In Overcoming Religious Illiteracy, Harvard professor and Phillips Academy teacher Diane L. Moore argues that though the United States is one of the most religiously diverse nations in the world, the vast majority of citizens are woefully ignorant about religion itself and the basic tenets of the world's major religious traditions. The consequences of this religious illiteracy are profound and include fueling the culture wars, curtailing historical understanding and promoting religious and racial bigotry. In this volume, Moore combines theory with practice to articulate how to incorporate the study of religion into the schools in ways that will invigorate classrooms and enhance democratic discourse in the public sphere.

The author conducted an empirical study on RE teachers' religious literacy, more specifically, on how they interpret a religious narrative. The transactional analysis of the RE teachers' interpretations of The Prodigal Son brought forth four categories or typologies: the immanent approach, the ethical, the Christian, and the dialogical approach. The typologies reflect that the RE teachers' interpretations are determined by different factors, more precisely, by the decisions made in the actual text-reader transactions. Kjørven therefore argues that it is important for RE teachers and RE teacher students to develop an awareness of and knowledge about the complexity of what is involved in meaning-making processes. A literacy of this kind, he concludes, will promote critical skills and thinking in school and in education. Ole Kolbjørn Kjørven works as an associate professor in religious education at Hedmark University of Applied Sciences in Norway. His research interests include teacher research and intercultural education. In 2014 Kjørven received his Ph.D for a thesis on RE teachers' religious literacy.

This text explores the phenomenon of religious bullying as it manifests in two North American contexts and theorizes religious literacy as a viable school-based intervention to promote understanding of religious and non-religious difference. Using substantive, qualitative data from schools and communities in California and Quebec, Teaching Religious Literacy to Combat Religious Bullying examines the impact of mandatory religious literacy courses delivered in secondary schools and identifies curricula, teacher attitudes, training, and administrative support as key determinants of course impact. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner's social-ecological framework, the text then illustrates how the environmental factors both in and outside of the school considerably influence teacher and student attitudes to religious and non-religious traditions. Practical recommendations are made to combat overarching societal trends and religious discrimination within the classroom, and context is cited as key to an effective discussion on religious literacy more broadly. This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in religious literacy, religious education, the sociology of education, and those looking at the field of bullying and truancy more widely. Those interested in intersectionality, marginalized communities, secularism, and educational policy will also benefit from the volume.

Although we often assume religion is in decline in the West, it continues to have an important yet contested role in individual lives and in society at large. And after half a century in which religion and belief were barely talked about in the public sphere, we face a pressing lack of religious literacy. Many are now ill-equipped to engage with religion and belief when they encounter them in their daily lives--in relationships, law, media, professions, business, and politics, among other venues. This valuable book is the first to bring together theory and policy with analysis and expertise to explore what religious literacy is, why it is needed, and what might be done about it. Its contributors make the case for a public realm that is well-equipped to engage with the plurality and pervasiveness of religion and belief, whatever an individual participant's own stance. It will be of great importance to academics, policy makers, and practitioners interested in the manifold implications of the continued presence of religion and belief in the public sphere.

The United States is one of the most religious places on earth, but it is also a nation of shocking religious illiteracy. Only 10 percent of American teenagers can name all five major world religions and 15 percent cannot name any. Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible holds the answers to all or most of life's basic questions, yet only half of American adults can name even one of the four gospels and most Americans cannot name the first book of the Bible. Despite this lack of basic knowledge, politicians and pundits continue to root public policy arguments in religious rhetoric whose meanings are missed—or misinterpreted—by the vast majority of Americans. "We have a major civic problem on our hands," says religion scholar Stephen Prothero. He makes the provocative case that to remedy this problem, we should return to teaching religion in the public schools. Alongside "reading, writing, and arithmetic," religion ought to become the "Fourth R" of American education. Many believe that America's descent into religious illiteracy was the doing of activist judges and secularists hell-bent on banishing religion from the public square. Prothero reveals that this is a profound misunderstanding. "In one of the great ironies of American religious history," Prothero writes, "it was the nation's most fervent people of faith who steered us down the road to religious illiteracy. Just how that happened is one of the stories this book has to tell." Prothero avoids the trap of religious relativism by addressing both the core tenets of the world's major religions and the real differences among them. Complete with a dictionary of the key beliefs, characters, and stories of Christianity, Islam, and other religions, Religious Literacy reveals what every American needs to know in order to confront the domestic and foreign challenges facing this country today.

