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training, and Youth Affairs. PO Box 202 Carlton South Victoria, 3053, Australia.
• Borgonovi, F. (2012). The relationship between education and levels of trust and tolerance in Europe 1.  The British Journal of Sociology,  63(1), 146-167.
• Campbell, H. A. (Ed.). (2012).  Digital religion: Understanding religious practice in new media worlds. Routledge.
• Goodlet, K., & Collier, J. (Eds.). (2014).  Teaching well: Insights for educators in Christian schools. Barton Books Pty Limited.
• Koehn, D. (2012).  Rethinking feminist ethics: Care, trust and empathy. Routledge.
• Miller, J. (2013). REsilience, violent extremism and religious education.  British Journal of Religious Education,  35(2), 188-200.
• Miller, T. S. (2012).  The hippies and American values. Univ. of Tennessee Press.
• O’Grady, K. (2009). Honesty in religious education: some further remarks on the legacy of Ninian Smart and related issues, in reply to L. Philip Barnes.  British Journal of Religious Education,  31(1), 65-68.
• Rovai, A. P., & Baker, J. D. (2004). The sense of community: A comparison of students attending Christian and secular universities in traditional and distance education programs. Christian Scholar's Review,  33(4), 471.
• Walsh, B. (1997). Education in precarious times: Postmodernity and a Christian worldview.  Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity.