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.

Curricular choices of ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities: translating international human rights law into education policy

Abstract: This paper employs the provisions of international human rights law in order to analyse whether and how liberal states should regulate Haredi educational practices, which sanctify the exclusive focus on religious studies in schools for boys. It conceptualises the conflict between the right to acceptable education and the right to adaptable education in international human rights law, and analyses four case studies of Haredi education that exemplify different socio-legal approaches towards this conflict. The case studies show how education laws are transformed along the cogwheels of education policy, in which there are plural normative orders and many agents who implement them. Based on the case studies, I suggest that policies providing financial incentives for implementing educational standards may facilitate the realisation of the right to acceptable education in Haredi schools more than policies devised to enforce this right. I also suggest stipulations for effective conditional-funding policies.

Weaving the threads of meaning: a characteristic of children's spirituality and its implications for religious education

Abstract: Although well documented from a British perspective, empirical research exploring the spiritual lives of primary school children in the Australian context is a field in which scholarship is beginning to emerge. This article reports on one particular finding which emerged from an Australian study seeking to identify some characteristics of children's spirituality in Catholic primary schools. The characteristic has been termed weaving the threads of meaning. It describes the way in which the children who participated in this study appeared to use their sense of wonder as a means of expressing their spirituality by piecing together a worldview based around their attempts at meaning making. This article argues that the existence of this characteristic presents a challenge for religious education, in particular for those programmes which operate within faith schools where the Christian narrative forms a source of the authoritative wisdom to be handed on to its students.

Women preaching for the secular state: official female preachers ( bayan vaizler ) in contemporary turkey

Abstract: Nearly one-third of Turkey's official preaching workforce are women. Their numbers have risen considerably over the past two decades, fueled by an unforeseen feminization of higher religious education as well as the Directorate of Religious Affairs’ attempts to redress its historical gender imbalances. Created in the early Turkish Republic, the Directorate is also historically embedded in (re)defining the appropriate domains and formations of religion, and the female preachers it now employs navigate people's potent fears rooted in memories of this fraught past. In the various neighborhoods of Istanbul, these preachers attempt to overcome conservative Muslims’ cautious ambivalence toward the interpretative and disciplinary powers of a secular state as well as assertive secularists’ discomfort and suspicion over increasingly visible manifestations of religiosity. Thus, the activities of state-sponsored female preachers are inescapably intertwined with the contestation of religious domains and authority in the secular Republic of Turkey and demonstrate an intricate interplay between the politics of religion, gender, and secularism in contemporary Turkish society.

Who’s Afraid of Secularisation? Reframing the Debate Between Gearon and Jackson

Abstract: This paper examines the debate between Liam Gearon and Robert Jackson concerning the politicisation of religious education. The debate concerns the extent to which secularisation frames religious education by inculcating politically motivated commitments to tolerance, respect and human rights. Gearon is critical of a supposed ‘counter-secularisation’ narrative that, he argues, underpins the REDCo project (Religion in Education. A Contribution to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict in Transforming Societies of European Countries), suggesting that the politicising assumptions behind REDCo in fact extend rather than counter secularisation. Although Jackson’s rejoinder to Gearon is robust and largely accurate, I suggest that it misses the basic challenge that religious education serves political ends. I argue that both Gearon and Jackson are enframed at a more fundamental level by a particular view of religion. The problem of pluralism is not, as Gearon supposes, a consequence of the secular framing of r...

The Guru in Hindu Tradition

Abstract: A striking perception for a student of religions is the universal insistence that instruction by an adept teacher is necessary for development in the spiritual life. This insistence is especially vivid with regard to the guru in the traditions of Hinduism. With the variety implicit in Hindu social and religious life and with the lack of an unified hierarchical organization, the individual guru as religious teacher plays an important role in the transmission and development of the Hindu religious tradition, from the passing on of religious knowledge to being himself a locus for worship. It is a general Hindu belief that only through evolution (karma and reincarnation) and through education within the guru system is a person perfectible. For Hindus, religion is manifested or embodied in the continuing, successive presence of the guru. It is the guru who reveals the meaning of life; he is the immediate, incarnate exemplar in life, and as such, the guru is an inspirational source for the Hindu. The basic strengths of the guru's role are such that guruhood is the oldest form of religious education still extant. An understanding of guruhood, therefore, is of paramount importance in any consideration of the Hindu traditions. The pan-Indian, Sanskrit term "guru" has a cluster of meanings with significance beyond that of the English translation, "teacher." Gu means "ignorance" and ru, "dispeller." The guru is a dispeller of ignorance, all kinds of ignorance; thus, there are gurus not only for specifically spiritual development but also for dancing, music, wrestling, and other skills. The term "guru" also means "heavy" or "weighty" and might well illustrate the belief that accomplished or holy persons are characterized by an uncommon weight. Jan Gonda states that "it must primarily have described the man who on account of his