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Based on diligent theological work and practical experience, Boeve explores how Catholic schools can reconfigure their identity in an increasingly secular and pluralised world. At a time when Christian values education has lost its plausibility and effectiveness, this work examines how a wider ''Catholic dialogue school'' project would welcome the plurality of beliefs among its staff and students, actively facilitate dialogue between them, and introduce the Christian voice into this dialogue in a contemporary and challenging way. This book offers chapters on the theological background of the project and its social relevance. With empirical evidence and case studies from across the world, Boeve dextrously analyses the practical implication of these Catholic dialogue schools. The processes of secularisation and pluralisation have changed school demographics and this has affected the construction of both individual and collective identities. In response to this changed context, this work shows how the ''Catholic dialogue school'' project actively engages with such identity construction. The book concludes by considering whether recent Church teaching supports this project and how it can strengthen the position of Catholic education in discussions about its legitimacy in contexts of (soft) secularism and shrinking educational freedom.
About the author
Lieven Boeve is Professor of Fundamental Theology at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium. As of August 1, 2014, he has been appointed the Director-General of the general office of Catholic Education in Flanders (Fundamental Theology). His research concerns theological epistemology, philosophical theology, truth in faith and theology, tradition development and hermeneutics. From 2005 till 2009 he served as president of the European Society for Catholic Theology.
He is the author of Interrupting Tradition. An Essay on Christian Faith in a Postmodern Context (2003), God Interrupts History. Theology in a Time of Upheaval (2007), Lyotard and Theology (2014) and Theology at the Crossroads of University, Church and Society (2016). He has co-edited various volumes, of which the most recent are: Questioning the Human: Toward a Theological Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century (2014) and The Normativity of History. Theological Truth and Tradition in the Tension between Church History and Systematic Theology (2016).
On September 17, 2015, the European Society for Catholic Theology awarded him the biennial prize for the best theological book of the past two years, for his monograph Lyotard and Theology.
