The agony and the ecstasy of phenomenology as method: the contribution to Australian religious education

The development of religious education in Australia in the past fifteen years has been profound. When I first wrote What Is This Thing Called RE? in 1989, the question implied in the title was symptomatic of the lack of appreciation of a role for religious education anywhere outside a religious school. There had been,- by that time, a report in each State of Australia proposing a form of religious education for the public curriculum but there was little evidence of change in the traditional arrangement that saw this subject being exclusively the preserve of the religious system.