Theologies, Education, and CRT: Confronting Moral Curriculums Affecting Public Education with Critical Theology

• In Event: Challenging Political Retrenchment: Curriculum Studies & Theory for Social Change

Abstract

Historically in the U.S., religious/theological commitments are often loosely or tightly coupled with political and economic allegiances that drive repressive moral or social agendas for public schooling. This essay highlights the early constructions of U.S. schooling (Puritan education, common schools, Lancaster schools, progressive era school) to more contemporary curriculum battles to affirm the linkage of theologies to a “moral” curriculum of schooling aligned with specific regimes of oppression and neoliberal politics. After this historical argument, we use theological reflection in CRT and the theological discipline of Black Church studies to demonstrate the possibility of theological counter storytelling to expose, confront, and even unravel unholy alliances of theologies with repressive discourses and politics influencing contemporary schooling.

Authors

• Timothy Conder, Black Mountain School of Theology & Community

• Daniella Ann Cook, University of South Carolina

• Michael Pascarella, University of South Carolina