ABSTRACT

In the current climate, and in an age of increasing hostility towards religion and the study of religion, religious education is a much-debated area. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of contributors from the USA, Britain and Ireland, and Australia, representing a variety of religious perspectives, Does Religious Education Matter? provocatively demonstrates that it is vital that religious education is presented as it ’really’ is: a valuable and rich resource that, when taught and engaged with appropriately, stimulates essential qualities for global and responsible citizenship: critical thinking, tolerance, respect, and mutual understanding.

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

part I|44 pages

The distinctness of religious education

chapter 1|18 pages

A space like no other

chapter 3|12 pages

Interpreting ‘between privacies’

Religious education as a conversational activity

part II|118 pages

Religious education in the school context

chapter 5|11 pages

Living the questions

The spirituality of the RE teacher according to Henri J.M. Nouwen

chapter 6|12 pages

Going below the surface of grow in love

Some of the theological presuppositions in the new Catholic religious education primary programme for Ireland

chapter 7|13 pages

Eclipses and reclamations

The question of religion in educational experience

chapter 9|16 pages

Religious education in Catholic second-level schools in Ireland today

An invitation to love, understanding, commitment, hospitality, and dialogue

chapter 10|11 pages

The role of religious education teachers

Perspectives from the field

chapter 11|11 pages

Reclaiming our ‘Own selves’

Fragmentation, Christian religious education, and the new junior cycle

part III|92 pages

Exploring the potential of religious education

chapter 15|9 pages

Religious education and emerging technologies

A post-worldview Flâneur

chapter 16|12 pages

Religious education through an experiential lens

Inclusivity and subjectivity in the writing and literature classroom

chapter 17|10 pages

Educational exclusion

A fundamental layer of social exclusion

chapter 19|12 pages

Religion in the Latina/o community

History, identity, and conscientisation through religious education