Religious Education in Rudolf Steiner's Educational Thinking

Religion certainly plays a significant role in Rudolf Steiner's educational thinking. This is because Steiner considers religiousness to be a constitutive potential of the human being, which must be fostered in education in accordance with the psychological developmental stages of the child and adolescent. The task is therefore to gradually enable adolescents to determine their religious existence freely and consciously.
Under the aspect of a holistic education, religious elements therefore find their place in the Waldorf school curriculum. Steiner is primarily concerned with an education of feelings and will, which can serve as a foundation for all religions. As a general religious education, it honors all religions and seeks to promote their common spiritual values under the banner of freedom of thought, tolerance, and mutual recognition. 
Such concepts can also be found to some extent in reform-oriented religious education in Steiner’s contemporary German-speaking environment, for example in the Munich Method, which represented a catechetical upheaval. Like Steiner, it also sought to harmonize religious education with the development of the child and to give it a theological foundation by referring to the image of God. While the former operates in the field of ecclesiastical-Christian understanding, Steiner focuses on aspects of training as he had previously described them in his theosophy, later supplemented by his anthroposophical understanding of Christ and the Trinity.
This contribution aims to provide a critical insight into the rationale and didactics of religious education at Waldorf schools and its strengths and weaknesses. Can a religious education really be replaced by an education of feelings and will? Can it contribute in a global multi-religious context - even outside the original Christian roots - to a modern and dialogical religious education so that religions will not be in competition with each other, but rather in cooperation to give humanity lasting spiritual dignity? A few examples may shed some light.