Church, Religion, and Morality

In this brief and certainly in exhaustive historical exposition on church, religion, and morality, I examine the intersection of religion, sociopolitical ethics as amoral ideal, and education, with the point of reference being the expansion of Christianity—mainline Protestantism and Catholicism—within the dynamic of modernities and where dramatic historical shifts and changing international educational landscapes often meet. The first part of the chapter situates the analysis of missionary projects in the international landscape of what Hobsbawm referred to as the “age of empire”—a period comprising the last quarter of the nineteenth century to 1914, with the war being, in his words, “a natural break.” The projects are examined relative to developing the educational state and the institutionalization of education as a scholarly subject, along with a process of internationalization that was Western in character. The second part overviews the interwar period during which international organizations related to education were created that promoted reform or responded to associated sectorial interests and projects, while the educational sciences began to rise and progressive ideas started to spread. The latter led to an analysis of the Protestant missionary project in Latin America that shows how the Social Gospel would converge with John Dewey’s educational theories in an attempt to generate anew polity—a new social morality in a spiritualized democracy. The last part of the chapter discusses the dramatic changes after the Second World War including decolonization, a shift in education leading to cognitive psychology holding central place, the emergence of new intersections such as the Cold War, secularization, the impact of pluralism, and “cognitive contamination,” and social liberating movements, together with growing Evangelical fundamentalism and the renaissance of Islamism. A different picture of religion and education was created by these changes. The connecting thread in this intellectual history is the pursuit of a sociopolitical ethics through education that would be framed by macro-political historical configurations, including, over time, colonialism in its various forms, American imperialism, the Cold War, and different liberating projects. The chapter does not go beyond the early 1970s.