Religious education

About: Religious education is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 9554 publications have been published within this topic receiving 65331 citations. The topic is also known as: faith-based education & RE.

Religion and Education in Europe. Developments, Contexts and Debates

Abstract: This book is the initial outcome of the REDCo-project, "Religion in Education: A contribution to Dialogue or a factor of Conflict in transforming societies of European countries." The REDCo project (2006-2009) is the first major research project on religion and education to be funded by the European Commission. The project includes ten studies from eight different European countries, plus some collaborative thematic studies. This volume reports the first thematic study, which assesses current issues in religious education and related fields in Europe.

The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief

Abstract: Only a century ago, almost all state universities held compulsory chapel services, and some required Sunday church attendance as well. In fact, state-sponsored chapel services were commonplace until the World War II era, and as late as the 1950s, it was not unusual for leading schools to refer to themselves as "Christian" institutions. Today, the once pervasive influence of religion in the intellectual and cultural life of America's preeminent colleges and universities has all but vanished. In The Soul of the American University, Marsden explores how, and why, these dramatic changes occurred. Far from a lament for a lost golden age when mainline Protestants ruled American education, The Soul of the American University offers a penetrating critique of that era, surveying the role of Protestantism in higher education from the founding of Harvard in the 1630s through the collapse of the WASP establishment in the 1960s. Marsden tells the stories of many of our pace-setting universities at defining moments in their histories, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. He recreates the religious feuds that accompanied Yale's transition from a flagship evangelical college to a university, and the dramatic debate over the place of religion in higher education between Harvard's President Charles Eliot and Princeton's President James McCosh. Marsden's analysis ranges from debates over Darwinism and higher critics of the Bible, to the roles of government and wealthy contributors, the impact of changing student mores, and even the religious functions of college football. He argues persuasively that the values of "liberalism" and "tolerance" that the establishment championed and used to marginalize Christian fundamentalism and Roman Catholicism eventually and perhaps inevitably led to its own disappearance from the educational milieu, as nonsectarian came to mean exclusively secular. While the largely voluntary disestablishment of religion may appear in many respects commendable, Marsden believes that it has nonetheless led to the infringement of the free exercise of religion in most of academic life. In effect, nonbelief has been established as the only valid academic perspective. In a provocative final chapter, Marsden spells out his own prescription for change, arguing that just as the academy has made room for feminist and multicultural perspectives, so should there be room once again for traditional religious viewpoints. A thoughtful blend of historical narrative and searching analysis, The Soul of the American University exemplifies what it advocates: that religious perspectives can provide a legitimate contribution to the highest level of scholarship.

Creating Social Identities through Doctrina Narratives

Abstract: This study describes narrative activity in a doctrina class (children's religious education class in Spanish) composed ofMexican immigrants at a Catholic parish in Los Angeles. During the telling ofthe narrative ofthe apparition ofNuestra Senora de Guadalupe (Our Lady ofGuadalupe) doctrina students and their teacher collaboratively construct a multi- plicity of identities in an ongoing narrative version. These past and present identities are represented as Mexican, de aqui (from here), and dark-skinned against the backdrop ofthe description ofan oppressive colonial past in Mexico. The paper compares a doctrina class with a racially mixed religious education class conducted in English (catechism) at the same parish to llustrate differences in the way social identities are created in both classes. This study describes how teachers and students in doctrina class (a religious education class in Spanish) composed ofMexican immigrants at a Catholic parish in Los Angeles construct social identities in the course of telling the narrative of the apparition ofNuestra Senora de Guadalupe (Our Lady of Guadalupe). During the telling of this narrative, doctrina teachers at the parish of St. Paul' employ several discursive and interactional resources to represent a multiplicity of identi- ties within a coherent collective narrative, establishing in this way links to tradi- tional Mexican world views. Like narratives of personal experience, this tradi- tional narrative organizes collective experience in a temporal continuum, extend- ing past experience into the present (Heidegger, 1962; Ricoeur 1985/1988; Polkinghorne, 1988; Bruner, 1990; Brockelman, 1992; Ochs, 1994; Ochs& Capps,

Measuring the Religious Variable: Amended Findings

Abstract: as presented in Shaw, M. and Wright, J. op. cit. Glock, Charles Y. On the Study of Religious Commitment. Review of Recent Research Bearing on Religious and Character Formation. New York: Religious Education Association, 1962, pp. 98-110. King, Morton. Measuring the Religious Variable Journal lor the Scientilic Study of Religion, 1967, VI, 173-190. Kirkpatrick, 0. Belief Pattern Scale: Attitudes of Religiosity as presented in Shaw, M. and