ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the stunning influence of personal, social and religious contexts on young people and their attitudes to religious diversity. It reflects dominant areas of US scholarship in relation to young people, education and religious diversity. The chapter is an exploratory map of youth educational research in the United States. The mapping of it is a sampling rather than a thorough review of the literature. The Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit (WRERU) chapters and this review of research in the United States suggest that religious education is a practice of opening opening persons and communities to new experiences, fresh thinking, critical analysis and imagination. The chapter discusses the five genres such as opening to life narratives, opening to communal relationships, opening to information and analysis, opening to the ambiguities of difference and opening to mystery. Mystery is particularly important in the face of differences that cannot be reconciled.
