16 Introduction Over 80 years ago, around the outbreak of the Second World War, an Anglican reverend named S.P.T. Prideaux addressed a group of teachers and teacher trainers at the College of Sarum St. Michael—formerly the Salisbury Training College—in England (3). His topic was the same as the topic of this dissertation—namely, citizenship and how trainee teachers should be prepared to practice and teach it from a Christian perspective. Moreover, his approach was as broad as this dissertation’s approach aims to be, as evidenced by his definition of citizenship as ‘the art of living together’ (Prideaux, 1940, p. 203). His context, however, was very different from that of the world as it is in the 21st century. The citizenship Prideaux referred to was the art of living together in a Christian country on its way to, as he saw it, the ‘full realization’ of the Biblical ideals concerning citizenship. Although that realisation was still ‘very far from complete’, Prideaux did not hesitate to invite his audience to make a ‘large contribution’ to it, finishing with the statement that ‘the need of Christian teaching in schools and colleges is urgent today’ (p. 209). For Prideaux, the Bible functioned as his ‘handbook of citizenship’ (p. 203). In it, he found his deepest motivation to invest in the art of living together. Indeed, Prideaux (1940) believed that it would be ‘unscientific and doomed to failure’ not to include God in citizenship education (p. 203). Citizenship education, he claimed, should always centre on three deeply interconnected core elements: the individual, the group and God as ‘the originator of the whole process of life’ (Prideaux, 1940, p. 203). While the omission of one of these elements would have disruptive consequences, their connectedness provides for wholeness. At the end of his talk, Prideaux (1940) summarised his contribution by stating that ‘God is to be put first in everything; the rights and freedom of the individual are to be respected (…); there is to be perfect balance between the individual and the community’ (p. 208). To this threefold conclusion he added that ‘the whole process of living, its motive and its method, is summed up in the world Love’ and that real agapè consists of ‘the recognition of God and devotion to God on the one hand, plus the devotion to the highest welfare of man’s fellow-men on the other’ (Prideaux, 1940, p. 209). It is my conviction that Prideaux’ talk, the text of which was published in 1940 in a scientific journal, can serve as a historic mirror for the research I am about to present. Like Prideaux, I am a Christian teacher trainer—and like Prideaux’ teaching-related audience in 1940, there are many teachers and teacher trainers today, all over the globe, who find in their Christian faith their 3 I thank Jenny Head for providing useful information about Prideaux and his role at the College of Sarum St. Michael and for the shipping of the memorial book she wrote together with Anne Johns (Head & Johns, 2015).
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