Religious education for harmony and balance: A model of adult religious education based on the yin/yang philosophy

This study endeavors to contribute to religious education for harmony and balance between different faiths in Korea, by utilizing the hitherto largely unexplored yin/yang philosophy, the philosophy of harmony and balance in ancient China, from a religious educational perspective. In interpreting and evaluating religious education theories abounding in various perspectives of the traditional approach, contemporary theological approach, liberative approach, and feminist approach, I have discovered the ethos of separation under an either-or pattern in the structures and methods of religious education. In introducing and interpreting variant sources of the yin/yang philosophy, I have found that the principle of harmony and balance in the yin/yang philosophy contributes to religious education for harmony and balance within the both-and pattern.;The purpose of this dissertation is that education must develop learners who have an integrated, harmonious relationship with others. The principle of harmony and balance in the yin/yang philosophy is essential for creating a constructive harmonious relationship among people of different faiths through education. This reconstruction necessarily interweaves trans-disciplinary threads. In chapters 1, 2, and 3, I present a literature study of Korean evangelical communities and analyze and interpret the dominant themes in the study with special attention to themes of Christian exclusivism, religio-cultural issues, and interreligious dialogue, engaging works of Paul Knitter, S. J. Samartha, Peter C. Phan, George Marsden, J. N. Farquhar, Choan-Seng Song, Bong, Thich Nhat Hanh, Koyama Kosuke, K. H. Ting, and Tongshik Ryu. In chapter 4, I introduce religious educational theories, engaging with works of Frank Gaebelein, Lois LeBar, Johaness Hofinger, Randolph Crump Miller, James Smart, Lewis Sherrill, Paulo Freire, Elizabeth Dodson Gray, and Mary Elizabeth Moore. I evaluate these scholars with special attention to the theme of religious difference in education. Chapter 5 identifies dynamics in the Eastern epistemology of harmony and balance in the yin/yang philosophy, and describe educational principles such as detachment and centering, rationality and intuition, and the yin/yang harmony derived from the yin/yang philosophy, engaging works of Greta Nagel and Diane Dreher, who contribute to designing structures and methods of education for harmony and balance by using the yin/yang philosophy. In chapter 6, I create models of religious education for harmony and balance for adults to foster interrelationship and wholeness among people of different faiths. The harmony and balance functions like didactic principles on which to base religious education in the category of both-and, which is holistic, harmonious, and interdependent.;By revivifying the ancient yin/yang principle from a contemporary educational perspective, I suggest that the principle of harmony and balance in the yin/yang philosophy brings out an alternative educational consciousness and vision for harmonious relationship among people who live in different faiths.