GREAT ZIMBABWE
UNIVERSITY
JULIUS NYERERE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
NAME: ZVEGONA NAMATIRAI
REG NO: M223813
NAME MUNGWA BARBRA
REG NO: M215251
PROGRAMME: BSC HONS DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
COURSE CODE: HDES 227
COURSE TITLE: RELIGION AND DEVELOPMENT
LEVEL: 2.2
CELL N0: 0774496384
LECTURER DR CHIBANGO
Email: [email protected]
Qn. ANALYSE THE CONTRIBUTION OF CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY IN
PROMOTING EDUCATION IN YOUR SOCIETY
The requirements of the question in se calls for an academic student explore the role of
Christianity in relationship to peace, religion and conflicts and above all education in societies.
These concepts are integral in the political and international relations field as it lays foundation
for an articulate exposition of the same. By the late 1990s social scientists rediscovered that
people around the world not only continue practicing their faith, but mobilized politically on the
basis of ethnicity, nationalism, culture, and religion. In fact, religious dynamics infused
numerous conflagrations in the 1990s including Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, and Sudan and most
African nations. However, it would be nearly as inaccurate for the pendulum to swing to the
opposite end of the spectrum to give credence that religion is the problem causing today’s
conflicts than we live in the era of the new wars of religion. There is therefore a call for
understanding of peace and its diverse conundrums, religion and its affinities as well as conflicts
and its various nature and causations, notwithstanding the role of the clergy in peace building.
Definition of terms shall be done in the foregoing that is; religion, peace and conflicts.
Christianity is a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices,
morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that
generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements which above
agrees on the belief of Jesus Christ , in this case it’s a religious phenomenon. Different religions
may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacredness, faith, and a
supernatural being or beings.
Peace is a concept of societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence. In
a social sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict (such as war) and freedom
from fear of violence between individuals or groups.
Kester (2017) defined conflict as a struggle and a clash of interest, opinion, or even principles.
Conflict will always be found in society; as the basis of conflict may vary to be personal, racial,
class, caste, political and international. Conflict may also be emotional, intellectual, and
theoretical, in which case academic recognition may, or may not be, a significant motive
A lot of people have a wide variety of opinions on whether or not a Christian education is
important. Admittedly there is a bias on the topic but there would be a love to share with you
why Christian education is important. We found a great article where Matthew Biemers from
The Banner that sums it up perfectly. Matthew says: “The overall aim of Christian schools is to
help students become citizens of the kingdom of God, responsive disciples of Jesus Christ.”
Religious leaders can be drivers of conflict or of peace. More specifically, religious
interpretations can directly induce or exacerbate conflict in a number of ways. For example, a
religious text or revelation directly mandates violence. The Ugandan government faces a long-
term insurgency in the north of its country that fits this pattern because the leadership of the
Lord’s Resistance Army claims direct divine revelation for its campaign. LRA leader Joseph
Kony claims that spirits talk to him and that the LRA is fighting for Uganda to be a free state
governed by the Ten Commandments, a democratic state, and a state with a freely elected
president. Elsewhere, religion may cause conflict is when a religious actor claims the authority,
based on religion, to prescribe killing. Osama bin Laden claimed the authority to issue a fatwa to
kill Americans and Jews: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies, civilians and military
is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do
it. This implies that religious leaders and cults are agents of peace building. This indicates that
Christianity can stand as a horn of hope and can help the education of the community which may
at the end emancipate the people of the land.
Needless to say, after a long conversation that included references to the Heidelberg Catechism,
Psalm 78, and a visionary pastor named Rev. Van Andel, I began to understand that my parents’
vision for Christian education was much deeper and wider than a hardwood floor and Plexiglas
backboards. As parents consider home school, public school, or Christian school for their child’s
education, what many hope to find is a place where their vision for their child and the school’s
vision for learning overlap. One of the privileges of work as a Christian school principal is
speaking with new parents who are exploring the possibility of enrolling their children in a
Christian school for the first time. Areas such as athletics, ACT scores, formational practices,
mission statements, music programs, science labs, service projects, and even a large gym might
all be part of their vision for their child’s education. But what if a family was asked to strip that
vision down to the core.
Families considering Christian schools can expect that these schools will partner with them in
helping their children understand that the whole world belongs to God. They can expect that,
through experiences both in and out of the classroom, their children will better understand how
to be responsive disciples of Jesus Christ. The purpose of Christian teaching, according to
educator John Van Dyk, is “to equip our students for works of service. That is, to enable them to
function as knowledgeable and competent disciples of the Lord, exercising their kingdom tasks
by hearing the will of the Lord and implementing it wherever they find themselves.” Philosopher
Nicholas Wolterstorff puts it this way: “The aim of Christian education must be to conduct
education and scholarship from a Christian perspective.” Wolterstorff suggests that a robust
Christian perspective must do much more than just point out the errors in secular thinking; rather
it must offer an alternative that demonstrates to students what it means to be a peculiar people
with particular practices.
When students and teachers engage learning from this perspective, everything in Christian
schools becomes distinct because the core values and truths are framed through the biblical
narrative. Student learning is nurtured in the context of faith. The pedagogy teacher’s use, the
topics they choose to teach, and how a school implements its discipline policies must all reflect
the story of salvation. When this happens, the Christian school curriculum provides time and
space for students to learn how mathematics, poetry, biology, sexuality, evolution, and the
environment are part of God’s good creation. Tim Van Soelen, director of the Center for the
Advancement of Christian Education at Dordt College, reminds us that “a biblical or Christian
perspective informs all of these parts of the curriculum, helping us understand God’s creation
and our participatory role in its restoration and reconciliation in a very special way. However,
creation and curriculum also help us develop this biblical or Christian perspective or
understanding of truth. It is a beautiful reciprocal relationship that recognizes the need to be
lifelong learners.
Parents should also expect that the Christian school classroom will be free of rhetoric, fear-
mongering, and stereotypes as teachers walk and talk with their students through complex topics.
Christian schools need to honor the questions that are raised as much as the answers. Christian
schools must empower their teachers to avoid simple and trite answers to topics that are due
much respect and thoughtfulness. Christian education explores God’s hope for his world framed
in the context of the story of creation, fall, and redemption leading to restoration. Christian
schools remind students that there is a loving and good God who creates and upholds the
universe and calls students, his human creatures, to live in and restore to goodness what is
broken. A distinctly Christian curriculum will focus its attention on this good Creator and what
he has made, on how it has gone wrong, and on how we might be called to help restore it to
God’s original intent.
Opportunities to bring restoration and shalom can happen through curricular and extracurricular
engagement. It could mean removing invasive species in a forest or participating in regular
stream-cleaning. It could mean having the varsity basketball team spend an hour a week
coaching at the local community center, initiating a “buddies” program at the local seniors care
home, or providing tutoring and homework support for children who are marginalized. The
Christian school curriculum must always demonstrate to students how any topic is, in that
moment, a small piece of something bigger. A skill such as reading is essential because it is
foundational to learning, but literacy also matters because it is a good gift from God that can
allow students to become co-creators in God’s kingdom. Jodie Bomhof, a kindergarten teacher,
says that every aspect of the Christian school curriculum in every grade matters because “God’s
rule extends over all creation and impacts all areas of the curriculum.
A Christian school curriculum and pedagogy cannot limit student learning to a transactional
enterprise where knowledge is valued for the ultimate goal of high test scores or upward
mobility. Of course, Christian schools must value a strong academic program. Nurturing learning
in the context of faith means that Christian schools will not only prepare students to live
faithfully as 6-, 8-, and 18-year-olds; it will also prepare them to enter fields such as law,
medicine, plumbing, philosophy, engineering, and landscaping. Christian schools need to remind
students that vocation is, as Fredrick Buechner said that “the place where a person’s deep
passions and the world’s deep needs meet.” Each student belongs to God’s story of redemption
and each has a significant role to play, whether in preschool, elementary school, or secondary
school. For example, the Teaching for Transformation curriculum model developed by the
Prairie Center for Christian Education and used by various Christian schools around North
America values the given topic as well as helps students understand how that topic is related to
being a community builder, justice seeker, or God worshiper, both in the classroom and as
students enter their everyday, walking-around life.
