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…

Scripture encourages parents to pass on faith to children, and a multitude of studies show that the biggest predictor of the faith of kids is the faith of their parents. However, raising kids in faith is more complicated and nuanced than simple "parent to child" religious transmission. In this paper, animal family models are used to…

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…

A phenomenological study was conducted to understand how secular, Generation Z, college students have experienced Christian rhetoric. The study's findings revealed Christian rhetorical praxis lacked intellectual vulnerability, empathetic imagination and a willingness to engage in steeped embodied discourse. This article contends these elements are…

Decades of work in dismantling racism have not yielded the kind of results for which religious educators have hoped. One primary reason has been what scholars term "white fragility," a symptom of the structural racism which confers systemic privilege upon White people. Lessons learned from Christian mystics point to powerful ways to…

This article examines how the field of religious education informs religiously based colleges and universities as they teach about their institutional missions. A discussion of the audiences, languages, and the temporal orientations of institutional mission education is intended to provide insights and parameters as mission offices chart their…

This article examines the importance of memory in the Hebrew bible and how memory lay at the center of Ancient Israel's religious faith and cultural identity. It argues for a similar, albeit nuanced, memory-based approach to contemporary Christian religious education. It analyzes memory through the lens of Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic of narration…

During the last decades the concept of interreligious education has been developed in which exploration and personal identity formation form important aspects. The increasing multi-cultural and multi-religious society requires open, respectful, and tolerant attitudes for which schools have to prepare. Therefore, theorists on interreligious…

The aim of this article is to present a framework for studying the religious identity development of highly religious Christian and Muslim adolescents. Building on existing theories on identity development, the authors define highly religious Christian and Muslim adolescents as "orthoprax" adolescents and explore the consequences of this for…

One perceived concern in the process of educating in faith in the context of our Western societies is the temptation of approaching this experience primarily in terms of observable and measurable criteria (e.g., church growth, reception of sacraments, acquisition of factual knowledge, study of trends). Although Religious Education requires…

In general churches talk a lot about the importance of education. At the same time their educational praxis is often fragmentized. The most crucial factor for this is a weak connection between the Church's identity and its activity. When this link is diffuse, different activities have a tendency to live their own lives. This article examines some…

This article reports the findings of interviews conducted with students (aged 11-13) in four English secondary schools, examining reasons why young people find it difficult to understand Christian beliefs regarding Jesus' miracles, resurrection, and status as the Son of God. For the students in this sample, understanding and belief are closely…

Respecting religious diversity while also staying true to the role of faith in theological practice remains a challenge in contemporary education. This is made more complex by the role of learning outcomes to assess student learning. This article first emphasizes the role of faith in theological discourse and then raises questions about the nature…

The author observes that now many religious educators are grappling with the realization that forming persons in faith today necessitates teaching them "to be religious interreligiously." Yet, there is one inter-religious relationship that is absolutely fundamental to Christianity: its relationship with Judaism in both the past and present. The…

In his highly regarded book on moral philosophy, "After Virtue" (1984), Alasdair MacIntyre offered a concept of tradition that explained both the past's claim upon the present and the present's availability for change, though he had not yet recognized and developed the theological implications of his work. A living tradition, in his terms, is a…