As a religious education theorist, I inquire into ways and means of rendering religion and theology pertinent to and applicable in education processes. To me, this includes observing and appreciating the religious and theological notions of people who did not study theology. What do they think about the “big questions” of life and how do their ideas relate to those of experts in the field of theology?

I regard religious education as an intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary science. It requires the dialogue with other theological disciplines as well as the dialogue with educational science, psychology, and sociology. Theories developed in these scientific fields provide models that sharpen the focus on religious education processes. They can thus be analysed in greater detail and, in the best case, optimised.

Protestant religious education pedagogy benefits from the dialogue with Catholic, Jewish, and Islamic religious education pedagogy. I consider religious education pedagogy, moreover, an international science that requires the dialogue with inputs in languages other than German. Drawing comparisons between the organisation and structure of religious education processes in Germany and those in other countries is likely to raise an awareness of characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses of the respective models.

Finally, I consider religious education pedagogy a science between theory and practice. Its objective is to observe specific educational processes – including teaching processes – from the theoretical perspective, and to distinguish clearly between descriptive analyses, normative evaluations, and prescriptive recommendations.