Towards Dialectics Of Faith And Life

"Faith" is one of the basic spiritual pursuits of human beings. In western societies, faith is usually mentioned in terms of "religious faith". In Chinese society, however, for most people, faith only means some belief in ethics or morals. But there is no paradox be-tween the two views. The faith in terms of religious faith not only involves belief in God but also belief in God’s teachings. God’s teachings are not only about the relation between God and people but also about the relation between persons. Regarding person to person rela-tions, there are some things which both eastern and western people fully agree with each other on, such as the importance of trusting, respecting and caring for others. These life praxes cannot be fulfilled without a social environment of freedom, equality and dignity, which are universal values that all people long for and pursue eagerly. In terms of philoso-phy and theology, these universal values always relate to human ultimate concerns and daily life praxes. From an educational angle, this work will bring a discussion on the dialectical relation between faith and life; point out some effective methods and approaches according to some religious education theories of Thomas Groome; and provide China some refer-ences on moral education and practice.Faith is extremely important for the growth of human life and the development of hu-man society. A lot of personal problems and social moral chaos are caused by the lack or distortion of faith. For most people, we can say, their life depends on their faith. In order to keep a good relationship between faith and life, education can never be ignored.Catholic religious education has a mission of passing Christian faith and enriching people’s life. It dedicates itself to form people’s Christian faith and transform their life. For doing so, it has accumulated a lot of experience and wisdom from its educational practices in the past thousands of years of its history. Based on summarizing and reflecting on the long period of Catholic educational history, Thomas Groome has built up a so-called "shared Christian praxis approach" or "from life to Faith to life approach" for religious edu-cation, through which people can be formed and grow holistically in their body, heart and soul. Regarding its core components, it can be briefly described as follows:1. The shared Christian praxis approach encourages a teaching-learning community of active participation, conversation and communication; students are to be engaged as active participants in the teaching-learning dynamic.2. In this approach, people name and share their reflections upon their own lives around a generative theme of life or of their own life in faith. The theme for reflection and conversation must be of real importance and relevance to participants’lives.3. The participants are given persuasive access to the Christian Story and Vision re-garding the theme. This is the prime moment of accessing the formal content of Christian faith.4. The participants are encouraged to personally appropriate this faith to their lives, seeing for themselves what it might mean for their daily lives. The pedagogy here is to en-courage participants to personally discern what they can learn from the focused aspect of Christian faith, and, it should be their choice.5. The participants will make decisions for their own lives in faith. The decisions can be cognitive, affective or behavioral, made in light of their own perceived truth and wisdom of life.In an actual teaching-learning event, this approach can be facilitated around a focusing activity and five pedagogical movements, which will be introduced and discussed in detail.In the face of mounting obstacles, educators find themselves increasingly challenged by the task of leading people toward lives of faith. Groome’s contemporary and holistic ap-proach could offer a real and effective solution for educators to teach Christian beliefs and values. Studies of religious education are still out of academic attention in China so far. This study is an attempt to expand our educational research area and to fill a gap in the study of education in China. I believe this kind of study could help us to solve some current educa-tional and social problems, such as lack of faith (not only religious faith, but belief in ethics and morals), disconnection between education and life, ineffectiveness of current efforts to create holistic education, and so on. This kind of study could also help us by promoting hu-man values, clearing up moral chaos, and constructing a good social ethos.This study will be based on Thomas Groome’s theory frame and will deeply discuss the dialectical relationship between faith and life, and it will also propose some effective approaches in order to promote their interaction. This study will be divided into six chap-ters. The first chapter will discuss the historical roots of Groome’s thoughts on religious ed-ucation. The second chapter will introduce Groome’s perspective on the nature and purpose of religious education. The third and fourth chapters are the key content of this study, and they will analyze Groome’s religious education approach in depth. The fifth chapter will compare Groome with Maritain, Dewey and Freire. The last chapter will explore some in-spirations which Chinese education system can gain from Groome.