This book presents a crisis of religion and belief literacy to which education at every level is challenged to respond. As understanding different religions, beliefs and influences becomes increasingly important, it fills a gap for a resource in bringing together the debates around religious literacy, from theoretical approaches to teaching and policy. This timely publication provides a clear pathway for engaging well with religion and belief diversity in public and shared settings.

The role of Religious Education within the primary school and how it should be implemented has been the subject of worldwide debate. Responding to the delivery of the non-statutory framework for RE and the recent emphasis on a creative primary curriculum Primary Religious Education - A New Approach models a much needed pedagogical framework, encouraging conceptual enquiry and linking theory to its implementation within the wider curriculum in schools. The book outlines this new conceptual approach to Religious Education and is based upon the Living Difference syllabus successfully implemented in Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton and Westminster. It demonstrates how to implement the requirements of the new QCDA curriculum and Ofsted criteria for effective RE and is rapidly gaining both national and international support. Through this approach, Religious Education is discussed within the larger context of primary education in the contemporary world. This book will help you to teach RE in a creative way in the primary classroom by providing: historical commentaries an overview of existing approaches case studies based upon developments in religious literacy connections to initiatives such as Every Child Matters and cross-curricular links to other areas of the curriculum, including PSHE. With an all-encompassing global context, this book provides tutors, students and practicing teachers with a firm basis for developing their thinking about the subject of RE, how it is placed in the primary curriculum and how it may be successfully implemented in schools.

The role of Religious Education in secondary schools is the subject of national and international debate. This book examines the current debates surrounding RE and puts forward a new approach to teaching the subject that is non-faith based and focused on conceptual enquiry and the development of a clear pedagogy. The book is based on the Living Difference learning model developed in Hampshire and adopted in other parts of the UK, which is sparking international discussion and provides an effective approach to implementing the new secondary curriculum. The chapters include examinations of: religious education and the curriculum an interdisciplinary approach to religious education the significance of pedagogy and learners’ development planning, progression, assessment and delivery specific case studies and examples of good practice in schools theoretical grounding and the future of RE the effects of globalisation, post-modernity and multiculturalism. Providing a basis for developing thinking about Religious Education, its place in the curriculum and how it can be delivered effectively in schools, this book is essential reading for tutors, students and teachers.

An intimate cross-country look at the new debate over religion in the public schools A suburban Boston school unwittingly started a firestorm of controversy over a sixth-grade field trip. The class was visiting a mosque to learn about world religions when a handful of boys, unnoticed by their teachers, joined the line of worshippers and acted out the motions of the Muslim call to prayer. A video of the prayer went viral with the title “Wellesley, Massachusetts Public School Students Learn to Pray to Allah.” Charges flew that the school exposed the children to Muslims who intended to convert American schoolchildren. Wellesley school officials defended the course, but also acknowledged the delicate dance teachers must perform when dealing with religion in the classroom. Courts long ago banned public school teachers from preaching of any kind. But the question remains: How much should schools teach about the world’s religions? Answering that question in recent decades has pitted schools against their communities. Veteran education journalist Linda K. Wertheimer spent months with that class, and traveled to other communities around the nation, listening to voices on all sides of the controversy, including those of clergy, teachers, children, and parents who are Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Sikh, or atheist. In Lumberton, Texas, nearly a hundred people filled a school-board meeting to protest a teacher’s dress-up exercise that allowed freshman girls to try on a burka as part of a lesson on Islam. In Wichita, Kansas, a Messianic Jewish family’s opposition to a bulletin-board display about Islam in an elementary school led to such upheaval that the school had to hire extra security. Across the country, parents have requested that their children be excused from lessons on Hinduism and Judaism out of fear they will shy away from their own faiths. But in Modesto, a city in the heart of California’s Bible Belt, teachers have avoided problems since 2000, when the school system began requiring all high school freshmen to take a world religions course. Students receive comprehensive lessons on the three major world religions, as well as on Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and often Shintoism, Taoism, and Confucianism. One Pentecostal Christian girl, terrified by “idols,” including a six-inch gold Buddha, learned to be comfortable with other students’ beliefs. Wertheimer’s fascinating investigation, which includes a return to her rural Ohio school, which once ran weekly Christian Bible classes, reveals a public education system struggling to find the right path forward and offers a promising roadmap for raising a new generation of religiously literate Americans.

This text offers a critical view of approaches to the treatment of different religions in contemporary education, in order to devise approaches to teaching and learning and to formulate policies and procedures that are fair and just to all.