Faith-based colleges and universities in America have historically been described as "church-related." Unfortunately, this classification is too one-dimensional, revealing virtually nothing about how faith-based identity influences the mission, rhetoric, curriculum, or policies of institutions. Although scholars have advanced…

This study explored the spiritual needs of Christian families by surveying and holding focus groups with parents and congregational leaders. We discovered a disconnect between what congregational leaders think is happening with families and the lived experience of families. Congregational leaders often perceive the lack of church engagement from…

A growing number of new faith communities in North America are emerging as part of the Wild Church Network. These outdoor church expressions seek to re-acquaint, re-cover, and re-member their faith communities as loving participants of the larger community of Creation. This paper explores theological foundations and spiritual practices grounding…

The Bible tells keeners to teach lament to a faith community and to the daughters of the community when evil and injustice are rampant. This intriguing demand draws the attention of the faith community to how lament works and how it can become a community practice to deal with suffering. This study specifically challenges the adequacy of the…

Educators at religious preK-12 schools attempt to integrate their faith into their teaching. Yet there is limited empirical study about how faith integration self-efficacy may develop. This study examines the relationships between the faith integration self-efficacy of educators at Mennonite preK-12 schools and their past educational experiences…

Informed by social and cultural perspectives, this article examines the religious literacies of sixteen Latter-day Saint young adults. Religious literacy for them was a deeply embedded religiosocial experience involving family, friends, and others associated with the faith (people); activities, events, and courses they participated in (programs);…

This study examines the attitudes of teachers toward the visibility of worldviews in public education as well as how teachers negotiate the boundaries of acceptability based on these attitudes. The question raised several issues: on the one hand, the clashing of increasingly complex, diverse, and secularized worldviews and, on the other hand, the…

This article explores religious and spiritual influences that motivate adolescents to show kindness toward their peers who are outside their friend group. Findings from semi-structured interviews with 21 students from eight Christian high schools show the importance of presence, modeling, resources, and education for supporting adolescent…

Race plays a significant role in shaping sense of belonging in higher education. However, little research has analyzed religion and belonging at universities. In this study, we test four hypotheses about race, religion, and belonging with survey data from a Christian university in the South. For first-year students, Asians express less belonging…

The purpose of this article is to explore suburban Black Christian girls' experiences of microaggressions in the public high school context. Through an ethnographic study, personal narratives were collected from six suburban Black Christian girls who all attended the same African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church where I served as the youth…

Death always brings questions for the living. How do we teach and learn in a context of death and pandemic? This essay recounts and reflects on experiences of "playing in the face of death" in a graduate-level adult learning community at the onset of COVID-19 in New York City. Play became a healing and holy act of pedagogical love and…

The Seminary to Early Ministry (SEM) Study is a mixed-method, prospective study designed to provide high-quality empirical data on student formation in theological education. The study will use a series of surveys and in-depth interviews to track three cohorts of divinity school students from matriculation into the early years of their careers. As…

This paper is based on a quantitative research study of Christian adolescents in junior and senior high schools, in 12 Protestant churches in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, concerning their perceptions about LGBTQ+ sexualities. Using a "normalcy" perspective from disability studies, the study finds heterosexuality is normative; other sexual…

Religious identity development is highly influenced by contexts. This influence is even more powerful for young people who grew up in strict religious contexts because of the prominence of orthodox beliefs and practices in everyday life. This article presents which contextual factors were influential on the religious identity development of 18…

Previous research showed that strong religious communities wish for cohesion and cooperation between pedagogical environments in religious socialization. This explorative and descriptive study examines what Dutch orthodox Protestant primary school teachers perceive to be their role in comparison with others, such as parents. We extensively…