Is Waldorf Education a Religion? Is it Religious? Is it Based on a Religion Called Anthroposophy?

The issue of religion and Waldorf education is not a simple one. The field extends, minimally, over three points of view. The first might be that all education, all meaningful human endeavor, has, in the broadest sense, a religious component. As A.N. Whitehead (1929/1967) said, “The essence of education is that it be religious.” (14) To speak of value, explicitly or implicitly, is to give evidence of a religious engagement with the world. This view is too broad to consider here, however, and does not necessarily distinguish Waldorf education from other methods.

The second point of view, probably the source of Waldorf critics’ frustration with aspects of Waldorf education as manifested by certain teachers or, potentially, by certain schools, is that Waldorf education is religious in a more conventional sense because some ideologues, through misunderstanding and misapplication of Steiner’s work, make it so. As Dorothy St. Charles, former principal of the Milwaukee Urban Waldorf School said in a radio interview, Waldorf education is not a religion, “but some people make it one.”

The third point of view, and the more carefully considered, is that Waldorf education and anthroposophy, the method that underlies it, are not religions at all. Douglas Sloan, former coordinator of the joint program in Religion and Education between Union Theological Seminary and Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, made this point eloquently as an expert witness in a lawsuit arguing that charter Waldorf schools, as religious schools, violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Sloan (2004) argued against this view:

By all scholarly criteria of what constitutes religion, anthroposophy is not a religion. ...

The attempt to define religion has been notoriously difficult, and the approaches to doing so are many. In general there have been three main approaches.

The first can perhaps be called the essentialist approach. Essentialist definitions tend to focus on the inner essence or substance, the metaphysical reality claims, of religions, and the relationships to these demanded of human beings by the claimed realities. One of the conceptual difficulties with this focus is that philosophers and others can make metaphysical and ethical arguments about the nature of reality without advancing these as themselves constituting a religion, although they may well have implications for religion.

The second main approach to the study and definition of religion can be called the functional approach, and is probably the theoretical approach most favored by social scientists, although as I shall point out, some theologians also favor it. Functional definitions of religion stress the effects, the functions of religion, in actual life—the ways in which religion functions to fulfill basic human needs, both individually and communally. Different scholars stress different functions as the defining characteristic of religion. Among these various functional definitions are, for examples: the cognitive—religion provides meaning systems for understanding and coping with life; the psychological—religion functions to meet psychological needs, such as, a sense of security in the face of life’s uncertainties, a sense of identity, a sense of purpose, and so forth; the social—religion serves primarily to provide values for social cohesion and the preservation of the social group; and the ideological (Marxist definitions of religion are a good example)—religion serves the power interests of governing elites by deluding the masses. Each of these taken by itself is decidedly reductionist, and, in order to avoid inordinate reductionism, most scholars attempt to fashion combinations of various functional approaches.

One form of functionalism, often utilized by students of religion, is that of the twentieth-century American theologian, Paul Tillich. Religion Tillich defined as expressing “the ultimate concern” of an individual or of an entire culture. Every person and every society, he argued, has its “ultimate concern” (often, to be sure, directed toward less than ultimate objective realities).

In fact, for Tillich, every culture is grounded in its own ultimate concern, to which it gives concrete expression. Culture itself as a whole is, therefore, the religious expression and activity par excellence.

“Religion,” Tillich famously wrote, “is the substance of culture, culture is the form of religion.” Tillich’s position can be a good illustration of how the strength of the functionalist can also be its main weakness. The strength is that it enables one to see the religious functions, as noted above, of many human activities not usually recognized as religious: the state, the university, science, technology, the stock exchange, Sunday afternoon football, and so on. Each has its ultimate concern, and often its own “priesthood,” paths of initiation, dogmas, sacred texts, and other marks of religion.

The weakness is that a definition which begins to apply to everything often ends up telling us little about anything.

In view of these various approaches, it is not surprising that one leading historian of American religion (Catherine Albanese of UC Santa Barbara), whose works I reviewed in forming my opinion, has observed that scholars have become increasingly less certain about what should be counted as religion as a general phenomenon. “In the end,” she writes, “religion is a feature that encompasses all of human life, and therefore it is difficult if not impossible to define it.”

In this light it is probably also not surprising that historians of religion turn mainly to the third approach to the definition of religion, namely, the formal. Scholars in the history of religion and comparative religion deal primarily with the actual religious forms manifested by concrete religious groups and movements. These religious forms include such things as beliefs and doctrines (creeds), ritual activities, forms of worship, sacred texts, and recognized sources of authority. The advantage and strength of this approach is that it is concrete and makes it possible to determine whether a group actually functions, not just religiously in general, a la Paul Tillich, for instance, but as a formal, identifiable religion as such. It also is possible then to distinguish it in detail from other religions and their forms, and to trace the actual development of a specific religion over time. In this perspective, a religious group is one that manifests and is organized around these common religious forms, albeit with its own distinct versions of them. This approach can also incorporate aspects of the first two approaches.

It is especially from the perspective of this third approach to the definition of religion, the formal, that I can meaningfully and concretely testify that anthroposophy is not a religion. …

Anthroposophy is the name given by Rudolf Steiner to designate the way of knowing, the method of inquiry, that he established. …

It is a wholly personal choice not only whether one follows Steiner’s method of knowing and tries to develop it, but also whether, out of conviction, one accepts–or does not–Steiner’s own results and content flowing from that method as he practiced it. If the principle of individual freedom based on knowledge is violated in following Steiner’s indications, then the entire method is vitiated.

It is worth noting that the case was dismissed and dismissed again upon appeal. I believe PLANS plans another appeal. Stay tuned.

St. Charles, D. (1994) Interview by Alan Chartock on WAMC, 90.3 FM, Northeast Public Radio, Albany, NY. April; exact date unavailable. Reference obtained from undated cassette tape recording.

Sloan, D. (2004) “Declaration of Douglas Sloan in Support of Defendants’ Opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment…” Case No. CIV. S-98-0266 FCD PAN. PLANS, Inc. v. Sacramento City Unified School District, Twin Ridges Elementary School District, DOES 1-100. United States District Court, Eastern District of California. July 30, 2004.

Whitehead, A. (1929/1967) The Aims of Education and Other Essays. New York: Free Press.

The Elevator Speech: What is Waldorf Education?

What do you say? I mean it, what do you say? Comment below!

It happened again.  A dinner with strangers, four couples at a round table in a big room. –And what do you do? –I’m co-founder, Faculty Chair, and a teacher at the Great Barrington Waldorf High School. –Oh. Great. Waldorf? What’s that?

And, as usual, I’m at a bit of a loss. I just don’t have an elevator speech. Depending on the noise level of the room and my assessment of the question, I say something about balancing academics, arts, physical activity, and social health. Or I say something about a non-denominational, non-sectarian approach to spiritual questions.

Sometimes I find myself in a meaty, fruitful conversation. Sometimes people’s eyes glaze over and I turn the conversation to another topic as soon as possible.

When I started looking into definitions and descriptions of Waldorf education, more than fifteen years ago, I believed it would be easy to find, say, a pithy paragraph in Rudolf Steiner’s work that would begin, “Waldorf education is…” But such a paragraph doesn’t exist. So I looked at the work of Henry Barnes, Jeffrey Kane, Eugene Schwartz, Steve Talbott, Douglas Sloan, and other very smart writers and thinkers about Waldorf education. All of them had lots of good things to say, but none had a synopsis that could fuel the elevator speech or the dinner table introduction.

So I’m putting it to those who read this blog: What do you say?