This article addresses the topic of teaching and how graduate students in higher education, as future faculty members and other types of educators, learn to support the faith identities of their future students. Through a series of guest teaching opportunities at different institutional types, the author shared her understandings of the spiritual…

In the context of talk about changing their lives, incarcerated young men and their supervisors talk about faith as a force for positive change. Given the historical and contemporary significance of religion as a locus of organizing and collective struggle, I argue that faith represents a potential asset in efforts to assist incarcerated young…

This article analyses some of the common assertions made in the public debate about the merits and disadvantages of faith schools and tests them against actual research findings. It argues that there is a growing body of evidence showing that current policy and practice in faith schools creates social division and that faith schools need to do…

This article responds to sociologist Christian Smith's claim that many teenagers today have lost traditional religious faith and instead espouse a new and erroneous faith in God the "Cosmic Therapist." The author challenges this claim by comparing two of Smith's chief complaints vis-a-vis teen faith to established portraits of adolescent faith.…

Justice is often thought to require that students receive educations that are, in some important sense, equal. I lay out, and raise questions about, an argument that seems to support this conclusion. The questions I raise about the argument suggest that what justice requires is not equality, but adequacy, of education. More specifically, I contend…

This essay considers how a male evangelical Christian in a first-year writing (FYW) course at a state university negotiates his identity in his academic writing for a non-Christian audience. It focuses on how "Austin" casuistically stretches a biblical text to accommodate his audience's pluralistic perspective. Austin's writing thus provides a…

While we agree with Cooling's argument from fairness, we argue that Cooling fails to give an adequate account of how fairness can be conceived, particularly because he does not decisively tackle the issues surrounding doing God in a plural context, or the contentious issues of compulsory collective worship and faith schools. In order to explore an…

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) is widely known as a champion for the political rights of African Americans, founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), aggressive advocate of Pan-Africanism, staunch supporter of female suffrage, and one of the creative forces behind the Harlem Renaissance. Further still, Du…

Integration or connectedness between faith and learning is a core aim of Protestant evangelical colleges and universities. It is pursued in a number of different ways in the academic programs of these institutions, even in commercially oriented courses that they offer, such as graphic design. However, the different ways that practical and…

This interview was recorded in November 2012 in Jonathan Z. Smith's Hyde Park graystone. Professor Smith offers insights into how he thinks about his classroom teaching and his students' learning through descriptions of various assignments and classroom activities he has developed over more than forty years of teaching. The discussion…

The article argues that even though deconstruction has indications for action in religious education, the action should be subordinated to the notion of deconstruction as event. Three strategies can be used in the curriculum of religious education inspired by deconstruction. The first strategy is to emphasize the spirit of religion as different…

In this article, the author addresses many of the key points in each of the special section articles to which he responded. He observes that they are all very important pieces of research in that they clearly add important information to the existing body of research. The author notes that the articles provide insight on school climate in…

This paper is a personal reflection on a lifetime experience of bridging the values and ideas of two distinctive faith traditions: the Christian and the Confucian. The author has chosen to focus on the lives and beliefs of two great teachers: St. Paul in Europe of the first century CE and Confucius in China of the 5th century BCE First the context…

Although widespread consensus exists that the integration of Christian worldview, faith and learning lies at the heart of effective Christian education, such an aspiration has not always resulted in the embodiment of worldview principles within Christian educational contexts. In response to this dissonance, an alternative approach to integration…

A key concept in contemporary Catholic educational discourse makes a distinction between religious education and catechesis. This distinction is based on the assumptions of faith commitment on the part of catechesis and the focus on cognitive outcomes on the part of religious education. Many official documents on Canadian Catholic school…