Choral singing was embraced by many missionaries as a means of attracting potential converts to Christianity. A principal choral singing method in 19th century Britain, Tonic Sol-fa, was introduced by missionaries and others to the Indian subcontinent where it was used as both a pedagogical method and a music notation system. Building on the…

Women missionaries who came to India with a superior Protestant religious imaginary were keen on critiquing Hindu cultural practices that created divergences and transfigurations. They blatantly proclaimed that the deep-rooted custom of women's "seclusion" was a stumbling block to education, evangelisation and modernisation. This study…

Jesuit schools, in particular, have been known for a long time to be centres of learning in Chotanagpur area, India, where tremendous efforts were made to achieve a high level of academic excellence; yet it appears that this legacy is not being sustained among rural, tribal, vernacular schools of Chotanagpur these days because of varied reasons.…

Religion as a school subject--Religious Education (RE)--is handled differently in various national contexts. This article discusses two different systems of managing (or avoiding) RE: those used in non-denominational Swedish and Indian schools. The article focuses particularly on what is allowed in the classroom with regards to religion. Both…

For the first time, in 2008, I offered a world religions study abroad course in South India. The special emphasis was meeting and befriending locals, and the centerpiece of the course was a six-night stay in rural homes. I considered this immersion in a Hindu context to be the best setting for learning Hindu thought. However, the environment was…

The theological misappropriation of Christianity as a civilizing force occurs when individuals convert to Christianity due to deception that ignores the faith-based aspect of Christianity. The history of Western education in India illustrates the hidden curriculum that Christian missionaries employed to disrupt the Indian educational system. This…

Religious learning within the currents of global cultural flows necessitates risky movements into "terra incognita"--be they unknown internal landscapes of the mind and heart in religious knowing, or external territories of culture, ideas, and the politics of identification. Drawing on insights gained from three seminary-sponsored…

The author believes that the future of learning religion and religiously learning does not primary depend on new methods or medias transferring faith or religiosity to people's lives. It depends more on a change of theological awareness and of people's ways of theologizing in the midst of cultural flow in order to get a deeper understanding of the…

"Meditation and the Classroom" inventively articulates how educators can use meditation to educate the whole student. Notably, a number of universities have initiated contemplative studies options and others have opened contemplative spaces. This represents an attempt to address the inner life. It is also a sign of a new era, one in…

How can teaching and living abroad impact our teaching in North America? This article explores how what I do teaching religion and ethics to undergraduates at Texas Christian University has been influenced by twelve years of teaching in the two-thirds world. It is structured in terms of three insights that correlate with what I call the past,…

From the earliest historical period up to the present, Hindus have linked education with religion. This paper examines the evolution of the Hindu educational system from the Vedic period (up to 1000 B.C.) to the present. Topics covered include the historical development of the Hindu education from the earliest period when it consisted of…