Within a Christian school, curriculum and pedagogy cannot be separated. Ed Noot, executive
director of the Society of Christian Schools of British Columbia, points out that of equal
importance to what we teach (the curriculum) is how we teach (our pedagogy). The Christian
educators need to become increasingly intentional about ensuring that our pedagogy is authentic,
effective, and reflective of our foundational beliefs. Along with curriculum, pedagogy also
shapes a student’s world-and-life view because how a teacher teaches communicates what the
Christian school community values. Both curriculum and pedagogy in a Christian school should
foster curiosity and encourage students to delve deeper into the wonder and majesty of God’s
creation. When I walk into a classroom at my school and see the learning outcomes on the board
and observe how teachers and students gather around the topic and learn from each other, it is
clear that the goal is not just to fill students with knowledge. Students are also learning deep
truths about who God is and how he works in the world. And they learn to respond in gratitude
as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Today children face a barrage of what Jamie Smith calls cultural liturgies. Whether in the form
of Instagram or Twitter, the movie theatre, the mall, television, smartphones, texting, the
supermarket magazine aisle, or any other idols of our time, children have never faced so many
competing interests that desire a piece of their heart. These liturgies seductively and subversively
tell our children that they will be fully alive and loved if they “own this” or “do this” or “look
this way.” Sadly, many children and adults cannot resist the message. Some parents believe that
sending their kids to a Christian school will protect them from these competing stories. But it
will not. A Christian school that does not engage the culture in which students live does its
children and parents a disservice. Rather, Christian schools are to equip students with the tools to
identify and respond to the idols of our time.
Engaging culture must go beyond identifying good and evil. Students must be able to understand
and articulate how and where and why their desires are being shaped by the stories told by the
culture—stories that wear down their hearts and minds. Christian schools must help kids see that
they do not need to capitulate. They must offer students a better story—one that reorients their
hearts and minds in a radical way. Our students need to see that that the story of Jesus boldly
proclaims that there is nothing they can do to make Jesus love them more than he does, and there
is nothing they can do to make Jesus love them less than he does.
Christian schools know that students were created to love and to know, and they help students
direct their love toward that of Jesus Christ through these unique practices. So, for example,
when there is a walk through our elementary school in the morning, children singing, reciting
Scripture, and praying together. Kids pray for grandparents who are sick, for friends who are
lonely, for dogs that are lost and fish that have died. Each morning these children are
acknowledging that our whole world belongs to God. These are goose-bumpy reminders that
nothing matters but the kingdom of God, but because of the kingdom of God, everything,
literally everything, matters. And that includes a child’s concern for his dying fish. Christian
schools offer students a chance to “re-story” their lives each day through such practices.
This is why Christian schools must provide opportunities for students to practice creation care, to
visit and sing with older saints at the care home down the road, and to hand out food at the local
shelter. These practices connect us to God’s creation and they show students how they can bring
hope, faith, and love to a broken world. Christian schools engage in these activities because
practicing them helps students become aware of how to be in a right relationship with God, with
others, and with the creation we live in. In the words of Jamie Smith, Christian education is not
just about the transfer of information but also the task of formation, the formation of the kinds of
persons that constitute a ‘peculiar people.
Other agents for peace and community education include individuals or groups who report a
calling to engage in religiously-inspired peacemaking, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s
reconciliation work in South Africa. Recently, USAID partnered with the Archbishop in a peace
and justice conference in Colombia designed to build trust among communities divided by the
long civil war there. This is not the first time that the USA government provided financial
support for or ended up at the same table with religious peacemakers. Pope John Paul II claimed
spiritual authority to act as an agent of peace, and he was clearly identified by Ronald Reagan as
an ally of American ideals, although the pontiff was also critical of aspects of American society.
All this points out that religion and conflicts shares much in common. This shows that religious
leaders are act as reconciliation agents.
Religiously-inspired claims can redefine identities to promote reconciliation, transforming
opponents to God’s children and brothers and sisters. This is precisely what happened in
Mozambique, and governments followed in the wake of religious peacemakers and helped
guarantee the peace with offers of assistance to Mozambique society. Similarly, faith-inspired
forgiveness transcends the often unresolved temporal issues of a conflict, as has happened for
some victims of Latin America’s military dictatorships and the Rwanda genocide. This is only
anchored on the concept of community education.
Religious actors and impulses infuse contemporary violence and peace building and thus are
critical for social scientific study as well as foreign policy consideration. Moreover, other
governments need a sophisticated approach to the diversity and depth of these issues and should
be bold in its condemnation of religiously-inspired violence while seeking opportunities to
partner with religious and other actors to ameliorate suffering, build trust, establish security, and
nurture long-term peace and reconciliation. No major religion has been exempt from complicity
in violent conflict. Yet we need to beware of an almost universal propensity to oversimplify the
role that religion plays in international affairs. Religion is not usually the sole or even primary
cause of conflict.
In conclusion, it can be said that Christianity is very important as much as other many religions
in their diverse nature. Taking the Christian education in the community will help emancipate
masses, liberalize the community, depoliticize the community, provide political lenses, preach
peace and unity, and preach importance of uniting for a common cause and purpose and largely
by proffering the solutions of the day. The establishment of Christian education and
organizations may as well help cascade the message down to the ground in any case.
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