The Status of Moral Education, Spiritual Education and Religious Education

The purpose of this study is to delineate the three seemingly overlapping concepts of moral education, spiritual education, and religious education. Adopting a descriptive-analytical approach, it was attempted, first, to draw some boundaries between the three concepts. The following two pivotal questions are raised in the present study: first, is spiritual education a subset of religious education or vice versa.and what about moral education. In other words, how can the domain of the triple concepts be specified? Secondly if religious education encompasses spiritual education, then how comes that some secular individuals do actions which seem impossible without resorting to some sort of metaphysical power? While acknowledging the close interrelationships of the three concepts, we conclude that the ultimate goal of moral education is spiritual education and the ultimate goal of spiritual education is religious education. Moreover, there are two types of spirituality; non-religious spirituality and religious spirituality. The former empowers the soul within certain limits while there seems no limits to the power of religious spirituality.